No one suggests Punjab should hide genuine gains in canal rehabilitation. But there is a difference between reporting gradual improvement and projecting a breakthrough.
‘If we keep shrinking its bed, it will definitely enter our houses. How can we call it an angry river, it's not the river’s fault,' said a 23-year-old who lives by the Chenab River.
For India, the IWT has increasingly come to feel like a
straitjacket—one that restrains its strategic options even as
Pakistan provides safe havens for anti-India terror outfits.
Project envisages constructing a barrage with storage capacity of 0.30 MAF to stabilise Jhelum’s water level. It was abandoned in 1987 after strong objections from Pakistan.
In a widely circulated video, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief had said if you stop the water, God willing, we will stop your breath, and then blood shall flow in these rivers.
Conceived in the early 80s, work began on the Tulbul project in 1984 on river Jhelum, at the mouth of the Wular Lake, India’s largest freshwater lake near Sopore in North Kashmir.
Global media also highlights US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s call for India and Pakistan to ‘de-escalate tensions’, and raising the possible need to bring in a ‘neutral third party’.
The colossal dams on the Indus rivers won't rise overnight. But India now possesses the will, the foreign-exchange reserves, and the engineering talent to realise this vision.
The Indus Waters Treaty was seen as a technical compact, but now it is viewed from the perspective of diplomacy, counter-terror policy, and geopolitical strategy.
In FY 2025-26, AoN for 55 proposals amounting to Rs 6.73 lakh cr has been accorded by DAC. Both the quantum of AoN given and capital contracts signed, so far, have been the highest in any FY.
COMMENTS