John Briscoe, a renowned water expert, has said that India could not have exacerbated the current floods in Chenab and Jhelum basins in Pakistan because India does not have any large storage reservoirs on either Jhelum or Chenab rivers, in part due to the restrictions of terrain, and in part to the restrictions of the Indus Waters Treaty (neither has India a large dam on the Indus which bore the brunt of the 2010 floods).
But by passing the buck to India how do we generate the political impetus to build Kalabagh dam, the media must also look to its own role in allowing a moratorium on dam building for 38 years, in which time both Kalabagh and Bhasha dams could have been built.
Did the media say even once that it is not Indian agents who are opposing Kalabagh dam, it is our own politicians who have given air to parochial feelings by saying that Sindh will become a desert if Kalabagh dam is built.
It is for the editors, the columnists, the letter writers et al to tell the people that dams are built the world over to overcome water shortage and not to create it. A 20 per cent shortage for the Rabi season is being projected in this winter. We have managed without any increase in supplies for the last 38 years while the population has increased from 8 to 19 crore, how many more years are we going to survive on the same 104 million acre feet while 22 million acres of arable land is still available, 80 per cent of it in Sindh
If Time magazine was to print my letter, the Americans will think we are all suffering from mad cow disease. No sane people would do what we are doing to our country.
ENGR KHURSHID ANWER
Lahore
