New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 2 - Spring 2015 | Page 49

New Water Policy and Practice

of non-required floods. The upper riparian states do so to maintain their own
water interests. However, this regulation and release and withdrawal of water
cause droughts and floods in lower riparian state. This damages the standing crops
and also brings disaster to human lives. Change in weather pattern is causing nonseasonal precipitation and increase or decrease in monsoon rains. A few times
the increase in spell of rainfall raises the water level, which positively helps in
managing water distribution disputes, though only for a season. In 2014, due to
increased spell of rainfall it was possible for Indus Rivers System Authority (IRSA)
to supply additional water to Punjab and Sindh (Ahmedani 2014). This avoided
clashes between them that season.
Punjabisation of Pakistan: Scholars such as Yunus Samad, Ian Talbot et al. use
the term “Punjabisation of Pakistan” (Samad 2007) to discuss the domination
of Punjab province over the Pakistani state machinery. Punjab has attained this
status because of the key role it plays in Pakistan’s history. It is home to Pakistan
Army which has wielded power directly for two and half decades and indirectly
for longer still (Talbot 2002). Politically, it is such a powerful province that any
head of the state in Pakistan cannot even think of surviving without its support.
During her first (1988–1990) ministry, Benazir Bhutto found to her cost that a
national administration in Islamabad could be undermined by a hostile provincial
government in Lahore (ibid). Any challenge to Punjab’s authority in Pakistan
by the others is punitive. The Sindhi Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was
hanged by the Punjabi military rulers on April 4, 1979, but for the same level of
“conspiracy” and allegations, in 1999 then Prime Minister Nawaz Sahrif, a Punjabi,
was deported to other, country, by a Mohajir (migrant) Chief of Army Staff. Later
on he returned from his exile in 2008 and become the Prime Minister of Pakistan