Bury IWT, Reclaim Indus—without breaching the LoC or the LAC
By KBS Sidhu
PREFACE: The Indus Waters Treaty is now history, and every cubic metre of the western rivers is once again India’s to shape. Across three articles, this being the first, we lay out the full spectrum of technically feasible projects—mega, mini and micro—on the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab that New Delhi can launch immediately: high‑rise storage dams and pumped‑storage caverns, medium run‑of‑river upgrades, and village‑scale micro‑schemes. No more treaty‑imposed storage caps, diversion bans or foreign vetoes—only engineering imagination, environmental care and national will.
1. Goodbye Treaty, Hello Freedom
The moment India scrapped the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, the absurd storage ceiling that strangled every western‑river idea went with it. The 170‑kilometre reach of the Indus running entirely through Ladakh—safely inside our lines at Batalik and Demchok—now becomes an engineering playground where India alone decides how much water to keep, where to send it and when to release it.
2. The Master Key: Nimoo–Alchi Multipurpose Reservoir
Less than thirty kilometres west of Leh the river dives into a quartzite slit barely two hundred metres wide. A 250‑metre double‑curvature arch dam here will impound 4 – 5.7 MAF (5–7 billion m³) of precious melt‑water, drive a 2 GW surface powerhouse and, via an off‑stream gallery 1 000 metres higher, add 1 GW / 8 GWh of pumped‑storage punch for the evening peak. Price tag: ₹70–75 thousand crore, taken straight from Sardar Sarovar’s 5.8 MAF reservoir cost in 2016, scaled for altitude and inflation. The lake never crosses the LoC or the LAC; the water is 100 % Indian.
3. Power Multipliers Waiting in the Wings
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Zanskar Cascade. Three head‑race tunnels drop the Zanskar 1 100 metres before it meets the Indus, yielding 2.5–3 GW firm. Cost: ₹35 thousand crore—benchmarked against current Himalayan tunnel contracts issued by MoRTH.
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Run‑of‑River Upgrades. Raise the crests at Nimoo‑Bazgo and Chutak, bolt on gated spillways and turn today’s 90 MW trickle into ≈ 500 MW of flexible peak power. Budget: ₹8 thousand crore, using Pakal Dul’s cost per installed megawatt.
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Shyok High‑Level Pumped Storage. Two natural bowls at Durbuk and Saser Brangsa form a 1 GW / 8 GWh daily cycle plant for ₹8 thousand crore, priced off the Tehri PSP tender.
4. Water on the Move
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Indus–Spiti Gravity Tunnel. A 45‑kilometre pressure tunnel diverts 1.5 MAF (1.9 billion m³) a year to the Sutlej, shoring up Bhakra and shielding Punjab‑Haryana from glacier retreat. Estimated ₹25 thousand crore, calibrated against the Atal Tunnel’s per‑kilometre bill.
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Desert Carrier to Kandla. Off‑peak hydro plus Ladakh sunshine pump 2.5–3.2 MAF (3–4 billion m³) south‑west into Rajasthan and Gujarat’s hydrogen hub. The ₹45 thousand crore estimate comes from the Ken–Betwa link, uprated for length and lift.
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Leh Cold‑Desert Canal. A gravity spur waters 70 000 ha, recharges the aquifer and gives Leh city round‑the‑clock drinking water for ₹15 thousand crore, matching Rajasthan’s Indira Gandhi feeder cost per kilometre.
5. What It Costs—and What India Gets
All projects combined total ₹2.1–2.3 lakh crore (US $25–27 billion) and deliver up to 6 MAF of fresh storage and 7–8 GW of firm or dispatchable hydro power—an integrated water‑energy complex larger than anything north of the Sutlej.
6. Constraints That Still Bite
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Seismicity: The dam sits on an active thrust; fibre‑optic strain gauges and fuse‑plug spillways are non‑negotiable.
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Glacial Hazards: Twin low‑level flushing tunnels sized at 1 500 m³/s will sluice any sudden debris surge.
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Cultural Heritage: Alchi’s 11th‑century murals require a slow fill—no faster than half a metre a day—and a 24‑kilometre diversion tunnel keeps construction water off the monastery.
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Diplomacy with China: The back‑water line stops fifteen kilometres short of Demchok, and routine hydrological data still flow across the ridge.
7. Downstream Shock‑waves for Pakistan
This Ladakh stretch supplies only four per‑cent of the Indus at Attock, but storage is about timing, not totals. Hold back just half the new reservoir in October‑November and Tarbela’s inflow can be cut fifteen to twenty percent, squeezing Punjab wheat canals and deepening salt water creep in Sindh. Release that water in July, though, and Islamabad gets flood protection it can’t build for itself. New Delhi now holds the adjustable tap—and Islamabad’s terror‑driven adventurism will carry a transparent hydraulic price.
8. The Strategic Bottom Line
For the cost of one year of national highway building, India can transform a thin Ladakh ribbon into a high‑mountain lake, an eight‑gigawatt hydro‑battery and a strategic water valve. The work is hard, the ecology delicate and the diplomacy complex, but the choice is now ours alone. We can leave the upper Indus a tactical stream—or we can turn it into a sovereign asset that powers Ladakh, safeguards our plains and keeps a terrorist neighbour permanently on notice.