CHANDIGARH: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday avoided making any pronouncement on an ongoing [Sutlej Yamuna Link] canal row between the states of Haryana and Punjab, but he did indicate that he would use river waters as leverage against Pakistan.

“Now every drop of this water [of the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej] will be stopped and I will give that to the farmers of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. I am committed to this,” he said, addressing a rally held in Bathinda in connection with the upcoming elections in Punjab.

His remarks on the waters of the Indus system come a week before the Heart of Asia Conference is to be held in Amritsar on Dec 3-4, according to a report which appeared on the web edition of The New Indian Express. The conference is to be attended among others by Sartaj Aziz, the PM’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs.

Mr Modi alleged that waters of the three rivers were going to waste in Pakistan under the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).

He said that the share of river waters due to India as per the IWT would now be “fully utilised’.

“In the Indus Waters Treaty, the waters of the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi rivers, over which our farmers have a right, are not available to them. The water is India’s right...[but it’s] flowing into Pakistan and going [to] waste into the sea,” he claimed.

The Indian leader then turned his focus from water to more common issues with Pakistan. “From here Pakistan is not far off. When schoolchildren are killed in Pakistan [a reference to the Taliban attack on the Army Public School Peshawar], 125 crore Indians cry for them. We are with the people of Pakistan. I want to urge the people of Pakistan that they should tell their rulers that Pakistan should fight against poverty, corruption and black money.”

He then sharpened his diatribe. “Pakistan now knows fully well what the Indian army is capable of, and it should not destroy itself by fighting against India.”

He said there were “tremors” across the border after India’s surgical strikes of Sept 29. “Our soldiers carried out surgical strikes in Pakistan which completely shook the country. It has not been able to recover from that shock,” he alleged.

The Times of India quoted Mr Modi as saying that a task force had been constituted to ensure that each drop of water that flowed out of the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi reached Punjab and the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

“There is no reason that we cannot use our rights [over our waters], and let our farmers suffer,” he said, adding, “I need your blessings in order to fulfil your requirements for watering your fields.”

Criticising previous governments, PM Modi said, “waters kept flowing to Pakistan, but successive governments kept sleeping on this issue and my farmer kept crying for want of water”.

“If Punjab farmers get sufficient amount of water, they could produce `gold’ from the soil and could fill the coffers of the country,” he said.

The 1960 World Bank-mediated IWT is considered one of the great success stories of water diplomacy, especially as it has survived the India-Pakistan wars of 1965, 1971, 1999 and much bad blood during and after the wars.

Under the treaty, which was signed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President Ayub Khan, water of six rivers — Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum — are to be shared between the two countries.

Published in Dawn November 26th, 2016