Abstract
Is Punjab's ₹1.44 lakh crore water bill to Rajasthan a legitimate legal claim, or a populist distraction from its own dying aquifers? By using a 1920 colonial-era contract to bypass constitutional water-sharing agreements, Punjab is attempting to commercialize a fundamental right to life. This article analyses how the fight over 'ghost water' violates the Public Trust Doctrine, threatens the fragile ecosystem of the Thar desert, and signals a dangerous breakdown of India's cooperative federalism.
Introduction
The recent demand by Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann for payment of ₹1.44 lakh crore by Rajasthan for the use of 18,000 cusecs of water for six decades now has sharply brought the fundamental issues of inter-state water disputes to the forefront. The claim raises the issue of the 1920s colonial era royalty regime between the then undivided Punjab and the princely state of Bikaner, which essentially challenges the post-independence water agreements signed in 1960 under the Indus Waters Treaty and in 1981 under the Ravi - Beas Water tripartite agreement.
Punjab has transformed a long-standing resource sharing issue into a dispute over commercialisation of trans-boundary river water and a narrow territorial scope of the riparian doctrine. Equating this multi-crore demand with mere rhetoric or a regular fiscal battle misses a far more significant and troubling paradigm change in the hydro politics of India. This claim indicate towards bigger problem of decreasing cooperative federalism as increasing climate crisis and worsening resources scarcity. The concept of inter-state water sharing, which is inspired by the constitution, is being seriously undermined as the condition of groundwater is deteriorating and hydrological cycles are erratic in agrarian states.
Instead, a very transactional, win-lose no-win situation takes its place. The move towards river waters being 'sold' marks a perilous new phase in which historical agreements are being utilized as tools to fight, and the very fabric of the Indian federal system is being put to the test by the unyielding demands of ecological survival.
The Legal Battleground between 1920 Legacy and Post-Independence Reality
The recent claim had been revived as a colonial-era contract, the tripartite Punjab-Bikaner Canal Agreement of 1920. It was an agreement between the British administration, the princely state of Bahawalpur and the princely state of Bikaner for diverting the water of Sutlej river through Gang (Bikaner) Canal. Importantly, this accord contained some conditions that included paying a 'seigniorage' royalty or usage fee based on the average water rate per irrigated acre, paid for the water supplied.
Punjab is trying to legally record the unpaid debt of 18,000 cusecs of water stretching back more than 60 years that is continuously flowing into Rajasthan by claiming that this pre-independence agreement wasn't formally cancelled by subsequent treaties. This demand is based on a narrow, exclusive understanding of the riparian doctrine. Punjab has claimed absolute territorial sovereignty over the Sutlej, Ravi and Beas and has stated that since these rivers are not in the territory of Rajasthan, the state is not a riparian state, meaning it has no natural rights to water from these rivers.
For the sake of Punjab, any diversion to a non-riparian entity is a contractual concession which has to be monetized and not an equitable distribution as stipulated in the Constitution.
Rajasthan's constitutional defence is based on the basic geopolitical reorganisation of the Indian subcontinent after 1947. The loss of the sovereign logic of 'seigniorage' underpinning the 1920's agreement was an effective result of the transition from a patchwork of princely states to a unified republic. The historic legal turnaround was in 1960 when the Indus Waters Treaty was signed, giving India total control over the eastern rivers (Sutlej, Beas and Ravi). This international agreement led to their federalisation, and the distribution of these waters became the reallocation issue in the domestic sphere instead of bilateral trade between states.
In the following inter-state agreements, this paradigm was formalized in a rigid manner, indeed the 1981 tripartite agreement was the most recent of its kind. This agreement was brought about by the Union Government between the three states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan to divide the water of the Ravi-Beas in accordance with national interest and equity rather than the strict riparian principle. This agreement gave Rajasthan 8. Million Acre Feet (MAF) as its allotment, the highest share among the three, thus establishing the rights of a non-riparian beneficiary state in a federation.
Punjab is trying to reimburse itself from 1960 on a colonial, profit-making contract, instead of a constitutional settlement which has been in place.
The recent demand goes to the very heart of the Public Trust Doctrine, which is well entrenched in Indian environmental and constitutional jurisprudence, beyond the specific treaties. Inter-state rivers and their water is not a commercial property of the state that it flows through, but only a trustee of the state upon which it flows for the common good. This doctrine is necessarily breached by the monetization of a right to water guaranteed under the constitution, since it turns a life-sustaining fundamental right into a commodity subject to transactions.
The Supreme Court in its 2016 advisory opinion on a Presidential Reference said that a state will not be allowed to unilaterally cancel inter-state agreements or circumvent constitutional processes to abrogate the rights of co-basin states or beneficiaries. Consequently, the recent demand is against the constitutional principles
The Battle for Ghost Water in a Changing Climate
The Punjab CM's demand is not some sudden awakening of their legal rights and entitlements, but a populist distraction for their bad water books. The groundwater extraction rate in Punjab is 156% because of the influence of their agrarian lobby and lack of crop diversification. It would be politically smart for the government to put the responsibility for its tainted aquifers on an outside bogeyman through the other state rather than deal with the repercussions of regulating their own water use. The false premise behind this political posturing is that the federal government will bail out private companies.
This political posturing has been constructed on an illusion, that 20th century hydrological benchmarks still exist. In the 1920, 1960 and 1981 agreements were signed in climates that no longer exist. As temperatures climb and the weather is becoming more unpredictable, Punjab is essentially fighting over 'ghost water', water that is recorded in historical accounts but not in the riverbeds. This partisan divide obscures a unifying, interrelated environmental problem. The natural base flow of these rivers in Punjab is affected by severe over exploitation of upstream aquifers.
