- Inevitability of failure
Now that the honourable chief justice has brought the judiciary to the rescue – regarding the water scarcity issue – he could act more wisely than put Kalabagh Dam at the top of his list of priorities. Granted, the country continues to lose billions every year, quite astonishingly, just because this particular dam has still not been constructed. But if history is any guide, and considering resolutions against Kalabagh Dam in three provinces, adopting this route will only lead to more controversy and conflict, with water growing scarcer by the day.
Just as the Supreme Court learned the other day, India and China have been able to get a handle, largely, over their power problems because of construction of thousands of dams over the last two-to-three decades. Pakistan, on the other hand, has let its most feasible projects drown in controversy while paying zero, or very little, attention to other such projects that could have been producing thousands of megawatts of electricity annually by now. And while the CJ brings himself up to speed on the issue, even addressing seminars on the water crisis and construction of dams, he would understand that a bigger mistake than not building Kalabagh Dam, eventually, will be not making many more, much smaller, and not controversial, reservoirs to conserve water and produce electricity.
Sadly we have had neither the foresight nor the will to address the water issue so far. Kalabagh Dam first stirred controversy in the Zia days, and quite deliberately so, before continuing to cause divisions during the democracy of the ‘90s. Even Gen Musharraf, all powerful for almost a decade and hell-bent, initially, to get KBD made, had to fold at the end of the day. CJ Nisar would not want to start his water crusade by running into a brick wall. A more doable strategy would be getting the ball rolling on smaller, more viable projects while beginning a long process of political dialogue that might, at the end of the way, make KBD possible as well.