India’s Hydel Ambitions & The New Indo-Pak Water Conflict

Already, the IWT was at the centre stage of India's plans to expand hydropower generation in Jammu and Kashmir. India’s intense effort to strengthen its control over the territory is quite a whirlwind, driven by a mix of power issues, infrastructure goals, and big strategic moves. It’s not just about facts and figures — it’s also about environmental talks and the ongoing push-and-pull between India and other players.

Kashmir’s Rivers As Power And Leverage

Rivers in J&K, which together represent more than 24,000 MW of hydropower potential, have always been a tantalising prospect. But with the IWT effectively abrogated since the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025, India is acting at breakneck speed.

Six big projects — Sawalkot (1,856 MW), Pakal Dul (1,000 MW), Ratle (850 MW), Bursar (800 MW), Kiru (624 MW), and Kirthai I & II (1,320 MW) are being expedited, with Home Minister Amit Shah and other senior officials holding top-level meetings. The government will no longer have to inform its neighbour, Pakistan, nor provide water-discharge data, a move that could lead to a 65-year-old protocol becoming ineffective.

Technical And Strategic Insights

The projects are feats of engineering — the Sawalkot dam, which is slowly being built to harness the power of River Chenab, will be one of the tallest in the region, while the use of underground powerhouses is not only an attempt to reduce an environmental footprint but also to protect vital infrastructure from earthquakes and military threats.

With the treaty’s data-sharing and notification requirements out of the window, India has begun ‘reservoir flushing’ at Salal and Baglihar dams — emptying reservoirs to clear sediment, something previously blocked by Pakistan due to downstream flood risks. This move alone has already increased output from the Salal project, which had been running at just 60 per cent capacity due to silt build-up.

Indian officials are now publicly discussing the operation of these projects at “free will”, with the water minister declaring that “not a single drop of the Indus river’s water [will] reach Pakistan”. While India can’t instantly halt the flows due to the river’s geography and the design of the dams, having the power to control the timing and volume of water gives it an unprecedented edge in the region’s water politics.

Economic And Ecological Impacts

If these projects were to take place, the level of power generation in J&K would reach a record high of 10,000 MW, thus making the UT a net exporter of electricity — a game-changer for its economy. Moreover, the increase in the size of reservoirs would raise the irrigation and drinking water supply in the plains.

As the years pass by, the impact on the environment and society has continued to increase. In Kishtwar, which has been featured as the dam construction centre, numerous displaced people and entire villages have been submerged, with little compensation and rehabilitation efforts disbursed in most cases. 

Conservationists argue against the building of dams in the seismically active region, citing the high probability of landslides and earthquakes. A report authored by JNCASR in 2018 disclosed the likelihood of an 8.5 magnitude earthquake.

As much as the removal of silt from the reservoir makes the process easier and cheaper, it also leads to the loss of valuable water and can be catastrophic to the ecosystems situated downstream. 

A typical example is the extraction of silt from the Salal dam recently, which led to a deposit of more than 12,000 tonnes of sediment, affecting aquatic life and farms.

Water As A Strategic Weapon

The energising of hydropower has become a matter of great concern. Pakistan, which relies on the Indus system for 80 per cent of its agricultural needs, has warned of legal action if water is diverted.

The sudden void in data sharing and the absence of flood warnings have negatively impacted Pakistan’s hydrology management, making it worry about the damage caused by some of the floods or droughts it feels it could have controlled. 

India has denied these allegations and claimed that the Pakistani government's inability to use privately offered data is leading to the loss of such information flow. However, past attempts to disrupt the treaty were met with international condemnation, and it remains unclear if India is alone in this, as China has also repeatedly threatened to impact water availability in the region. 

Unfolding Drama

India had not informed Pakistan when it launched the Salal dam project in 1970 and the one at Baglihar in 1999 — a clear indicator of India's willingness to assert full power over upper riparian projects. This makes it difficult to imagine that the neighbouring countries, which have faced water-related conflicts, were engaged in a collaborative water management project on the Indus basin since 2022. 

In 2022, a group of Pakistani and Indian experts, under the aegis of the World Bank, began mediating a combined solution to examine water scarcity in the Indus basin and to set up hydro projects. 

Under the model, both countries were obligated to share data. The team planned to monitor the Indus River for five years to obtain detailed information for addressing the basin-wide water management problem.

All that's changing after India's decision to stop the IWT, and subsequent announcement of the flushing of the two dams without Pakistan's consent — actions that reflect the country's new strategy of exercising power not only in terms of hydroelectricity generation, but also in water resource management. 

In PoK, Pakistan has used the Jhelum river as a waterway for commercial, household, and industrial needs, besides generating cheap hydroelectricity and running a healing spa.

That's because the IWT, brokered by the World Bank, allocates the Jhelum (a “western river”) to Pakistan for unrestricted use, while India retains only limited, non-consumptive rights (such as hydropower generation without storage or diversion). 

Future Risk

India’s suspension of the IWT marks a decisive shift from decades of technical mediation and cooperation to a strategy anchored in national security and leverage, as India directly linked water diplomacy to Pakistan’s ongoing support for cross-border terrorism.  

By halting notification enforcements, ending data sharing, and unilaterally managing river flows — including reservoir flushing without prior consent — India has asserted its upstream rights and signalled the end of collaborative water management, reflecting both a response to persistent security threats and a recalibration of regional water politics.

This new approach, while rooted in India’s legal and strategic prerogatives, inevitably raises the risk of heightened tensions, as water resources become further entangled with the ongoing geopolitical conflict between India and Pakistan.