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The Mega Water Facade

A significant indictment of the nature of IFI operations in the country relates to the human costs, which have never been fully acknowledged in the Chashma Right Bank Irrigation Project
By Mushtaq Gadi & Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

Awareness about the role of IFIs in Pakistan is growing fast, especially given the experience of the past three years. Many ordinary Pakistanis are aware that much of their slide toward acute hardship has something to do with the military and its policy biases, and that these biases have a fair bit to do with IFI dictations. It has become much more common to hear people badmouthing the World Bank and IMF as much as the military itself. That being said, it is unfortunate that the role of the IFIs is increasing by the day, as is their influence on what are supposed to be sovereign decision-making structures of the State.

Beyond sloganeering, however, there is often a genuine lack of knowledge of exactly how the policies of IFIs, and the generally accommodating attitude of the Pakistani State, lead to the kind of negative social and environmental impacts, which have become alarmingly widespread. Distinct examples of bad practice tend to be swept under the carpet, despite the fact that they should be public information. And it is difficult to isolate non-complex causes of the overall effects of policy prescriptions of the IFIs, largely because these effects are the outcome of a long history of policy interference and fairly random geo-political changes.

It is, therefore, important to study the existing examples of bad practice because they do encapsulate all that is wrong with the development paradigm propagated by the IFIs hand in hand with obedient State elite in Pakistan. Perhaps, the most compelling example of bad practice in present times is that of the Chashma Right Bank Irrigation Project (CRBIP). The Chashma area is home to one of the most comprehensive irrigation systems in the country, all thanks to the large-heartedness of the IFIs.

Irrigation development on the right bank of the Indus River was initially conceived of in the 1960s when the West Pakistan Power and Irrigation Department researched the possibility of perennial irrigation systems servicing the area lying above the command of existing inundation canals and beyond the reach of perennial Zams (hill-torrents) emerging from the Suleman Range into the plains of D I Khan and D G Khan districts. Meanwhile, the construction of a barrage on the Indus River at Chashma as part of the Indus Basin Project (IBP) meant that it had become possible for a new canal to be built on the right bank of the barrage.

The Chashma Right Bank Irrigation Project (CRBIP) was born in 1977. The ADB's involvement in the CRBIP started in 1976 when a fact-finding mission visited the proposed site of the project in D I Khan district. A project loan totaling $31.5m was approved on 15 December 1977. The project was then meant to irrigate 202,350 hectares in both the NWFP and Punjab provinces. By late 1979, the project work had virtually ceased due to substantial cost overrun. The revised PC-1 Proforma prepared by Wapda assessed a two-fold increase in project costs. The government promptly imposed a ban on the award of new contracts.

Subsequently in 1981, a technical assistance package of the ADB reviewed, reassessed, and reformulated the CRBIP. A revised proposal was prepared in 1984, in which total investment cost was estimated at $577m. It was also proposed that the project should be designed and implemented in three stages. Two stages have since been completed and the last stage is expected to be complete by December 2002.

Financing of $185m for the current and last stage was approved by the ADB in December 1991, a sum totaling about 64% of the total cost. The Government of Germany (KfW) has also loaned about $40m for the project. There have been significant changes in the project design, as well as cost overrun and substantial delay in the implementation process. It was initially envisaged that the construction of the main canal would start by early 1992. However, the major contract for its construction was not awarded until late 1997. The PC-Proforma attributes the delay to donor insistence that the tender be awarded to the second lowest bidder M/s TEKSER whose bid was Rs180m higher than that of the lowest bidder M/s China Geo Engineering Corporation. Wapda claims that it tried its best to convince the Bank to award the contract to the lowest bidder so as to save the national exchequer an extra Rs180m, but in vain.

Similarly, there was a delay in the award of Contract No66 again due to donor reluctance to accept stipulated terms. The tender for the contract was made public on 5 December 1996. The contract agreement was eventually finalised on 20 February 1999. The process took 27 months against the originally scheduled four months. One of the reasons for the delay was the insistence of donors that new vehicles be purchased for the project. Wapda was of the view that there were already enough vehicles available to cater to the need of the contract.

