As debate gathers pace over the future of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), I find myself reflecting on conversations that took place nearly two decades ago but remain strikingly relevant today.
In 2005, as Senior Vice President of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), I was part of a delegation that met the then Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, at his official residence on Race Course Road in New Delhi.
We presented the Chamber's position on the Indus Waters Treaty and its implications for Jammu and Kashmir. When we met him again in 2007, by which time I had become President of the Chamber, we returned to the same issue because we believed one fundamental question had never been adequately addressed.
Our discussions were never about reopening the water dispute between India and Pakistan. They were about Kashmir.
More specifically, they were about Kashmir's absence from one of the most consequential agreements ever concluded concerning its own natural resources.
For more than six decades, the Indus Waters Treaty has been celebrated as one of the world's most durable transboundary water agreements. It has survived wars, diplomatic crises and changing governments. Yet another history deserves equal attention.
The Treaty determined the future use of rivers originating in Jammu and Kashmir, but the people of Jammu and Kashmir were never party to the agreement.
From our perspective, this was the Treaty's original omission.
Neither the people of Jammu and Kashmir nor representatives chosen by them participated in the negotiations that culminated in the 1960 agreement. Even the government headed by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad was not a negotiating party to the Treaty that determined the future governance of these rivers.
That historical reality raises an equally important question for the future.
The issue is not whether successive administrations exercised governmental authority in Jammu and Kashmir, nor whether they held constitutional office.
The question is whether any administration functioning within the constitutional framework of one of the Treaty parties can, merely by virtue of that position, be regarded as having represented the people of Jammu and Kashmir in an international agreement governing rivers that originate in their homeland.
I believe the answer is no.
Administrative authority is not the same as participation in an international treaty. The omission of 1960 cannot simply be corrected by pointing to governments that came afterwards.
Practical Proposals
It was against this backdrop that our delegation placed a practical proposal before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rather than advancing a political slogan.
We argued that, irrespective of the strategic considerations that shaped the Treaty, Jammu and Kashmir had borne significant developmental and economic consequences that had never been adequately recognised.
We therefore presented two principal demands.
First, we sought financial compensation for what we regarded as the long-term developmental and economic opportunity costs imposed on Jammu and Kashmir under the Treaty's framework.
Second, we urged that hydropower projects be transferred to the Jammu and Kashmir government so that the people of the region could derive greater benefit from the natural resources originating in their own land.
These were not demands for concessions. They were demands for equity.
If decisions concerning a region's natural resources are taken without its participation, the developmental consequences cannot remain unaddressed indefinitely.
Nearly 20 years later, the debate over the Indus Waters Treaty has entered an entirely different phase.
Today, the discussion extends far beyond engineering specifications and technical provisions. It increasingly encompasses climate change, water security, strategic competition and regional stability.
Yet amid this transformation, one reality remains unchanged.
Kashmir continues to be discussed primarily as territory rather than as a stakeholder. The region from which these rivers originate remains largely absent from conversations about their long-term governance.
If the future of the Treaty is now open for discussion, the objective should be more ambitious than merely revising technical provisions or renegotiating water allocations.
It should also be to correct one of the Treaty's most enduring omissions.
The participation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir cannot be reduced to consulting whichever administration happens to be exercising governmental authority at a given time. The issue is one of legitimate stakeholder participation.
Future Framework
Any future framework governing the Indus basin should recognise that the people of Jammu and Kashmir have distinct environmental, economic and developmental interests arising from the simple fact that these rivers originate in their homeland.
A durable agreement requires more than legal validity. It requires legitimacy.
And legitimacy cannot be achieved by continuing to exclude those whose lives, environment and future are directly shaped by the governance of these waters.
Looking back, three omissions stand out.
The first was the exclusion of the people of Jammu and Kashmir when the Treaty was negotiated.
The second was the failure to adequately address what many in the region regarded as its long-term developmental and economic consequences.
The third would be to repeat that exclusion if the future of the Indus water regime is reconsidered without meaningful participation from the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
History should not repeat itself.
When we met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005 and again in 2007, we believed we were raising an issue that had not received the attention it deserved. Nearly two decades later, that conviction has only grown stronger.
The strategic importance of the Indus basin has increased. Climate change has intensified the challenge. Water security has become inseparable from regional security.
As the world begins to reconsider the future of the Indus Waters Treaty, it is time to answer the question that has remained unresolved since 1960.
Can the future of rivers originating in Jammu and Kashmir continue to be determined without the meaningful participation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir themselves?
In my view, the answer is clear.
Whatever framework governs the Indus basin in the decades ahead, it should not repeat the original omission of 1960. The people of Jammu and Kashmir must no longer remain the forgotten stakeholder.
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