Water Dispute

Discuss the Water Dispute

The I Water Dispute

The  Water dispute had its origin in the partition of the Punjab. It broke into the open on April 1, 1848, when East Punjab in India cut off the flow of canal waters 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 upon irrigation by canals drawn 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 sense the Indus river 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 use of the water of the Indus system of rivers, entitled “The Indus Water Treaty 1960″ was signed on September 19 in Karachi by Jawaharlal Nehru (Prime Minister of India) on behalf of India and by Field Marshal Mohammad 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 the livelihood of some 50 million people in the two countries was dependent.

The treaty allocated the waters of the Western Rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – for the use of Pakistan while the three Eastern Rivers – Ravi, Beas and Sutlej – had been awarded exclusively to India.

Simultaneously with the signing of the Indus Water Treaty, an international financial agreement was also executed in Karachi by representative of Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States and of the World Bank. This agreement created an Indus Basin Development Fund of almost $900 million to finance the construction of irrigation and other works in Pakistan.

Works Program
The division of water provided for in the Treaty necessities the construction of works to transfer water from the three Western Rivers to meet the irrigation uses in Pakistan hitherto met by water from the three Eastern Rivers. The effect of the transfer was eventually to release the whole flow of the three Eastern Rivers for irrigation development in India.

The system of canals and reservoirs that was constructed provided further substantial irrigation development and developed important hydro-electric potential, in both India and Pakistan. It also made a much-needed contribution to soil reclamation and drainage in Pakistan, and provided a measure of flood protection in both countries.

Works in Pakistan
The following works were built in Pakistan.

1. A system of eight link canals nearly 400 miles in total length, transfering water from the Western Rivers to areas formerly irrigated by the Eastern Rivers. The total area to be thus irrigated became about 5 million acres and total annual volume of water to be transfered became 14 million acre-feet, about equal to the entire flow of the Colarado River in the United States.

2. Two earth-filled storage dams, one on the Jhelum River (with a live reservoir capacity of 4.75 million acre-feet) and the other on the Indus (with a live reservoir capacity of 4.2 million acre-feet). These two reservoirs provided the water storage potential to meet on a firm basis the irrigation supplies of the Pakistan canals during critical periods of fluctuating short-flow supplies, and as well will make possible substantial new irrigation development.

3. Power stations installed at the Jhelum Dam with a capacity of more than 3,00,000 kilowatts.

4. Work done to integrate the former canal and river system into the new inter-river link canals. These works included three barrages to carry new canals across rivers, and the remodeling of five existence barrage sand eight existing canals.

5. Tube-wells and drainage to overcome water-logging and salinity in irrigated areas totaling 2.5 million acres. The number of tube-wells installed was 2,500.

The general scheme of works was drawn up by an Indus Basin Advisory Board set up by the Government of Pakistan, which in addition to Pakistani, irrigation engineers, included representatives of American and British engineering firms, and in consultation with the Water and Power Development Authority of Pakistan (WAPDA).