The project is also marred with serious legal and procedural irregularities and charges of corruption. For example, it was said that dovetailing work was completed prior to the commencement of Stage III by contractors hired during Stage II. However, the government termed the award of the contract for dovetailing work on the basis of negotiation highly irregular and against prescribed rules. An investigation was also ordered, the outcome of which remains a guarded secret.

It is interesting that institutions such as the ADB should focus so much of their energies on insisting that Pakistan adopt adjustment policies and balance its budget through prudent expenditures, given that it has systematically increased the project cost of the CRBIP through what, at best, can be termed as institutionalised corruption. If past history is anything to go by, it is likely that costs will increase even further as time passes.

A far more significant indictment of the nature of IFI operations in the country, however, relates to the human costs, which the ADB has never fully acknowledged in the CRBIP. Initially, it was stated that no displacement would take place in the project area. Gradually, this statement has been revised to the point that 22 villages now stand to be displaced, or a population of thirty thousand. Despite such a large number of people facing the threat of displacement, the ADB has failed to ensure the preparation of resettlement and rehabilitation plans, which are mandatory according to its own policies on involuntary resettlement.

About 20,000 acres of land have been officially acquired for CRBIP III. In addition to the acquired land, a significant area has been damaged because of flooding on the west bank and riverine belt, deep burrow excavations and other engineering interventions. Traditional spate irrigation system (rowed-kohi) has faced massive disruptions caused by these engineering interventions. Similarly, the western side and riverine area--both lying out of the command area--are facing serious problems of project induced flooding. Severance of landholdings is also very common and has rendered the land of many small farmers unproductive and useless. In the project area, about 80% of the population comprise of small farmers and the loss of their lands without adequate compensation is essentially equivalent to total destruction of their livelihood support system. Worse, approximately 26% of the people living in the project area are landless tenants.

The land acquisition and compensation process was in total violation of national laws. The concerned authorities failed to implement even the insufficient, much-criticised colonial legal provisions for land acquisition (Land Acquisition Act, 1894). According to the act, affected communities should be informed prior to land acquisition, and an award should be announced. Neither of these two requirements has been fulfilled. The project is scheduled to be complete in two months and not a single project affectee has been compensated so far.

Alongside the loss of land and livelihood will come a rapid erosion of ecological standards in the area, the true effects of which are likely to become obvious only when the damage will already have been done. Large-scale irrigated and mechanised agriculture has had deleterious effects on the environment almost everywhere in the world, with Pakistan as no exception. It is, therefore, irresponsible of the ADB and the GoP to be oblivious to the possibility of such effects, and indeed to the displacement and livelihood concerns of thousands of people.

Over a period of time, concerned citizen's groups and affectees have protested to the ADB about the realities of the project, while also asking for the ADB to provide relevant information on project activities to better understand how to offset negative impacts. There has been little in the ADB's response to these initiatives to suggest that the ADB is genuinely concerned about these issues, despite the fact that the ADB has institutionalised the monitoring and mitigation of negative effects of ADB projects in its own operational procedures.

It would be impossible to delve into more specific details of irregularities in the CRBIP because there are so many. Institutions such as the ADB are often perturbed at complaints about such projects and their multitude of negative impacts because they claim that it is the GoP, which decides to design and then implement such projects, and that the ADB is simply providing assistance. In some ways, one wishes this were the truth because it would facilitate a much more focused criticism of the GoP. But while the GoP is guilty of persisting with an obsolete and decadent conception of development, the ADB and other IFIs do have a very large part in continuing to promote this paradigm.

This is a paradigm, which is founded almost exclusively on undemocratic decision-making, capital-intensiveness, premised on an obsession with investment and growth, and motivated by a desire to, quite simply, make money, and not by a genuine desire to improve people's well-being. It is problematic and it is spreading fast, thereby undermining people's ability to make organic decisions about their development based on their view of the world.

The CRBIP's location in the Siraiki belt, in an area where demographic and social changes have been almost overwhelming, reflects that the GoP and ADB are well aware where such projects may face the least resistance. The CRBIP is going to be followed by a number of other mega water projects, which have been announced over the past three years including the Greater Thal Canal, Gomal Zam Dam and Kacchi Canal, all of which incidentally will be based in the Southern part of Punjab province. None of these proposed projects seem to be an improvement on the thought process that created the CRBIP. It is no wonder that this country seems to be going nowhere fast.

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