Kalabagh dam calling

Opposition to this project means disaster

Water is life. It knows no politics, no law. The irony, however, is that it has been subject to both. Pakistan as a nation is going through a severe water crisis. Often, there is no electricity, industries are closed, labour sent home, crop depressed and the economy retarded.

The year is 1994. Feasibility reports conducted by various American consultants (including Tipton & Hill and Chas T Maine) have affirmed the creation of Kalabagh dam as a technically feasible project with a high degree of economic feasibility. It is in the national interest of Pakistan. Yet three out of four provinces have passed resolutions against its construction. To them Heaven whispers – they must not give in. The project is defenestrated on account of whimsical politics. Unfounded apprehensions are deliberately instilled in the minds of the curious naïve citizen to whom water and circuitously crop is irreducible subsistence. The scepticism is widespread and of this bemusement the political creed is lover.

The year is now 2012. Beneath the bruised sky, public protests against electricity shutdowns in different cities are underway. It is a proverbial phenomenon. However, despite the increasing water and electricity crisis, Kalabagh dam has still not been dealt with. The Council of Common Interests (CCI) – an independent freestanding constitutional body empowered to do so – is redundantly prolix.

Taking birth in 1973 pursuant to Article 153 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the CCI comprises of the prime minister of Pakistan as its chairman, the chief ministers of all four provinces and three members from the federal government. Article 154 empowers the CCI to formulate and regulate policies in relation to matter(s) couched in Part II of the Fourth Schedule of the constitution and to exercise supervision and control over the related institutions. Part II of the Fourth Schedule of the constitution encompasses the subject of electricity, amongst others. Article 155 of the constitution deals exclusively with water supplies. The construction of the forgoing provisions of the constitution are subjudice before the Honourable Lahore High Court in various petitions filed on Kalabagh dam, thus to dwell further will hazard skating on thin ice.

The Awami National Party (ANP) has sworn perpetual allegiance to the omission of Kalabagh dam, it seems. To them any ephemeral regard, however slight, to the issue is akin to seducing war in their neck of the woods. Like the Spartans, they will defend to “their very last breath.” With the zeal of the Fortinbras’s march against the Polack (see Hamlet), this is their only syllable and symphony alike.

The inability to follow or distinguish gives rise to the critic. Critics are neither good nor bad. They are but essential. And so is ANP, our brethren. The critic disapproves deftly that which may be amenable to acceptance. He is awake too much or misled too wide. Without rumination, the critic is dicey. Dicey so employed is disastrous.

An officious bystander with a green wig would perhaps term ANP as being curiously outlandish. “But why is the ANP disseminating unwarranted misgivings amid the people of KP?, he asks.” From the apprehension that Nowshera and low lands in the Peshawar Valley would be adversely affected by flood levels to the issue of water logging and salinity in Mardan, Pabbi and Swabi – technical analyses have dispelled the apprehensions beyond pale. Directing prescient warnings to courts of justice has hardly served the cause. The opportunity to ratiocinate at the appropriate forum is plenty. We are not the Tudor kings. Our brethren from ANP and KP should (read will), in all reasonableness, be entitled to adequately manifest their concerns.

The critic should not merely fish for political notoriety in Bolingbroke’s pond.

The writer is a Lahore based Barrister.