ON Jan 15, 2006, the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) inaugurated its new fountain — the Rs320m lighted harbour structure that spews seawater hundreds of feet into the air.
Also on this day — as on most others in Karachi — several million gallons of the city’s water supply were lost to leakage, some hundred million gallons of raw sewage oozed into the sea, and scores of Karachiites failed to secure clean water.
Over the next few years, the fountain jet would produce a powerful and relentless stream of water high above Karachi. Meanwhile, down below, tens of thousands of the city’s masses would die from unsafe water.
After several fountain parts were stolen in 2008, the KPT quickly made the necessary repairs and re-launched what it deems “an extravaganza of light and water”.
In an era of rampant resource shortages, boasting about such extravagance demonstrates questionable judgment. So, too, does the willingness to lavish millions of rupees on a giant water fountain, and then to repair it fast and furiously — while across Karachi and the nation as a whole, drinking water and sanitation projects are heavily underfunded and water infrastructure stagnates in disrepair.
And so, too, does Pakistan’s insistence — expressed vociferously in media editorials railing against ‘water theft’ and in politicians’ warnings about water wars — that India is to blame for Pakistan’s water woes. The story of the KPT fountain illustrates how Pakistan’s water crisis rages not because of the machinations of its upper riparian neighbour, but because of Pakistan’s own misplaced priorities and poor governance.
To be sure, India may well divert flows from the Indus Basin’s western rivers, which the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) allocates to Pakistan, and India does itself few favours by refusing to be transparent about such matters. (In this regard its agreeing to allow Pakistan to inspect two under-construction hydropower plants in Indian-held Kashmir is welcome.) Yet keep in mind that the IWT gives India the right to use some of the western rivers for agriculture, and the country has yet to exploit much of the cropland set aside for this purpose.
