Follow a drop of water in Pakistan, from glacier to reservoir, through barrage and canal, into an aquifer, across a farm and through a city. Responsibility changes hands at every stage. WAPDA operates major reservoirs, the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) allocates, provinces distribute irrigation water, and local authorities and utilities supply households. Yet who answers for how these parts work together? Pakistan does not lack water institutions. It lacks an enforceable chain of accountability connecting them.

IRSA was established by law in 1992 to implement the 1991 Water Apportionment Accord, with provincial and federal representation. Its difficulty is not an absence of statutory powers. It is the burden of administering that agreement when measurements are challenged, shortage-sharing is disputed and technical decisions become proxies for federal mistrust. Provincial representation and professional independence are both necessary. Neither can substitute for the other.

The new-canals controversy exposed the cost of getting the sequence wrong. On April 28, 2025, the Council of Common Interests (CCI) directed that provisional federal approval and IRSA’s water-availability certificate be returned for further consultation, and endorsed proceeding only after agreement among the provinces. Planning approval cannot settle a dispute over the water a project requires. Those questions must be resolved before commitments harden.

Better measurements will not dissolve competing interests or settle every question of entitlement. They will establish what is available, what was delivered and where disagreement actually lies. A federation that shares a river but not a trusted measurement of it is a federation arguing in the dark.

The same disconnect runs below the surface. The World Bank estimated in 2021........

© The Nation