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| October 4, 2005 | Tuesday | Sha’aban 29, 1426 |
Mega dams and water shortage in Sindh
REINFORCED pronouncements about construction of Kalabagh, Akhori-Sanjwal, Bhasha and other dams prove one thing: the rulers in Islamabad continue to ignore voices of small provinces.
One is at loss to understand why they are so unresponsive — and why do they want to destroy the very few remaining bridges between the people of Pakistan?
One wonders how hard it will be for anyone with a minimal intelligence to figure out overwhelming majority of people of Sindh were deadly against construction of any mega dam on the Indus River.
If there was a democratic set-p or a true federal government in the country, the people at the top should have respected viewpoint of a federating unit or at least they should have tried to understand reasons behind their stand.
If the powers that be had sincerely tried, they might have found out that the people of Sindh already faced annihilation.
What should one expect from them? Seeing everything in black and white how can one suggest to them to agree to their death warrant and change their views of the Army, the Punjab and the Center — the parties that they think were responsible for their plight in the first place?
How can it happen just like that?
The powers that be or the Establishment can have also easily known if it had tried that the people in Sindh believed that over-exploitation of water resources upstream has caused irreversible losses to agriculture, livestock, fisheries, deltaic life, flora and fauna, eco-system and the environment of Sindh and also that they strongly believed that any further damming of the river waters would completely ruin the province.
The people of Sindh just do not have anything more to give or take. It is not only Sindh.
The people in the NWFP are also against construction of the Kalabagh dam. They fear inundation of their fertile lands and several towns.
Three out of four provincial assemblies have passed multiple resolutions against the dam.
How can a uniformed ruler arbitrarily decide otherwise and embark on a quixotic pursuit of building mega dams that may bring catastrophe to the country?
It may be true that the present fragile government at the Center is working under tremendous internal and external pressures. It lacks the popular mandate and has not been able to convince the world of its legitimacy.
It may be in dire need to please its own constituency and a powerful lobby in the bigger province to continue in power.
But the question is: are these reasons good enough to put the country’s integrity at stake?
Also shouldn’t we know that it is not only agriculture that makes a country great? There are other ways that many developed countries have adopted to increase their per capita income and reach formidable positions in the comity of nations.
Merely destroying agriculture at one place and irrigating some lands at other places will not ensure our greatness.
The sanity calls for prudence and looking into the available alternates.
Will they — the powers that be — for once opt for the rationalism instead of exigencies?
One is afraid they may again make a wrong decision. We should know by now that wrong decisions in the past have played havoc with the country. This will too. It is guaranteed. —Aziz Narejo
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