Did Pakistan surrender all its rights as lower riparian to India when it (rather unwisely) signed the Indus Water Treaty? The point came up in a discussion session on the subject 'Debating Effective Solutions For Constrained Water Future Of Pakistan,' held here at the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Chapter of the Institution of Engineers of Pakistan (IEP), on Saturday.
Dr Ms Zaigham Habib, an international expert on water management resources as well as consultant working for the Planning Commission, gave the talk at the IEP premises. India made its desert bloom while in our own country River Chenab, which belonged to Pakistan, had been utilised by her (India} had become dry, Naheed Ghazanfar, Chair of the IEP, expressed this general feeling which was uppermost on the minds of every tone present in the audience.
Engineer Sabihuddin Bakhtiar, a discussant at the lecture, said that when a new law came up in 1970, Pakistan should have asked for revision of the Treaty. "We had not done anything about using flood waters of the Chenab, and other rivers, observed the engineer.
In her lecture Ms Habib said we had been utilising flood waters of Chenab River until 1976 but thereafter India prepared the Greater Water Plan to irrigate the desert of Rajasthan and turn it into a blooming garden but we did not raise any objection.
The reason why this problem cropped is our lack of data and statistics. Pakistan had little data while India was fully prepared. 'If you look at web-sites you will find India claiming all of Pakistan's water,' and yet we are struggling to fill in the required data.
Even in the case of Baghliar Dam, India is not entitled to build a dam and so they have come up with a new proposal for joint usage of floodwaters and the World Bank has Okayed their standpoint. India has made use of legal loopholes to its advantage forcing basin water into canals, which it was not entitled to, in accordance with the treaty, with the result that Chenab had become dry.
In this context Dr Habib said that Pakistan had reached the danger point of having 900 million cubic feet of water and she feared that in the long run Pakistan might even have the problem of food security.
She suggested that we must have an engaging debate on the subject to bring the problem before the people, in the background of international treatise, and try to stop India from building more dams. Now, everyone in the country must be made water wise because the constraints of water will impact heavily on our food situation.
'Already we are already producing much less per hectare than many other nations, and to conserve water we must have wastewater treatment of the rivers. Construction over riverbeds is also reducing water flows in the rivers, and lately farmers have taken to raising cash crops and paying less attention to growing wheat, which is the staple food of the country.
When the subject of water sharing between the provinces was discussed, the president of the discussion session, Mir Hasan Rind, General Manager, National Highway Authority, who came from Sindh, remarked, 'let us do everything with good intention and love without encouraging rancour.'
He added that if one built dams with good intentions no one would object, with reference to the problem of Kalabagh Dam. However Rind feared that Kalabagh Dam might not be the best solution for the country. With a new dam built over River Kabul, which the Afghans were contemplating to do, the lower riparian would still become silted. What should we then do? he asked.
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