Kalabagh or not

By I. A. Rehman

The new controversy over the Kalabagh Dam (KBD) proposal has all the characteristics of a typical Pakistani debate on any serious issue, in which assumptions are treated as facts and the point of view of the other party is first misinterpreted and then dismissed as ridiculous or worse.

The discussion is on four issues. First, there is what is described as the Lahore High Court’s order (interim) to the federal government to build the Kalabagh Dam. Secondly, references are being made to the federal government’s obligation to implement the “decisions” of the Council of Common Interests. Thirdly, the validity or significance of the less populous federal units’ opposition to the project is being challenged. And finally there are signs of lack of unity or clarity in the parties concerned.

Most of the political parties have taken the view that work on the controversial dam cannot be started as three provinces are opposed to it. While the rank and file of the PML-N in Punjab can hardly conceal its joy at having received the blessings of the Lahore High Court (LHC), their supreme leader says national consensus is necessary for building the dam. The JUI-F chief has expressed a similar view. ANP and Sindhi nationalist parties are, as expected, up in arms. The Awami Workers Party has said the dam proposal is a disputed matter and the high court should not have taken it up.

The government’s line of action, as usual, is not clear. The prime minister says the time is not opportune for talking about the KBD but the counsel of the ministry concerned (water and power) told the Lahore High Court that he welcomed its order, that the KBD was feasible, and that the government was taking appropriate action. There is no contradiction between the two positions (of the PM and the water-power ministry). The government will go on deferring start of work on the KBD till the elusive national accord is possible and it will at the same time respect the court’s decision. The latter approach is confirmed by the report that the Council of Common Interests (CCI) has already asked Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governments to restate their positions on the subject.

Interestingly, while everybody is clamoring about the LHC’s order to the federation to build the dam the court has not done that. Its interim order is a direction to the federation to implement in letter and spirit the decisions/recommendations of the CCI of 1991 and 1998. But did the CCI clearly give a signal to build the KBD? An official of the CCI said the other day it didn’t. According to him, the CCI decision of 1991 was vague and in the nature of a recommendation, and while the decision of 1998 was more clearly worded it only asked the federal government to develop consensus and create an enabling environment to facilitate the building of the KBD. Thus by renewing inter-provincial consultation on the project the government can claim to the rendering unto both the LHC and the PML-N what is their due.

One may pause at this point and recall what the situation in 1991 and 1998 was. On both occasions Mian Nawaz Sharif was the Prime Minister and his party controlled all the four provinces. He had possibilities of persuading the CII to give the go ahead on the KBD. True he had “more important” matters on his plate, such as the Shariat Bill, and the desire to get rid of the president, the chief justice and the chief of the army, but he chose to yield on the KBD because the project had run into serious opposition, because building KBD had become politically hazardous or impossible. If the holder of a heavy mandate could not satisfy the parties that had fat contracts in their pockets, what can one expect from a government whose weakness is being proclaimed from all the pulpits in Lahore?

Leaving the KBD issue aside for a moment, the citizens have abundant reason to hail the LHC’s landmark order. The court recognized the people’s right to electricity supply and water and invoked Article 9 of the basic law which guarantees the right to life. This is indeed a giant leap forward, perhaps comparable to the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling on the right to life being meaningless if subsistence is not guaranteed. It should now be possible for the jobless and the homeless and the old and the infirm to force the state to look after them by securing court orders under Article 9. All that is required is a lawyer who can put all the rights-related articles of the constitution in his arguments as was done by the petitioner in the instant case.

A critical issue is whether the KBD project has been held up on the basis of assumptions and surmises and whether Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh had legitimate reasons to oppose it. The fact is that the project was promoted most ineptly. Calculations for water storage were made on the basis of maximum precipitation ever. The people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa took alarm at reports that many of their towns, including the large city of Nowshera, would go underwater. The people of Sindh voiced fears of destruction of their deltaic region and mangroves. They produced evidence of the adverse effects of dams on the Indus on the underground water channels. These concerns were never adequately addressed, and these will have to be addressed.

Some over-zealous advocates of the KBD are annoyed at the audacity of the ‘smaller provinces’ to obstruct the project. For one thing there are no smaller provinces; they are all equal units of the federation. Each one of them has as much right to defend its interest as the Big Brother even if its voice does not carry as much weight as the latter’s. No scheme that affects the material interests of more than one province cannot be put into effect without the concurrence of all stakeholders. In the new scheme of democratic dispensation in a federation, the federal authority cannot make laws for the provinces without their consent. After all the federation has been dragging its feet on the issue of agricultural income tax under the pretext that it can move only if all provinces ask for it.

Those who argue that the less populous provinces should withdraw their objections to the KBD plan and accept Punjab’s plea for its implementation in national interest may ask themselves whether they have ever equated Sindh’s or Balochistan’s aspirations with national interest. It seems the Punjab’s ruling elite and the institutions under its influence are yet to recognize the immutable requisites of a voluntary federation.

All human endeavours have relevance within a given time. The establishment of a genuinely federal Pakistan was not difficult in the first few years after independence. The short-sighted rulers’ stubborn adherence to the model of a unitary state made the task difficult with the passage of each year. Everybody knows how unmanageable the transition to democratic governance and federalism has today become.

Likewise, there was a time when a national accord on the KBD might not have been too difficult to achieve. Instead of working towards national integration we have succeeded in alienating the people of Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to an extent that a rational discourse on the KBD has become impossible. Now we should wait till an environment conducive to the emergence of national unity is created. Prudence demands that instead of trying to seek a consensus on KBD alone all those who matter should concentrate on developing a wider consensus on how the federation is to be managed and how the rights of all peoples inhabiting the land can be guaranteed on the basis of equity and justice.