Introduction

In recent decades, dams have come to personify “nation-building” (Roy) - the bigger, the better. In developing countries, economic growth is often predicated on the expansion of infrastructure. That’s the mantra of Pakistan’s political elite.

Our current economic structures define economic growth as an exponential growth of gross domestic product (GDP), the goods and services produced in a country in a given period of time. In an agro-based country the pursuit of exponential economic growth means increasing crop cultivation, even in places nature does not allow. Man-made irrigation has turned swathes of arid, dry land into flourishing crops, and to feed this irrigation system in the context of Pakistan’s geography, water storage is necessary. The elite at the national and transnational levels present mega-dams as the solution to this necessity.

In Pakistan, Punjabi officials and the Punjabi-dominated army are considered as the political elite of the country. On the transnational level, I use the term political elite to refer to international development agencies, particularly the World Bank, and First World diplomats. I also include multinational companies in this world of elitism. Although they frame their mega-dam proposition in economic terms of GDP, agricultural growth, megawatts of power produced, etc, their driving force is political and economic self-interest.

This paper will examine how and why the project came to be proposed and built, the role played by the global elite in choosing this project, and the consequences it had for the politically marginalized communities. The framework of this essay borrows the following features of Political Economy Analysis (PEA), as delineated by Alex Duncan and Gareth Williams in their journal article ”Making Development Assistance More Effective Through Using Political-Economy Analysis: What Has Been Done and What Have We Learned?”:

• Emphasizing the centrality of politics
• Identifying underlying factors that shape the political process
• Recognizing that development agencies are political actors