It is no news that water is a natural gift of God. It is no less than a blessing in disguise on earth; It is essential for the survival of all the states. It includes developed as well as developing states. In order to make optimum use of water, every state aims at developing dams. The major reason behind building dams includes flood control, irrigation, and hydroelectricity production. Such dams play a pivotal role to meet the challenges of climate change and variable weather patterns. These challenges have been raised exponentially in the shape of monsoon rivers, particularly in India and Pakistan.
It is saddening to learn that India, the neighbouring rival state of Pakistan, has started posing threats to Pakistan by making ample dams. This is another menacing attempt by India other than terrorism using bombing.
For the first time, India stopped the supply of water to Pakistan from every canal flowing to Pakistan on 1 April 1948. As a result, Pakistan protested and India finally agreed on an interim agreement on 4 May 1948. This agreement was not a permanent solution. In the end, another agreement was signed between India and Pakistan in September 1960, which is known as the Indus Water Treaty, during Ayub Khan’s regime.
Despite the fact that this Treaty guaranteed ten years of uninterrupted water supply from India to Pakistan, India is maximizing its use of water from the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum rivers of Pakistan. However, millions of people in both countries are solely dependent on water in these rivers.
Woefully, India is busy in building dams on all the rivers flowing into Pakistan from occupied Kashmir in order to regain control of water of western rivers. It is a violation of the Indus Water Treaty. History has witnessed that India has left no stone unturned in spoiling Pakistan’s link-canal system, destroying agriculture of Pakistan which is its mainstay and turning Pakistan into a desert.
It has become increasingly important for developing states to build dams to store water for hard times but India has the nightmarish dream of causing threat to Pakistan by building dams in order to stop water during crop season and release maximum water during monsoon to sink the country.
There is no denying that India has already built 14 hydroelectric plants on Chenab River. For blocking the entire water of Chenab for 20-25 days, it is building more plants.
However, another dam in the making is the Kishanganga hydroelectric project on the Neelum River in India. it will drop the average flow of Neelum water by 21 per cent in Pakistan, and would lead to energy losses amounting to billions of rupees and to serious environmental damage
Desalination technologies should be pondered on by the current government. It can turn seawater, an inexhaustible resource, into fresh drinkable water. In this way, this would strengthen the water security in both neighbouring countries by preventing them from relying heavily on the shared river. Desalination can improve the water security in Pakistan, with desalinated water over 1.2 billion cubic metres a day. Both states can bring a long-term peaceful end to decades old agreement by relying on seawater as one of the most pragmatic ways in contemporary era.
India can block 7000 cusecs of water per day through Baglihar Dam. It would divert the River Neelum to Wullar Lake and leave very little water for Pakistan. Its negative consequences are that it had reduced the flow of water in Chenab River during the sowing period of August to October 2008. Pakistan lost 23000 cusecs of water. Farmers could not irrigate their fields; it badly affected the agriculture sector.
Moreover, the construction of 450-MW Baglihar hydropower power project created acute water shortage on the Chenab River. The project is 470-feet high and has a 317-meter-wide dam with a storage capacity of 15 billion cusecs.
Similarly, Chutak is under construction on River Suru. Collapsing of these dams or releasing of large amounts of water from them will endanger the proposed Bhasha dam and submerge Skardu city and airport.
The most crucial and the biggest of the five dams is the Sawalkot project, located in Doda and Udhampur districts of occupied Kashmir, with a capacity of 1200 MW. The project is also higher than the Baghlihar Dam. It can render Pakistani rivers vulnerable to water shortage.
The Sawalkot dam would be highly vulnerable to earthquakes, being in the seismic zone of Kashmir Himalayas. This could be an environmental disaster for Pakistan as the lower riparian.
India has already chalked out the plan to build 93 dams at an estimated Rs 230-billion. It will make agricultural lands barren in Pakistan as it will almost dry up the rivers. India has already finalized 50-60, medium-sized projects.Over 100 such projects are planned with cutting of trees intended. The resulting environmental impact will also impact Pakistan’s water due to the environmental degradation and increased sediment flow.
Pakistan is already under the impending cloud of water disaster and its availability would plunge to 800 cubic metres per capita annually by 2020 from the current 1200 cubic metres. History revealed that 5000 cubic metres of water was available to every Pakistani citizen 60 years ago.
Torrential monsoon rains have already caused havoc in Pakistan with over 350 deaths and damage to property and livestock in 2022. India released 300,000 cusecs of water downstream into the already flooded rivers of Pakistan.it added fuel to fire in flood. The situation painted the grim picture of Indian hostility.
Pakistan has made headways to mitigate these challenges. In September 2011, the country had protested the construction of the Kishanganga project and succeeded in getting a stay order regarding its construction fronm the Court of Arbitration. As it would adversely affect 133,209 hectares of agricultural land in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has launched multiple attempts to prevent India from building dams on both the Chenab and the Neelum rivers for the last two decades.
India’s building dams would have severe ramification for Pakistan. It is a matter of survival for the country. With the construction of dams, fears of future water shortages would cause diplomatic tensions between India and Pakistan. Losing control over the Neelam River would put the life of Mangla dam at risk.
For Pakistan, there is still a green signal to get rid of Indian atrocities regarding building dams illegally. Drastic times call for drastic measures. There are two aspects that can pave the way forward for Pakistan: how the country can utilize its own potential, and how its potential can be affected by India. It is time to reactivate the World Bank arbitration process as the first stance, and the pace of work at Neelum-Jhelum should be significantly increased as the second. Pakistan’s water issues with India are as important as the resolution of the Kashmir problem. The country should invest in making new large dams and finish the under-construction Dams quickly to meet the challenges of India’s hostile state.
In a nutshell, WAPDA’s Vision 2025 should be turned into action which aimed at planning four storage reservoirs: Yugo, Skardu, Basha and Kalabagh. Similarly, the Mohmand Dam, a new dam project on the Swat River, must be completed in 2024 and the Dasu Dam project on the Indus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2028.
Also, desalination technologies should be pondered on by the current government. It can turn seawater, an inexhaustible resource, into fresh drinkable water. In this way, this would strengthen the water security in both neighbouring countries by preventing them from relying heavily on the shared river. Desalination can improve the water security in Pakistan, with desalinated water over 1.2 billion cubic metres a day. Both states can bring a long-term peaceful end to decades old agreement by relying on seawater as one of the most pragmatic ways in contemporary era.
