Pakistan’s 2004 Technical and Parliamentary Reports on developing the Indus Basin assumes that India will not be able fully to utilise its allocation of waters from the three western rivers. Beggar-my-neighbour policies can only cause mutual damage. Instead, with the peace process in J&K getting under way, future cooperation on the Indus, or Indus II, holds out real promise. What better means of making boundaries irrelevant than by integrating the natural resource economies of both sides of J&K to everybody’s benefit?

Lafitte has done his bit. It is now for India and Pakistan to use his report as a springboard for a new era of mutual cooperation. Water Resource Minister Saifuddin Soz has made some statements hinting that this is the way forward. It would be eminently appropriate therefore to place a concrete proposal on the table.

The writer has authored the book, ‘Waters of Hope’