The statement of the federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervez Ashraf that Kalabagh dam project has been scrapped for good (reference your editorial of May 25) is very depressing. If true, the decision has dashed to ground all hopes and aspirations of prosperity that the people of Pakistan had linked with this project. The miserable conditions under which the people live on account of acute shortage of electricity are, thus, likely to persist till a suitable remedy is found. It is shocking that the people at the helm of affairs do not realize that even a dozen small dams can not provide such a boost to offset the shortage of water and power that a single KBD can. Some time back I discussed the subject with a former WAPDA top man according to whom the politicians from Sindh and Frontier who oppose the construction of Kalabagh dam know very well that the project will cause no harm to their provinces. But they insist that, "It is our political stand which we are not prepared to abandon". It always was my firm belief that the construction of KBD would never start during a PPP regime. Go back to the years 1995-96 when instead of developing the country's water and power resources, the PPP regime introduced the IPPs. That increased the price of an electric unit from Rs. 1.50 to Rs. 6.50 raising the common man's electric bill by over 400 percent. -RAFI NASIM, Lahore, via e-mail, May 28.