The Water Apportionment Accord in Pakistan aimed for fair water distribution but faced challenges. A telemetry system meant for transparency was shelved, worsening provincial tensions. India’s successful adoption of similar technology contrasts Pakistan’s governance decline. The proposed solutions include integrating artificial intelligence for transparent water distribution and reforming IRSA with sensor-based technology.
The Water Apportionment Accord (WAA) is an agreement on the sharing of waters of the Indus Basin between the provinces of Pakistan. It is based largely upon the historical use of water by the provinces; Punjab 47%, Sindh 42%, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 8%, and Baluchistan 3%. The Accord on 21 March 1991 is Pakistan’s most significant piece of water legislation after the Indus Waters Treaty.
To implement the water-sharing division among the provinces, a federal body, the Indus River System Authority (IRSA), was established in 1992. However, the Accord is not without its problems. Its manual distribution, compiled by the permanent staff of IRSA is the source bone of serious coactions among the provinces of Pakistan.
On the complaints from the provinces, a telemetry system was installed in June 2004, costing the nation Rs 450 million. The telemetry was installed to collect data and transmission system in the Indus Basin irrigation System for providing online information on water flows and diversions at all barrages, dams, and canal heads regulators from twenty-three sites (23), to all the stakeholders at eight (8) monitoring sites concerned with water distribution. Simply put, the telemetry system automatically collects, transmits, and measures real-time data on water flow and storage from dams, barrages, and canals. To ensure 100% transparency, the data is then displayed on the website. Telemetry is similar to live water distribution coverage, to satisfy all provinces.
IRSA was first given control of the system by WAPDA after it was installed. This mistake befitting the Himalayas. Thus, from the beginning, IRSA’s non-technical employees declined to take over it. Hence, sadly after a few months, the telemetry system was shelved to make it a case study against digital transformation at the global level.
One of the most probable reasons is transparency in the system, which is unwanted because it challenges the hegemony of those who are the authority within IRSA. Telemetry made the senior staff of IRSA almost redundant. Yet, finally, they managed the telemetry system in the same way as Patwaris failed in all attempts of the government to computerize land records in Islamabad and Punjab. When telemetry started, the brilliant engineer of the installation company predicted that in the presence of permanent staff, this initiative would never succeed till the sacking of the operational staff. This was resistance to automation, which posed a challenge to the water data manipulation in IRSA but its worst effect was to exacerbate the steps necessary to develop source confidence in water sharing.
Since the telemetry system was postponed, the provinces’ mistrust has developed into rivalry. IRSA regained the right to manually distribute water, but at the cost of national unity. What IRSA has done is beyond the imagination of even the most formidable adversary of Pakistan. Aside from that, it stoked public animosity over water distribution, rather than bringing four federation units together. The loss of the opportunity to construct Kalabagh Dam, which would have created water rights over the Kabul River, is the greatest consequence, though. This is a premeditated action of IRSA.The Kalabagh Dam might have saved at least $30 billion in losses from the 2022 floods.
While India took a lesson from the failure of the telemetry system in Pakistan, it also started web-enabled real-time data of water flow on December 3rd, 2008. India now disseminates this data from 433 Dams. The brilliant model set by India is at the Bhakra Dam on the Sutlej River. The dam can hold 7.56 million acre-feet of water, which is used to supply water to Chandigarh and Delhi, as well as for irrigation in Haryana, East Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh. Following the telemetric system‘s installation, there was no disagreement amongst the seven stakeholders regarding water being shared.
In Pakistan, governance has declined in the last 15 years. Otherwise, our past was a source of pride in terms of water governance, serving as a model for Asia. On June 30, 1997, WAPDA completed remarkable telemetry and data of snow and rain, air temperature, snow depth and density, and river discharge in the Upper Indus Basin, which includes the Indus River above Tarbela, the Jhelum River above Mangla, and the Kabul River above its confluence with the Indus River. This was accomplished with the support of CIDA and the IDRC during its glory days. Originally, The Guru of “Kenneth Hewitt” of the Karakoram Glaciers conceived this massive undertaking when he estimated in the early 1980s that 80% of the inflow to the Tarbela reservoir comes from snow and glacial melt, whereas 40% to 70% of the inflow to the Mangla reservoir comes from snow melt.
To address this grave problem—which arose from provincial squabbles that threatened Pakistan’s sovereignty—the government devised a brilliant plan to appoint an elderly, retired bureaucrat—who is not familiar with basic water governance—as Chairman of IRSA. The retraction of the illegitimate decision was the result of another controversy sparked by this act.
However, our decision-maker failed to take into account the fact that, as of January 2024, there were 190 million active mobile phone connections in Pakistan and 72 million social media users. As a result, water governance needs to change to incorporate artificial intelligence to ensure equitable and transparent water distribution as stipulated in the WAA at a much cheaper cost. There is now no choice but to shelf IRSA immediately, as a straightforward app that installs sensors on all dams, canals, and barrages and integrates with the data landing hydrological unit WAPDA. Looking at the business; IRSA has four members, one chairman only stays at IRSA for four years, and the Director of Operation IRSA, raised from the lower level, runs the whole show of IRSA.
There is no place for conventional thinking in IRSA, as Pakistan is ranked third in the world among nations facing severe water shortages in 2025, according to UNDP. GOP should now give careful consideration to creating a robust information system, as resource planning requires comprehensive water-related data at both the national and provincial levels. Since water security is the foundation of food and economic security, Pakistan’s water security needs to be addressed. To do this, provincial irrigation departments and WAPDA should be integrated to create a standardized real-time national information system with a network of data banks and databases of surface and groundwater.
Writer can be contacted at ahabasi@gmail.com
