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Water Politics

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has many questions to answer instead of claiming credit for the cancellation of the six-canal project.

By Nikhat Sattar | June 2025


Since the deliberately engineered February 8 elections in Pakistan, the establishment has shed its previous cloak of behind-the-scenes machinations, and its strong arm is seen in significant economic, political, judicial, and administrative decisions. One of these is corporate farming, a supposedly joint initiative between the army and the government meant to modernize agriculture and provide benefits to poor farmers. However, corporate farming has pros and cons, and it has been practised successfully and unsuccessfully in various parts of the world.

One of the essential prerequisites for a successful model is transparency and involvement of local people, especially the farmers. At the very outset, this prerequisite had been abandoned. The government is supposed to (and at the time of writing this, has already) hand over thousands of acres of agricultural land in the Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan to unqualified people for various projects. The government has sought funding from foreign donors, a $6bn investment from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain over the next three to five years to cultivate 1.5 million acres (600,000 hectares) of barren land, and mechanise the existing 50 million acres (20 million hectares) of agricultural land across the country.

As a part of this programme, the Green Pakistan Initiative (GPI), to be implemented in Cholistan and elsewhere in the Punjab, approved by President Asif Ali Zardari in July 2024, was launched in February 2025. Under this initiative, irrigation systems are to be improved by constructing six canals, five of which are to be on the Indus River. The Indus River System Authority (IRSA) had already provided a certificate saying there would be enough water from floods, despite a letter of dissent from an IRSA member from Sindh.

At least, that was the plan when a massive civil society movement was initiated in February, although experts and activists have been writing and talking about the permanent damage this project would do to the Indus Delta ever since the idea of corporate farming was generated. The Indus is under great stress. It receives far less water annually, and building canals has already caused waterlogging upstream and sedimentation in the dams, say the experts.

Nationalist parties and the opposition, such as the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had also expressed their strong reservations. At the same time, lawyers, women, and the student lobby had come out in large numbers to protect against this initiative. The surprising part of announcing the implementation of this project has been that there were no consultations, no studies conducted to assess economic feasibility, and the impact on Indus water flows and upon communities and their livelihoods downstream in Sindh.


Some PPP members in the national and provincial assemblies did voice their concerns, but the response throughout this period of planning and launching the project was muted. President Zardari’s approval was glossed over, and it was only when civic and lawyers’ bodies started sit-ins on the roads that the ruling party, which had governed the province for 16 years, woke up to threaten a pullout from the coalition government in case the project is continued. Reaching a climax, the government announced the shelving of the project. Finally, it was placed before the Council of Common Interests (CCI), (before which it should have come for approval long before its fanfare launch), which has cancelled it. The PPP has claimed this as its victory against the federal government and as its democratic advocacy for the people of Sind, whereas it is the people themselves who have made this happen.

The PPP has many questions to answer instead of claiming credit for the project’s cancellation. Why did it not ask for a meeting of the CCI earlier? Why was IRSA’s certificate not objected to more strongly, and why did the PPP not come to the assistance of its member when he objected to it? Importantly, why did President Zardari approve the six strategic canals, given that the consistent construction of dams, barrages, canals, and other infrastructure has destroyed the Indus Delta over the years?

The danger is not over. With the canals project out of the picture, what will happen to the GPI in Cholistan and to the thousands of acres of agricultural land already given to the underserving people? What will happen to the larger corporate farming programme? What plans are underway to irrigate this area? Will the non-civilian engineering experts and planners heed civil society experts when they say that it is not required to expand the irrigation system? Instead, the efficiency of water production, its harvesting, and its usage are necessary. Above all, people need to be consulted. Will the donors back out now that the canals project has been shelved?

The PPP would do well to play its role in opposing policies and projects that are harmful to citizens’ rights from the beginning, instead of waiting to see how civil society responds. Even then, its approach to protecting the rights of Pakistanis in general has been to sit on the fence and then give in to the combined pressures of the establishment and the PML-N. This is precisely what happened in the case of PECA, the changes to the judicial system, and the trial of civilians in military courts. The PPP is fighting for its survival as a political party in Sindh while maintaining its relevance to the establishment in preparation for the next elections. It certainly cannot claim that its stance on the canals project has been the driving force behind the cancellation of the project.

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