The Indus Basin Water Dispute
May 6th, 2008 | by Raja Ghias |The Indus Basin water dispute had its origin in the partition of the Punjab. It broke in to the open on April 1, 1948, when East Punjab in India cut off the flow of canal water to west Punjab in Pakistan.
Pakistan has fertile soil but a hot and dry climate. The rainfall is scanty and undependable. Agriculture, the mainstay of the economy, is dependent almost entirely up on irrigation by canals draw from the Indus and its five tributaries. The three western rivers-the Indus, the Jhelum, and the chenab-flow into Pakistan from the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and three eastern rivers-the Ravi, the Beas, and the Sutlej-enter Pakistan from India. In a very real sense, the Indus rivers system is Pakistan’s source of life.
The sharing of the waters of the Indus system has been a matter of dispute for many years between Pakistan and India and later on it. Became an international issue, until a treaty governing the uses of the waters of the Indus system of rivers, entitled “The Indus water Treaty 1960” was singed on September 19 in Karachi, by Jawaharlal Nehru (Prime Minister of India) on behalf of India and by field Marshal Muhammad Ayub khan (President of Pakistan) on behalf of Pakistan.
Signature of the Treaty marked the end of critical and long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan, and opened the way to the peaceful use and development of water resources on which depended the livelihood of some 50 million people in the two countries.
The treaty allocated the waters of the western Rivers-Indus, Jhelum and Chenab-for the use of Pakistan while the three Eastern Rivers-Ravi, and Sutlej-had been awarded exclusively to India.
Simultaneously with the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty, an international financial agreement was also executed in Karachi by representational of Australia, Canada, Germany, NewZealand, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the united state, and of the World Bank. This Agreement created an Indus Basion Development fund of almost $900 million to finance the construction of irrigation and other works in Pakistan consequential on the Treaty settlement. The fund was financed with the equivalent of about $640 million to be provided by the participating Governments, with a contribution of approximately S174 million payable by India under the western Treaty and with $80 million out of proceeds of the World Bank loan to Pakistan.
