A water rights treaty between India and Pakistan is now in jeopardy
Ships once sailed the broad and wide Ravi. Hindu and Muslim saints lived by the banks and people still worship at shrines built in their honor. But the river flowing past Madhu is not the Ravi of history. It is now a stinking, dirty ribbon flowing between dusty banks, a dump for industry, agriculture and sewage, one of the world’s most polluted bodies of water. Environmentalists and activists alike say a treaty is partly to blame for killing the Ravi: the Indus Waters Treaty between Pakistan and India, signed in 1960….one water expert suggested that a new river water treaty could be negotiated “in line with emerging trends of sustainability and environmental protection and restoration of degraded ecosystems.”