For India, the water resources minister, Prof Saifuddin Soz, may also have resorted to some exaggeration when he claimed that the Lafitte report has upheld the Indian point of view. Nevertheless, his reaction was decidedly sober and politically correct. Besides, as a Kashmiri himself, Soz would not like to say or do anything that would cause another round of delay in the project which would eventually generate 900 mw of electricity. ‘The overall design of the dam remains intact. We are very happy with the report,’ he said.

The ordinary people in Jammu and Kashmir have welcomed the verdict as it raises hopes of an early end to power shortage in the state. The separatists and the militant outfits have not commented on it, probably not wanting to condemn the report for fear of inviting adverse reaction from the people who are increasingly getting tired of violence.

Work on the Baglihar dam started in the year 2000. Two years later in 2002, Pakistan started to raise noises. A year before the project was to be completed Islamabad took the matter in May 2005 to the World Bank for arbitration, shouting all the way that India was violating the 1960 Indus Water Treaty by constructing the dam.

This road show did not come as a surprise. For two reasons. One Pakistan saw propaganda value in the cry India violated the World Bank brokered Treaty. Second its aim was to see that either the project is abandoned or delayed indefinitely. Sadly for the rulers in Islamabad, they have failed in both these two misanthropic objectives. Now there is desperation to enforce another postponement in the completion of the project. A consolation prize for Islamabad is the fact that its filibustering tactics have seen the 450-mw project Baglihar cost escalate by at least Rs 2000 crore. There are only slim chances of more pleasure on this score. That is because India is ready to abide by the Lafitte verdict in letter and spirit.

Politics aside, the Pakistani case against the Baglihar project rested on four technical reasons: about the very design, the height of the dam above the maximum storage line, the ‘pondage’ level and the height of the gated spillway, which are the outlets at the bottom of the dam to flush out silt. Pakistan is rejoicing that three of the objections it had raised have been upheld.

But as usual, Pakistan has presented the facts out of context. During the talks before the matter reached Raymond Lafitte of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, India had offered to lower the height of the dam above the storage line from 4.5 metres to 3 metres. The Lafitte verdict gives Pakistan the same concession that India was offering. Two other alterations in the project that India will have to carry out will be to peg the ‘pondage’ at 32.5 million cubic metres instead of 37.5 mcm and raise the level of the power intake turbines that control the run off by 3 metres.

These modifications are not so drastic as to cripple the project, as Pakistan would have liked. True, the changes would add to the cost of the project. But what rankles Pakistan is that the Lafitte verdict would has found no merit in its objections against the level of the gated spillway at 808 metres.

In once again exhibiting its usual mindless but compulsive animus towards India, Pakistan has forgotten to realise that the Swiss civil engineer’s verdict upholds India right to use the waters of three western rivers of Indus, Jhelum and Chenab without altering their natural flows. Indus Water Treaty does not prohibit India from using the flows for power projects and non-consumptive purposes. Yet, whenever India plans a project on these rivers, Pakistan raises a red flag with the intention of wrecking it. The Tulbul project has already been held up for years.

Time has come for India to quickly review and revive the hydroelectric projects, such as Tulbul and Kishanganga, in Jammu and Kashmir in the light of the Lafitte report which has tacitly agreed with the Indian position that it has no intention to construct projects that are going to adversely affect Pak interests. Much of the irrigation requirement in the Punjab province of Pakistan is met with rivers that originate in Kashmir, one of the many reasons why Pakistan wants to annex Kashmir from India.

What Pakistan refuses to see is that despite some severe downs in relations with India, New Delhi never deprived Pakistan of its rights over the river waters flowing from its territory. It is only the state-fabricated mistrust of India and the traditionally hostile attitude towards India that makes Pakistan see red in whatever India does. The report prepared by Raymond Lafitte may have sobered some policy makers of Pakistan that a blind anti-Indian policy does not work. In any case, Pakistan can no longer assume, like it does in the past, that international arbitration in all its disputes with India will go in its favour.

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