Surface-water scarcity is forcing farmers and pastoral communities in western Rajasthan to draw more heavily on deep aquifers. That response cannot remain sustainable indefinitely. A rigid allocation regime that ignores ecological change will convert an intergovernmental dispute into a wider social and environmental crisis.
The Human Cost
In the heart of dry land Western Rajasthan lie the real bones of contention of this hydro-political tussle while the constitutional tussle takes place somewhere else. In the districts like Sri Ganganagar, Bikaner and Jaisalmer, the water from the Ravi-Beas is a vital ecological requirement and cannot be used as an alternative source of water for intensive commercial farming. The Indira Gandhi Nahar Project (IGNP) is a system of canals designed to transport 8. MAF allocation of Rajasthan to the farthest parts of the Thar Desert, which is inextricably linked to the survival of the region. Western Rajasthan is an economic and biological heartland of the IGNP.
It influences drinking water security, livestock economics and cash crop farming in areas that would otherwise be desert wasteland. Such an attempt by Punjab to assert absolute riparian sovereignty would lead to a decrease in flow or if the cost of providing this flow were to be imposed by force on the IGNP, it would have a cascading impact on the lives of millions who depend upon it. One has to recognise the historical hydro-vulnerability of Rajasthan to comprehend how the fiscal ultimatum by Punjab has been received with visceral anger in Rajasthan. The severe drought of 2000 - 2002, known as Trikaal (triple famine) has left the collective memory of western Rajasthan scarred.
During the Trikaal crisis, the failure of rainfed agriculture and the drying up of local water bodies led to a socio-economic breakdown. Pastoral activities were one of the most important safety nets for people living in arid regions and were almost destroyed with the loss of millions of animals. The IGNP was the only lifeline that saved the situation from complete demographic meltdown in its command areas, further solidifying its nature as a non-negotiable lifeline and not simply a developmental asset.
Punjab is indirectly stirring up the historical and psychological fears of Trikaal by questioning the legitimacy of the allocation of water to Rajasthan. It makes an inter-state legal battle a local issue of survival. The human cost of this exposes the perils of playing cooperative federalism as a numbers game. When states start seeing natural resources as a taxable commodity they somehow forget that these resources belong to the people living downstream who have the fundamental right to life and livelihood.
The National Contagion of Federal Fracture
The original idea of the framers of the Constitution for managing shared natural resources, cooperative federalism, is quickly becoming a cutthroat and deal-making process. As the stress on the environment and the reduction in water levels intensifies, agrarian states are in a feverish struggle against equity in the apportionment, as guaranteed by the constitution. Instead, the 'user-pays' approach is emerging, in which States seek to establish absolute territorial jurisdiction over resources, and make those that span borders into commodities. Escalation of resource conflicts across the country in India is already reflected in the change in transactions.
The Cauvery dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu illustrates the same structural pressure. What was once a seasonal allocation of surplus monsoon water has become a recurring exercise in rationing scarcity. Disputes over the Pennaiyar and demands by mineral-rich states for greater resource sovereignty likewise show how natural resources are reshaping federal politics.
The Punjab government's recent demand only compounds the new factor of financial weaponisation in this troubled federal picture.
According to Article 262 of the Constitution, Parliament has the authority to resolve inter-state water disputes. But the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 has sadly become an instrument of institutional lethargy driven by a historic disinclination by successive Central governments to speed up tribunals or implement awards, as noted by the Commission on Centre-State Relations. This federal vacuum is allowing the States to circumvent constitutional adjudication and resurface old colonial style treaties like Punjab.
Conclusion
To move from the cooperative phase of inter-state water dispute negotiations to a transactional phase, it is essential to revamp the hydro-legal framework of India. The existing frameworks have failed to meet the basic need. The Union Government should implement the call for statutory and independent River Basin Authorities (RBAs) to resolve conflicts such as the Punjab-Rajasthan dispute. Such authorities should have the power to allocate, audit and manage water according to the ecological continuum of the river basin rather than the static past compromise.
The only constitutional tool that can provide ecological governance in the face of absolute scarcity is moving from a state-centric litigation paradigm to one that governs the whole basin.
Federal administrative changes, however, will not be sufficient without destroying the political economy of locality that promotes ecological self-destruction. The need of the hour for Punjab is to make a shift from indiscriminate groundwater extraction for agricultural power to decouple it from the same. The shift from free and unchecked agricultural electricity to targeted Direct Benefit Transfers is imperative. Such structural change is necessary to get the desperately needed pivot towards agroclimatically appropriate cropping patterns, rather than the posturing that can only be accomplished from the outside.
Furthermore, India needs a compulsory, centralized and transparent water accounting system of all the water sources to remove the information imbalance and end the 'ghost water' battle. This would build an indisputable, public record of flows on the land surface and underground water levels in aquifers using real time telemetry, remote sensing etc. This real time ecological data should be the only data that can be used in future policy interventions and judicial arbitration, so that politicians will not be able to manipulate the facts for electoral purposes.
In the end, Punjab CM's demand from Rajasthan is a warning of red light on the dashboard of Indian federalism. It illustrates the vulnerability of the historical deals in the presence of the new ecological or any other kind of stress which is very common in Indian political atmosphere. For the political executive, inter-state water treaties are simply the means to polarized populism and to place the blame for their own governance failures on their neighbours, at a significant national price.
As political gamesmanship continues to outrun ecological truth, these constitutional conflicts will not be limited to courtrooms but will inevitably lead to unalterable environmental, economic and social devastation across the sub-continent.
Primary materials
Key primary materials: Constitution of India (Legislative Department); Supreme Court of India judgments.