A WATER CRISIS IS BREWING BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN:

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A WATER CRISIS IS BREWING BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN:

• Both have accused each other of violating the World Bank-brokered 1960s Indus Waters Treaty
• Imran Khan’s six-month-old Pakistani government has sought to mend ties with India
  

Women and children walk miles each day in search for water in a crowded, downtrodden district of Pakistan’s financial capital, Karachi — a scene repeated in cities throughout the country.
Across the border in India, government research indicates about three-quarters of people don’t have drinking water at home and 70% of the country’s water is contaminated.
As rivers and taps run dry, water has the potential to become a major flash point between arch-rivals India and Pakistan. Both have repeatedly accused each other of violating the World Bank-brokered 1960s Indus Waters Treaty that ensures shared management of the six rivers crossing between the two neighbors, which have fought three major wars in the past 71 years.
The latest dispute is over hydroelectric projects India is building along the Chenab River that Pakistan says violate the treaty and will impact its water supply. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is sending inspectors to visit the site on January 27. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who faces elections in the next few months — has vowed to proceed with construction, and it remains unclear how the impasse will be resolved.
“Tensions over water will undoubtedly intensify and put the Indus Waters Treaty — which to this point has helped ensure that they have never fought a war over water — to its greatest test," Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington said by email.
“The prospect of two nuclear-armed rivals becoming enmeshed in increasing tensions over a critical resource like water is unsettling and poses highly troubling implications for security in South Asia and the world on the whole," he said.
For now, relations between India and Pakistan appear to be stable, and even looking more positive. Khan’s six-month-old Pakistani government has sought to mend ties with India, and has said the country’s powerful military supports those efforts — a notion greeted with skepticism in New Delhi.

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Srinivas1939

A real pity that a new dimension is added to the existing crisis in the relations between the neighbors.While it is not clear whether the civilian government in Pakistan is in full control  any attempt to deescalate tensions  would augur well for both sides.