Water for the Punjab

Two hundred thousand men and women in brightly colored turbans and saris, standing in the 100DEG sun, cheered Prime Minister Nehru one day last week as he pressed a button and sent tons of water roaring through a new canal toward the parched deserts of India's thirsty East Punjab. Along the 238-mile, tile-lined concrete canal, devout Hindus burned camphor. Tears ran down the wrinkled cheeks of old peasants who, in past years, had seen their children and their cattle perish in drought.

Nehru (whose name means canal) was opening the first link in the Bhakra-Nangal Canal System, part of an Indian-financed, U.S.-engineered $327 million hydroelectric-irrigation project. Starting in the Himalayan foothills where the Sutlej River pours onto the plains, the project has more than 4,500 miles of canals, will eventually distribute water through an area twice the size of New Jersey, some of it in chronic famine.

In a voice quivering with emotion, Nehru said: "I look upon these projects, where thousands of human beings are engaged in great constructive activity for the benefit of millions of their fellow beings, as temples and places of worship.

These are sacred places ... for me more sacred than temples, gurdwaras [Sikh shrines] and mosques. I feel more religious-minded when I see these great works." While Indians cheered, tempers rose in neighboring West Pakistan. Premier Mohammed Ali called an emergency Cabinet session, and lodged a strong protest with New Delhi. For years the two nations have quarreled about water almost as much as they have quarreled over Kashmir. World Bank officials in Washington are trying to get them together on a plan for joint Indian-Pakistani development of the waters of the Sutlej and four other rivers which join the Indus (all of which flow out of Indian-held territory and give West Pakistan its life).

Though eventually there should be water enough for all, the new canal will divert the Sutlej River. waters, which irrigate much of Pakistan's fertile West Punjab, before Pakistan can build compensating canals. Pakistan fears that Nehru--or a less friendly successor--could, if he wished, turn West Punjab into the desert it once was.

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