Farmers facing brunt of Indian dams construction

Multan: The Anjuman Kashtkaran Punjab (AKP), Pakistan Kissan Board (PKB) and other farmers Associations are afraid that farmers of Punjab and Sindh would have to bear the brunt of the Indian plan of construction of three dams on the Indus, as the country will be in a better position to control the water flows into Pakistan for late rabi and early kharif crops, hence destroying agriculture in the province.

Khurshid Kanju, President PKB, Abdul Ali Zakir Usmani President of AKP and Pirzada Khurshid-ul-Haq of Farmers Association on Monday demanded of the Government to discus the consequences of the Indian decision to build three dams on the Indus, a lifeline for Pakistan, in total contravention of the Indus Basin Treaty. They said the farmers of the country felt strongly about India's plan to build three dams on the Indus at a time when water was getting scarce every year and irrigation had become a serious challenge. 'The Indus is our lifeline and should be our top priority. We cannot trust India when it comes to water issues and one thing should be very clear that India has always violated the treaty and tried to pressurize Pakistan through various tactics.

The most recent example is blockage of the Chenab flows when they were crucial for our rice crop. It has caused irreparable damages and the farmers of Pakistan suffered immensely,' they revealed.They pointed out that the new Indian dams could play havoc with Pakistan if its reservoirs collapsed for any reason, releasing huge quantity of water and causing flash floods that would devastate large areas of land in Pakistan. 'It will enable India to undertake construction of the river diversion works, even on the Chenab, and other irrigation works with storage from the Jhelum and the Indus,' he remarked. He further said when completed, the projects would enable India control or throttle the rivers' flows in its favour, making Pakistan bow to their hegemony.

He said the Indian control on river water would eventually make Pakistani main productive provinces of Sindh and Punjab barren. They hoped that the government would not ignore this important matter, like Baglihar and other water treaty-related matters, when India always won its point and Pakistan had been denied its rightful share of water as embodied in the treaty. They further stated that had Pakistan constructed Kalabagh Dam, it would have been very easy to prevent India from using Pakistan's water, as we would have argued that it fell under committed water usages. But when about 35 to 40 million acres feet (MAF) of water was going into sea every year, it was not possible to claim that India was violating the rights of the lower riparian state.