Thursday, September 22, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
EDITORIAL: Dams and Pakistan’s sub-nationalisms
A senior adviser of the World Bank (WB) on water in South Asia has caused yet another flutter in Islamabad by telling Pakistan that it needed big water reservoirs if it wanted to survive the coming water crunch. He said the World Bank would be pleased to fund the big projects ten times upwards of what it had pledged in the past. In contrast to past comments made by other WB bureaucrats, this time the answer to the controversy of the Kalabagh Dam was quite realistic: “There is not a single project in the world that has not run into opposition, but it is up to the government and people of Pakistan to decide its fate. As far as the World Bank is concerned, it would consider providing as much funding as required”.
The World Bank adviser pointed to Pakistan’s woefully inadequate readiness for the coming water shortage. In terms of water storage, “Pakistan can barely store 30 days of water in the Indus basin. If something wrong happens with the Indus basin, Pakistan has no alternative to feed its agriculture. There is no latitude for error in contrast to other countries where mishaps in one river system are cushioned by opportunities in other places”. It was disclosed that the United States and Australia had over 5,000 cubic metres of storage capacity per inhabitant and China had 2,200 cubic metres, while Pakistan had only 150 cubic metres of storage capacity per capita. Not to speak of new projects, Pakistan needed $10 billion a year to upgrade and maintain its existing water system. Punjab alone needed $5 billion to maintain the quality of its existing water structure.
Needless to say, the WB adviser was attacked by the usual band of suspect “experts” representing Sindh and the NWFP for talking about the Kalabagh Dam. The response was that an “independent auditor” could be appointed to sort out the water accounts among the four federating units. It may be noted that South Australia had appointed such an auditor from abroad to get rid of the “trust deficit” at home. It would perhaps be a good idea to follow the example of South Australia because “no province would accept the water auditor from any other province”. The objectors were not there to listen to arguments. Driven by a sub-nationalism that has attached itself to water, they asked that the Kalabagh Dam be shelved and Basha-Diamir be undertaken instead.
The voice of the extremist is always loud and always passionately projected. Last time President Pervez Musharraf talked in the NWFP about building the big dams, the public at large was not greatly agitated. The ANP came out flailing the air but the ruling MMA was lukewarm about it, willing to sit on the fence. Down in Sindh, everyone including the MQM has to side with the nationalists because the reaction to what Punjab has done in the past with Sindh’s water and what it might do again has seeped into the general thinking. Only Basha-Diamir seems to get the green light everywhere, but the problem with this dam in the Northern Areas is its delay, its environmental damage and dangerously unprecedented height. Although President Musharraf has said that he might plump for it, the fact remains that Pakistan needs both the dams for survival.
With oil touching $70 a barrel and oil prices projected to remain high for the foreseeable future, the world is once again thinking of less expensive sources of energy. Pakistan’s electricity is being produced from gas and oil but gas deposits are going to run out and the future prices of gas are expected to rise to a point where nuclear and hydel energy alone will be feasible. As one Pakistani ex-World Bank economist pointed out recently, “On the supply side, Pakistan can no longer postpone the exploitation of the only source of energy that is available in abundance — hydel power. Political disputes among the provinces on the location of storage capacity have caused expensive delays in the construction of dams at Basha and Kalabagh. This must not be allowed to continue.”
The irony of the situation in Pakistan is that “external” water disputes look like being resolved while the “internal” deadlock over the Kalabagh Dam cannot be broken. Two provinces vow to stage revolts if Kalabagh is okayed. One party in the NWFP swears it will blow up the dam if it is built. President Musharraf has a strong opposition in the parliament which will not bail him out on Kalabagh although there are some parties there whose views on Kalabagh are balanced. But then President Musharraf, by choosing not to make any concessions to them, has hamstrung himself politically, like many other politicians in the past. It is Pakistan’s continuing tragedy that the national interest always takes a back seat before the personal interest, and that General Musharraf is as open to that charge as Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif or Qazi Hussain Ahmad.
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