The prime minister has categorically said at the inauguration of the 50 MW wind power project that Kalabagh dam will not be built without consensus among all the provinces. We have been hearing about this elusive consensus since the last three decades without any serious efforts being made to achieve a consensus. The real bone of contention seems to be the location of this dam on Indus in Punjab. If a dam is proposed on Indus in Northern Areas at Bhasha or three dams on Indus in Indian-held Kashmir, there is no need of a consensus and everybody keeps quiet about it. Even the PPP, which claims to be Zanjeer of all four provinces, has failed so far to bind all the provinces on the issue of the vital Kalabagh dam. This is despite the fact that Water Accord of 1991 stipulates equal share of water i.e. 37 percent each to Sindh and Punjab in the event of a new storage on Indus with NWFP getting 14 percent and Balochistan 12 percent. The water is getting scarce in the world but we are getting short in both water and power. The calls for generating power by wind or solar energy ignore the fact that our multipurpose hydroelectric dams would not just store water for irrigation but also provide cheap, renewable and very clean energy of up to 40, 000 MW if harnessed properly. Our slackness in building storage reservoirs has encouraged Indians to build dams on all our rivers, including the all-important Indus, to store water for their use. We, as a nation, are fast asleep without a care for the shortage of affordable power and water that we might have to face in future due to our present failure to build feasible dams on Indus. -DR.MUHAMMAD YAQOOB BHATTI, Lahore, via e-mail, April 21.