The 1991 Water Accord

A Broken Covenant in the Indus Basin

Guest Writer

In Pakistan, water transcends its physical properties to become a symbol of power, a political instrument, and ultimately, a determinant of survival. The distribution of the Indus River waters represents one of the most contentious issues highlighting the country's deep inter-provincial divisions. The 1991 Water Apportionment Accord emerged as a supposed resolution to decades of mistrust between provinces. However, more than three decades later, this agreement stands as a hollow document, fundamentally flawed, systematically exploited, and conveniently ignored during crises.

The failure of the 1991 Water Accord cannot be attributed solely to Punjab's upstream advantage or federal negligence. The complicity of Sindh's ruling elite, particularly the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), reveals a multilayered betrayal that has exacerbated water inequities both between and within provinces. This critical assessment examines how this watershed agreement has become a legal fossil—outdated, manipulated, and violated with impunity by multiple stakeholders.

Origins and Framework

The Water Apportionment Accord, signed on March 21, 1991, allocated an average of 114.35 million acre-feet (MAF) of Indus waters among the four provinces:

• Punjab: 55.94 MAF

• Sindh: 48.76 MAF

• Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: 8.78 MAF

• Balochistan: 3.87 MAF

Additionally, the agreement stipulated that 10 MAF would flow downstream to preserve the ecological integrity of the Indus Delta. To oversee and enforce this distribution, the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) was established as a federal regulatory body.

While celebrated as a historic achievement, the Accord was fundamentally a product of political compromise rather than hydrological reality. It emerged from a moment of political expediency but lacked the scientific rigor and enforcement mechanisms necessary for sustainable water governance.

Structural Deficiencies

The Accord suffers from four critical structural flaws that have undermined its effectiveness from inception:

1. Unrealistic Water Availability Projections

The agreement's foundational assumption of 114.35 MAF annual water availability was optimistic even in 1991. This figure has proven increasingly unattainable as glacial melt patterns shift, rainfall becomes more erratic, and upstream consumption intensifies. The allocations were essentially built on an illusion of abundance that environmental realities could never sustain.

2. Ambiguous Shortage Management

While the Accord states that "shortages shall be shared proportionally," it fails to define the parameters of proportionality or establish a clear arbitration process. This ambiguity has allowed IRSA to implement interpretations that often favor Punjab, leading to repeated protests and walkouts by Sindh's representatives, further eroding trust in the system.

3. Absence of Enforcement Mechanisms

Perhaps the most glaring deficiency is the complete absence of penalty clauses. Provinces can—and do—violate the agreement without consequence. The Accord contains no provisions for fines, no independent oversight, and no legal accountability framework. It remains an aspirational document without practical enforceability.

4. Neglect of Ecological Imperatives

The promised ecological minimum flow of 10 MAF to the sea has rarely materialized. Consequently, the once-vibrant Indus Delta ecosystem faces catastrophic degradation—its network of creeks drying up, mangrove forests disappearing, and over a million acres of formerly productive agricultural land in southern Sindh succumbing to seawater intrusion.

The PPP's Double Game

The Pakistan Peoples Party, which has dominated Sindh's political landscape for most of the post-1991 period, has perfected a strategy of dual deception. Publicly, it positions itself as Sindh's staunch defender against water injustice, directing blame toward Punjab's over-withdrawal and IRSA's alleged complicity. However, this narrative deliberately obscures the party's own role in perpetuating water inequities within Sindh.

Feudal Capture of Water Resources

The PPP leadership, while vocally demanding Sindh's fair share from federal authorities, has systematically protected the feudal elite who divert water illegally before it reaches tail-end farmers in districts like Badin, Thatta, and Sanghar. Many of these influential landowners (waderas) constitute the party's core support base and inner circle.

Water theft is endemic throughout Sindh's irrigation network. Tampering with measurement gauges, unauthorized canal breaches, and preferential diversions to sugarcane estates owned by party patrons occur with impunity. Canal rotation schedules, designed to ensure equitable distribution, are frequently disregarded to benefit politically connected landowners. The result is a form of internal water apartheid that disproportionately affects marginalized communities while PPP-affiliated landlords prosper.

