Professional Documents
Culture Documents
works of Madhupore and Firozpur to India. Soon after Partition, on April 1, 1948, India
dropped the gates of the canals carrying water to Pakistan, designed to affect thousands of
acres of Pakistani land from north to south Punjab and trigger a state of famine. It was not
until 1960, through the mediation of the World Bank, that the two countries were able to
reach agreement to settle their water disputes through the IWT. I believe the IWT was
born out of necessity for both nations and is one of the best examples in modern
diplomacy of win-win for both parties.
India, on its part, has utilised its exclusive rights over the Eastern Rivers to the fullest.
In fact, it has built/intends to build 24 hydropower projects: 17 on the Chenab and seven
on the Jhelum.
Meanwhile, apart from building the Mangla and Tarbela Dams, Pakistan has been unable
to build any storage facility of this magnitude. Kalabagh Dam, which is ready for
construction, is lying un-built only because of certain vested interests within Pakistan who
oppose its construction. Resultantly, Pakistan, while suffering the worst water shortages,
lets more than 38 MAF of river water go to waste into the sea.
The current worldview is that water is a global asset, which no country can be allowed to
waste and its persistent wastage by Pakistan is viewed with astonishment. India has
devised a strategy to use this to its advantage and is pushing the idea of Treaty II, thereby
building a case that since the surplus waters of the Indus are being wasted by Pakistan,
India should be entitled to store this water on the Upper Indus, Jhelum and Chenab to
fulfill its needs.
Pakistan, in response, is still unable to present a defence to this claim by asserting
categorically that it is building the Kalabagh Dam. Instead, one finds constant statements
from successive provincial governments in K-P, Sindh and even Balochistan asserting that
Kalabagh Dam shall not be built. Even successive federal governments have been issuing
contradictory statements.
India has capitalised on this infighting between the Federal and Provincial Governments
and, as a counter-strategy, has in fact fuelled the controversy by supporting the antiKalabagh Dam lobby within Pakistan.
Many anti-Kalabagh Dam conferences have been held outside Pakistan, particularly in
Washington, DC in 2002, and have been openly supported by India. In fact, the theme of
the International Sindhi Conference held on November 9, 2002, in Washington, DC, was
that if Kalabagh Dam is built then Sindh should secede from Pakistan; the speakers at the
forefront were Indian Sindhis.
While the growth of Pakistans agriculture sector, its ability to meet energy demands and
the capacity to feed its rapidly increasing population are all factors which are entirely
dependent on the use of Pakistans water resources, scholarship in the area of water law in
Pakistan remains virtually non-existent. Therefore, the object and purpose of the IWT is
often misconstrued. Similarly, when arbitration awards, such as the Kishenganga award,
are announced, there is little understanding of what we have gained and ceded.
Stemming from this vacuum, Pakistan has not been able to effectively lobby against
Indias use of water as a weapon. The fact is that Indias threats of violating an
international agreement warrant consequences, but again Pakistans Government has not
done any homework on this.
While India has a clear strategy to continue its threats, and to lobby internationally that
Pakistans water needs come second to Indias, we continue to be incapacitated by our own
lack of vision and political will. The chaos surrounding Kalabagh Dam compels this writer
to state that unfortunate is a country whose leaders can see but do not have the foresight.
While we call upon the Supreme Court to do something about Panama Leaks (with some
folks even going so far as to claim that the Court should appoint NAB Chairman), continue
to raise hue and cry about matters like Panama Leaks, our most crucial problems remain
unresolved. Perhaps the Government of Punjab should petition the Supreme Court, under
Article 184(1) of the Constitution, to have the Kalabagh Dam dispute between the
provincial governments resolved once and for all. Such a petition can even be treated as a
matter of enforcement of fundamental rights.
Mahathir once rightly said that Pakistan is blessed with something greater than wealth of
oil and gold its geographical location. CPEC being one example. But this will be of no
avail if we cannot utilise this greatest resource of all water. Wallace Stegner aptly stated:
Water is the true wealth in a dry land. The question is for how long will we neglect our
wealth to our detriment?
Published in The Express Tribune , January 7th, 2017.