Daily Diary (DD) - Day 180 of 2022

2303hrs:

Day 24 at Maqbool Bhat Shaheed Square - Dadyaal.

0803hrs

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The heat is a stiff challenge. 

Now that we haven't seen rain for a few days, the electricity is playing up again and we are witnessing about 12 hours of load-shedding, just like we were before the few days of rain.

We are essentially suffering because of a greedy and myopic neighbour, who wants to use the hydro powered electricity of this territory (which is expensive to build but whose running costs are minimal) and what it produces in its own territory (Tarbela is its major source), to try and fulfill the electricity needs of its own country, while always trying to give us as least supply as it thinks we can tolerate.

If Pakistan were to try and supply electricity to everybody it would have to buy oil or gas based electricity, which it would have to use foreign currency to do so, which it doesn't have in sufficient supply. It has already borrowed way beyond its ability to repay, from the rest of the world.

Thus, despite Pakistan producing at least 10 times more than our own need for electricity - from our territory - it still strives to deprive us of our need, for over 12 hours a day.

When it rains, the immediate short term effect is that the electricity goes because the transmission infrastructure is weak. However, once the rain subsides there is more water to power the hydro power projects built in our territory. This increases the supply of electricity in the short term but only until the water levels recede.

This is the pattern we have witnessed over the past few weeks.

These large hydro projects, involved uprooting many people (our people, not the people of Pakistan) and they have had a disastrous effect on the environment too. Boring long tunnels to divert rivers is one such example. Given the natural altitude decline from our territory to the plains of India and Pakistan and given the abundant sources of water flowing down from here; many relatively smaller - run of the river - electricity generating projects could have been created.  

They would have been environmentally friendly and people wouldn't have been uprooted on the scale we have witnessed. 

However, our neighbour being greedy and myopic - as declared at the outset of today's weblog - has made us sacrifice ourselves for its behaviour. Mega projects enable mega corruption (not so easily possible on smaller projects) and so what if our people have to pay the price? A few religious anecdotes about big brother in Islam etc. is usually sufficient to appease our people, or what usually transpires is that our people also get corrupted to emulate their Pakistani brothers in Islam. 

The relatively strong exploit the weak. The Pakistanis exploit AJK and GB. The Pakistani sponsored power elites in our territory then exploit the weaker amongst us.

Our own resources are used to exploit and subjugate us.

This vicious cycle repeats itself from generation to generation.

Our motivation is to break this cycle and make our people productive enough to genuinely compete with the rest of the world, based on what should be our competitive advantages bestowed by nature upon us. 

To not be unproductive rent/commission seekers, a haven for black money and terrorism or a destination for bad loans.

AJK and the rest of JKA - including GB - would do well to stop emulating Pakistan. 

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