Political Bargaining at Sindh's Expense

Under the pretense of defending provincial autonomy, PPP leaders, most notably former President Asif Ali Zardari, have repeatedly negotiated backroom deals with federal authorities, regardless of which party controls Islamabad. These arrangements typically exchange Sindh's policy leverage for political immunity, financial concessions, or federal appointments. In these transactions, the province's water rights often become secondary to personal and party interests.

The PPP has thus mastered the art of performing victimhood while being complicit in maintaining the dysfunctional status quo. It weaponizes the 1991 Accord not as a tool for reforming water distribution, but as a rhetorical device to generate moral outrage and consolidate political power.

The 2025 Crisis: Consequences of Systemic Failure

By 2025, the accumulated effects of this structural and governance failure have manifested in three critical dimensions:

1. Ecological Devastation

The Indus Delta, once ranked as the world's sixth-largest delta—is experiencing accelerated ecological collapse. Seawater intrusion has contaminated freshwater supplies, displaced fishing communities, and rendered vast agricultural areas uncultivable. Despite the evident catastrophe, no comprehensive rehabilitation strategy has emerged.

2. Institutional Legitimacy Crisis

IRSA's credibility has been severely compromised, particularly in the eyes of Sindh and Balochistan stakeholders, who increasingly view it as a Punjab-dominated institution. Its telemetry systems, intended to provide transparent real-time flow data, have repeatedly malfunctioned due to either deliberate sabotage or technical incompetence. The resulting atmosphere of suspicion has eliminated any prospect of interprovincial cooperation through formal channels.

3. Climate Vulnerability and Resource Hoarding

As glacier melt patterns become increasingly unpredictable and precipitation regimes shift, the period 2024-25 has witnessed historically low flows in several Indus tributaries. Rather than fostering collaborative adaptation strategies, this scarcity has intensified resource hoarding behaviors among provinces, further entrenching the cycle of mistrust and non-cooperation.

Federal Complicity: Strategic Ambivalence

The federal government in Islamabad has maintained a calculated ambivalence toward water governance reform. It simultaneously refuses to revise the outdated 1991 Accord or enforce compliance, while leveraging water distribution as a tool of political control—offering "relief" selectively to secure provincial cooperation on other policy fronts.

Initiatives to modernize the Accord by incorporating contemporary climate data, demographic shifts, and ecological protection measures have consistently stalled under both military-backed interim administrations and fragile civilian coalitions. Water governance reform, like many other essential institutional reforms in Pakistan, remains captive to entrenched power structures that benefit from administrative dysfunction.

The Path Forward

Addressing Pakistan's water governance crisis requires a multifaceted approach that confronts both interprovincial inequities and internal corruption:

1. Comprehensive Accord Revision: The 1991 framework must be fundamentally reconstituted based on realistic water availability projections, current climate science, and ecological imperatives.

2. Ecological Flow Enforcement: A legally binding minimum delta flow requirement, monitored through independent third-party systems, must be established and enforced as non-negotiable.

3. Internal Distribution Accountability: Sindh must address its internal water corruption. The PPP must be held accountable for regulating equitable water distribution within the province, particularly to tail-end areas.

4. Penalization Framework: IRSA, or preferably a new independent water regulatory authority, must be empowered to impose meaningful penalties on provinces or individuals violating established quotas.

5. Technological Transparency: Tamper-resistant telemetry systems and satellite monitoring technology must replace the current antiquated measurement infrastructure that facilitates manipulation and fraud.

Conclusion

The 1991 Water Accord was fundamentally a temporary political compromise rather than a sustainable water management framework. Three decades later, it serves neither the provinces nor their citizens—benefiting only those who profit from institutional disorder: the Punjab-centered federal establishment and the feudal elites in Sindh who simultaneously decry and perpetuate water injustice.

Achieving genuine water equity in Pakistan requires confronting not only central government biases but also the entrenched provincial power structures that exploit resource scarcity for political and economic gain. The current water governance crisis reflects a broader failure of institutional accountability in which formal agreements serve primarily as rhetorical weapons rather than operational frameworks. Until this deeper governance deficit is addressed, water will remain both a source and an instrument of conflict in the Indus Basin.