India And Its Farmers Have Sole Right Over Its Waters: PM Modi On Indus Water Treaty

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said India and its farmers have the sole right over the country’s share of Indus river waters and termed the Indus Water Treaty “unjust and one-sided”.

It had caused enormous harm to agriculture in India, Modi said in his Independence Day address from the Red Fort. He said the attack in Pahalgam underscored the futility of continuing the agreement. “India has decided that blood and water cannot flow together,” the prime minister said, accusing the treaty of allowing rivers that rise in India to “irrigate the fields of our enemies, while the soil of my country and the farmers of my country remain thirsty”.

“The waters that belong to India will be used by India, for India’s farmers alone and we would no longer tolerate an arrangement that deprived its farmers,” he said. Modi said India's farmers had suffered “unimaginable losses” for decades under the agreement. “India has endured this for decades. We will not endure it any further. In the interest of our farmers, in the interest of the nation, this agreement is unacceptable to us,” he asserted.

India’s decision to suspend the decades-old treaty follows the killing of 26 people, mostly tourists, in a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam. The Indus Water Treaty, brokered by the World Bank, has governed the use of the Indus river and its tributaries between India and Pakistan since 1960.