The Water and Power Ministry showed to the National Assemblys Standing Committee on Water and Power that it was not only incompetent, but also it lacked any good news for the ordinary man. Not only did it concede, during the Additional Secretarys testimony, that it had failed to obtain a stay order on Indias Kishen Ganga Dam project from the International Arbitration Tribunal, but the Secretary, talking to the press after his testimony, also said the Ministry had initiated a recommendation for a six percent increase in the electricity tariff. This would be over and above increases resulting from fuel price hike, though there again the Ministry skimmed over its responsibility for the circular-debt problem which has arisen. However, it supinely concedes to India the right to flagrantly violate the Indus Waters Treaty by its failure to prepare a convincing case for stopping the building of the Kishen Ganga project. At the same time, it is only too ready to press for a tariff raise which will further press the common man hard, even though this would come on top of other increases in the power tariff. As a committee member observed, those increases had already shut down vast swathes of the textile industry, with 30 percent shifting to Bangladesh for this reason. Perhaps the most comprehensive solution, the building of the Kalabagh Dam, was ignored by the testimony as well as the Committee, even though the failure to build it is not so much a permission to India, as an encouragement. With the hydel power it would generate, there would be no reason to raise the tariff even to the level it has reached, let alone the further increase the Ministry is pressing for. However, the Ministry has not played its due role as the government department most responsible for observing Indian compliance with the Indus Waters Treaty. Even when it did wake up to its responsibilities it failed to ensure that it prepared a proper case. The government must stop trying to please India, and make this Ministry fulfill its duties better.