Who Will Decide?
One General in His Warped Wisdom or the Nation As a Whole
By
Ayaz Amir
FIRST
THE question of recognizing Israel and now the balloon of the
Kalabagh Dam. Whatever else you might say of Pakistan's man of
destiny, it's hard to deny the talent on display for raising distracting
issues.
President
Musharraf says that unless so many dams are built and so many
canals taken out we'll have a huge water problem by year 2050.
Perhaps he's right. Maybe we need the Kalabagh Dam, but then maybe
we don't. There's no consensus on the issue, at least none discernible
to mortal eye.
Who's
to decide? One man in his wisdom or the nation as a whole speaking
through a freely-elected national assembly?
There's
nothing wrong with Musharraf personally but everything wrong with
one-man wisdom. As fathers of contrived democracy go, Musharraf's
a nice person, in many respects much nicer than his three military
predecessors who like him went about saving the nation. But that's
hardly the point. Being nice or personable is not qualification
enough for taking decisions affecting the country's future.
Military
men have solved none of Pakistan's problems. Indeed, any honest
history will tell you, they've made them worse. But we've had
a problem these past fifty years: military men not sticking to
the job they were paid for. Military men itching to move outside
the narrow circle of their competence and more often than not
succeeding.
Now,
as if other problems have been solved, we have a military-initiated
debate into the pros and cons of big dams on the Indus. A fascinating
subject but perhaps best discussed when the curtains fall on one-man
rule and we have something closer to a democratic dispensation.
General
Musharraf has enough on his plate already. He's helping the Americans
in Afghanistan, inventing 'real' democracy at home, nominating
a prime minister and yet ensuring he remains a cipher. His own
constitutional expert, he has helped re-write that much-revised
document, the '73 constitution. He's also full-time army chief,
a position he seems in no hurry to relinquish.
He
shouldn't be adding water and dam-building to this heavy workload.
Or doesn't he want to leave anything to his successors?
There's
no one opinion about water in Pakistan. Punjab is in favor of
the Kalabagh Dam and indeed to listen to Punjab babus you'd
think the country's future depended on it. Sindh and the Frontier
think otherwise. Sindh's case is simple. A huge dam at Kalabagh,
it says, will reduce the flow of water down the Indus.
Less
water flowing into the sea will starve the complex ecosystem of
the Indus delta and allow the sea to come further inland thereby
turning more of Sindh's coastline into a saline desert. In other
words, less water down the Indus would mean irreparable harm to
a way of life and a system of agriculture in place for the last
five thousand years.
Apart
from angry sputtering and vague invocations to the larger national
interest (the last refuge of the intellectually-beleaguered),
from the babus and other enthusiasts of the Kalabagh
Dam there is no cogent or convincing answer to these objections.
The
Frontier's case is different: that a dam at Kalabagh would raise
the water level in the fertile, central districts of the province,
thereby ruining their fertility.
And
why is Punjab such a strong proponent of the dam? Because it will
help irrigate the last frontier: the unwatered western districts
(Bhakkar, Leiah) and the lands yet to be brought under the plough
down south in Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan. Who stands to gain
the most when this last frontier is crossed? The Punjab oligarchy,
civil and military, which from long practice has honed the art
of getting the best when new farmland and new housing estates
become available.
Of
course, the country will benefit too. More land under the plough
- regardless of who owns it, retired general or retired babu
- means more grain and more wealth. But at whose cost? Sindh and
the Frontier's.
Punjab's
gain will thus be these two provinces' loss. Which explains their
virulent opposition to the project. Not because they're less Pakistani
than the Punjabis - much the same argument deployed when East
Pakistan was being exploited and driven to the wall - but because
in a mega-dam at Kalabagh they see ruin for the lands they have
tilled since the dawn of history.
Chakwal,
incidentally, stands to gain a lot from a dam at Kalabagh because
the water table in all the rain-fed areas of northern Punjab -
a region of which Chakwal is a part - will rise. With more water
available for agriculture it's not hard to picture this area becoming
as green and productive as the irrigated lands of central and
southern Punjab. But again, at whose cost?
Right
from 1947, the Punjab oligarchy, with no little help from the
upper-class diaspora from India, has had a great facility to put
national questions in a patriotic frame. Urdu had to be the national
language and not Bengali because that is what patriotism demanded.
One Unit, suppressing Bengali aspirations, entering into western
defence pacts and suppressing democracy itself were all justified
at the bar of a higher and often mysterious patriotism.
The
remnants of the old patriotism still survive in pockets of Punjab
(read some of the Urdu papers to get a taste of the doctrine).
Scratch any Punjab babu of a certain age and the old
patriotism with all its shibboleths will quickly rise to the surface.
But
the people of Pakistan as a whole, lied to so often, and by now
heavily schooled in cynicism, have moved on. (Or at least one
hopes they have moved on.) The old theology - responsible for
the rise of militarism in the body-politic and the dismemberment
of Jinnah's Pakistan - no longer exercises the same hold.
Putting
the Kalabagh Dam in a patriotic frame and indeed making its construction
a touchstone of Pakistanism will no longer do. Far from doing
anything good it will further embitter feelings in the smaller
provinces where the word Kalabagh has become synonymous with Punjabi
chauvinism.
If
there is a case for Kalabagh it should be made. But by someone
legitimately entitled to present the case. People should be persuaded.
But again by someone entitled to do the persuading. But time is
running out, says Pakistan's soldier-president. If we don't act
now there'll be an acute crisis of water a few years hence. All
the more reason then for the soldier-president to step back a
few paces and allow the Kalabagh Dam and related issues to be
debated by a people's assembly.
Tailpiece
One: With the President acting as off-stage conductor,
the Q League (the ISI's godchild) and four other splinter Muslim
League factions, so small you'd have a hard time making them out
under a microscope, have got together in a great show of unity.
A new party is born, we are told.
Anyone
taken in by this charade? To go by the public enthusiasm generated,
it would seem very few. Pir Pagara of the Functional League, Chaudhry
Shujaat of the Q or Qainchi League, Wattoo of the Jinnah
League, Chattha of the Junejo League and Ejazul Haq of the Muslim
League Zia (Ejaz being son of the late dictator) setting the five
rivers on fire? Give me a break.
Tailpiece
Two: Whoever is Mr Nasim Ashraf who has some position
in the federal government and heads what sounds suspiciously like
a boondoggle, National Commission for Human Development? Judging
by the time President Musharraf and First Lady spent at the television
show put up by him, he's obviously a man with strong connections.
Any other claim to fame? - Courtesy Dawn
