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ISLAMABAD: As record monsoon floods batter Pakistan’s Punjab province, officials are calling for urgent investment in dams and water infrastructure, arguing that India’s stronger flood defenses have limited damage on its side while Pakistan reels from rising death tolls and mass displacement.

This week, swollen rivers in Pakistan’s Punjab have submerged more than 1,600 villages, displaced over 1.1 million people and pushed nationwide fatalities since June, when the monsoon season began, past 820. The mass evacuations began after heavier-than-usual monsoon rains and the release of water from overflowing dams in India triggered flash floods in low-lying border regions in Pakistan.

Experts say Pakistan’s meager storage capacity leaves it acutely vulnerable to both floods and droughts, a risk compounded by climate change, which is making the monsoons more erratic and intense each year.

By contrast, India has invested far more heavily in dams and reservoirs, giving it a significantly larger buffer against floods and droughts, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said on Thursday during a briefing to the prime minister in flood-hit Narowal district.

“We must identify those gaps in our infrastructure,” He said. “If you look at the River Ravi, India has made very strong spurs, embankments and dams on its side that they throw all the water at us as per their will.”

PM Shehbaz Sharif also called for urgent construction of reservoirs and dams as swollen rivers devastated the breadbasket province of Punjab.

“We have to build the capacity for water storage. If there is storage, there will be a shortage of flash floods. Cascading will also be controlled,” the premier said in televised comments. 

“This is the work that we must start today.”

According to the Indian Central Water Commission, India has a live water storage capacity of about 257.8 billion cubic meters (BCM), or around 209 million acre-feet, enough to hold water for 124 days. Pakistan’s total storage capacity is just 14 million acre-feet, which experts say is sufficient for only 30 days.

While rains and floods have killed nearly 820 people in Pakistan since June, over 1,200 have died in India nationwide, which has a population over five times larger than Pakistan.

Iqbal said climate change was the “new normal” but not unmanageable if systemic weaknesses were addressed, arguing that India suffered less damage from this season’s floods while Pakistan was overwhelmed. 

India, as the upstream country in the Indus Basin — a river system governed by a 1960 treaty between the two nations — can regulate flows to Pakistan through infrastructure such as the Ranjit Sagar (Thein) Dam on the Ravi, the Ferozepur Headworks barrage on the Sutlej, the Baglihar and Salal dams on the Chenab, and the Kishanganga Hydroelectric Project on the Jhelum.

These projects — located in Indian Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir — are used to store water, generate electricity, and control seasonal river flows, giving India leverage over the timing and volume of water entering Pakistan.

But experts note that India’s water storage picture is not without its own challenges. 

Despite ranking third globally in the number of large dams built, India’s combined live storage capacity is considered inadequate to fully meet its water security needs. Insufficient infrastructure limits its ability to hold back and store water under the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, constraining both domestic use and strategic flexibility.

Indeed, as Pakistan’s Punjab reeled under a flood emergency, in neighboring Indian-administered Kashmir’s Jammu region too, some of the heaviest rains in decades for the month of August have also wrought havoc, triggering flash floods and landslides.

Homes have been submerged and roads and bridges damaged, forcing Indian authorities to evacuate thousands of people living in flooded areas. At least 115 people have been killed in Jammu and scores injured just in August.

In Pakistan, it is also the first time in 38 years that the Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab rivers have been in high flood simultaneously, forcing rescue workers to intensify operations across multiple districts, according to the provincial irrigation department.

POLITICAL AND FINANCIAL BURDENS

Experts say Pakistan’s weak infrastructure is less about technical capacity and more about political and financial constraints.

“Pakistan has lagged behind India in building dams and water infrastructure largely due to fragmented governance, insufficient and inconsistent funding, political opposition and over-reliance on international financing,” Ahmed Kamal, former chief engineering adviser and chairman of the Federal Flood Commission, told Arab News.

He said such factors undermined “cohesive long-term planning and execution,” with inter-provincial disputes stalling major projects. 

For example, the long-proposed Kalabagh Dam on the Indus River has faced decades of opposition from Sindh province, where politicians and farmers fear it would give Punjab greater control over water flows and reduce supplies to downstream communities. The controversy has made Kalabagh one of Pakistan’s most divisive infrastructure projects, effectively blocking progress on what engineers argue could have added badly needed storage capacity.

“After Mangla and Tarbela [dams], Pakistan paused dam building for 40 years before starting the Mohmand and Diamer-Bhasha projects,” Kamal said.

The Mangla Dam, built in the 1960s, and Tarbela, completed in the 1970s, remain Pakistan’s largest reservoirs and hydroelectric projects, critical to irrigation and power generation. By contrast, Mohmand is a smaller dam now under construction in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while Diamer-Bhasha, planned in Gilgit-Baltistan, is a vast project envisioned as one of the world’s tallest concrete dams but repeatedly delayed by financing and political disputes.

Many experts suggest building smaller water-retention structures — such as check dams and delay-action dams, which slow down floodwaters to recharge groundwater — along with rainwater harvesting and conservation practices.

A deeper challenge also lies in governance, with political instability and frequent leadership changes undermining consistent long-term planning.

Dr. Rashid Aftab, director at Islamabad’s Riphah Institute of Public Policy, said India’s relative political stability had allowed consistent long-term planning, while Pakistan’s frequent leadership changes had produced short-term approaches.

“On one hand, they [India] naturally enjoy the advantage of being upstream in the Indus Basin, and on the other, they pursue policies with strong political will and greater fiscal space to invest in water infrastructure,” Aftab said.

Because India sits upstream of Pakistan on the Indus river system, it can regulate water flows before they cross the border — an asymmetry that has shaped decades of tensions between the two countries.

Aftab noted that India had invested not only in large dams but also in groundwater recharge through rainwater harvesting and extensive canal networks. 

Pakistan, by contrast, has relied on external loans and has limited fiscal space to fund its own projects.

“Currently, Pakistan’s total water storage capacity is only around 14 million acre-feet, enough to last just 30 days,” Aftab said, urging Islamabad to accelerate large dam construction while also expanding small and medium reservoirs, check dams, and water conservation projects.