The Hindu Editorial Analysis : 21st April 2023

21/04/2023

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The Hindu Editorial Analysis

The Importance of Reading The Hindu Editorial: Reading The Hindu newspaper has several benefits, including improving reading skills, facilitating comprehension, staying informed of current events, enhancing essay writing, and more. For individuals aiming for a career in banking, reading editorials is crucial for vocabulary building. In this article, we will examine today’s editorials, provide practice questions, and highlight important vocabulary words.

Water woes.

The government’s decision to issue notice to Pakistan, calling for negotiations to amend the Indus Waters Treaty, must be considered carefully.

New Delhi says this extreme step is due to Pakistan’s intransigence over objections to two Indian hydropower projects in Jammu and Kashmir: the 330MW Kishanganga hydroelectric project (Jhelum) and the 850 MW Ratle hydroelectric project (Chenab).
India has argued since 2006, when the objections began, that the projects were within the treaty’s fair water use.
However, Pakistan has refused to conclude negotiations with India in the bilateral mechanism — the Permanent Indus Commission of experts that meets regularly — and has often sought to escalate it.

As a result, the World Bank appointed a neutral expert, but Pakistan pushed for the case to be heard at The Hague. India has objected to this sequencing, as it believes that each step should be fully exhausted before moving on to the next.

While India was able to prevail over the World Bank to pause the process in 2016,Pakistan persisted, and since March 2022, the World Bank has agreed to have both a neutral expert and a Court of Arbitration (CoA) hear the arguments.

India attended the hearings with the neutral expert last year, but has decided to boycott the CoA at The Hague that began its hearing on Friday.
New Delhi says as talks have hit a dead-end, it wants the entire treaty to be opened up for amendments and renegotiation.
India’s accusations against Pakistan may be valid, given that Islamabad has failed to provide material evidence of the two projects hampering its water supply.
The World Bank’s decision to hold two parallel adjudication processes is also perilous as there could be contradictory rulings.
However, opening up the treaty for review has its own problems that India must deliberate on with a cool mind.

To begin with, the Indus Waters Treaty that decided the distribution of the six tributaries of the Indus or Sindhu between the two nations took nearly a decade to negotiate originally before its signing in 1960.
Built in were mechanisms for coordination and dispute resolution that have held the treaty in good stead for at least half a century, and it has often been used as a template between upper riparian and lower riparian states worldwide.