The prime minister is pleased to say about Bhasha Dam:Unlike the ill-fated Kalabagh Dam, the proposed project has already been endorsed by the CCI to pre-empt any unnecessary politicisation of the kind that dogged the dam project at Kalabagh for years on end. Only if he knows that KBD was a victim of unnecessary politicisation, could he please tell us how it had become politicised and who had done it? Was it, by any chance, because KBD is in Punjab and Bhasha Dam is not? Yet PPP claims to represent all the provinces The announcement about the construction of Bhasha Dam was made by Musharraf. If it has taken the PPP government more than three years to get to the foundation stone laying, how many more years will it require for the Dam to start delivering. Can Pakistan wait that long? Does he know that - Bhasha Dam will be dependent entirely on snow-melt from the glaciers, while a major portion of the 30 million acre feet of annual monsoon flows will go a begging unutilised. Can Pakistan afford this loss to industry and agriculture? Does he know that we are ourselves helping rapid depletion of the glaciers by burning oil, as per the dying wishes of certain individuals? Does he know that by the time Bhasha Dam comes on stream (in 12 to 15 years), Mangla and Tarbela Dams will be at half mast? It will irrigate only those acres which Mangla and Tarbela Dams will have stopped irrigating. Same goes for the power situation. At best it will be a replacement dam (It is only if KBD becomes the replacement dam, can Bhasha become a productive dam). Does he know that - Bhasha Dam will not block the flood waters emanating from the five big tributaries of the Indus Kabul, Chitral, Swat, Haro and Sohan? These flood waters will continue to wreck his adopted home province every year on an incremental basis. Does he know that power from Bhasha Dam will have to travel 200 miles to reach the national grid at Tarbela, through an earthquake prone region. What will the cost of power after adding transmission losses and maintenance overheads in inaccessible territory? If he doesnt know any of this, what does he know? KHURSHID ANWER, Lahore, October 8.