WHEN word spread that the Modi government had decided to put the Indus Waters Treaty on pause, it sent a quiet tremor through South Asia. For more than 60 years, this agreement, crafted with the World Bank’s help, has outlived wars, political crises, and deep mistrust between two nuclear neighbours. To suspend it now, in the aftermath of the Pahalgam incident, shakes an already fragile region and its most precious shared resource: water.

The treaty was straightforward in principle, even if complicated in practice. Pakis­tan was given the western rivers — the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab. India took the eastern ones — the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej. Four crossborder drainage channels — Hudiara, Fazilka, Kasur, and Saleem Shah — were identified to handle natural runoff. But over the decades, that neat arrangement slowly fell apart. Those four drains multiplied into more than 20, carrying ind­ustrial waste and untreated sewage into Pakistan. The Ravi and Sutlej, once living rivers, have for years resembled open sewers, poisoning aquifers and farmland across Punjab.

And then nature stepped in.

This year’s intense monsoons and sudden upstream releases pushed the Ravi and Sutlej back to life. Rivers long dismissed as ‘dead’ surged again,........

© Dawn