A BRIEF but telling moment passed quickly without comment in the press conference by the DG ISPR on Dec 5. It came in response to a question in which he was asked a vague and rambling question about how the “national media” amplifies the remarks and narratives that the DG had spent the entire press conference denouncing as fake and against the interests of Pakistan.
The DG started off by saying that the big problem with the “national media” is that they want to discuss nothing but “politics and rhetoric”. He exhorted them to talk about “actual issues” instead and went on to furnish a few examples. He said the country’s population is 250 million, and it’s growing by 4m every year, saying that we’re adding a small country’s worth of population every year.
“That requires a lot of resources,” he said, referring to the mouths that need feeding. He pointed to the recent rains and ensuing floods, pointed out the huge losses they caused, then added that, according to one estimate, 25 to 30 million acre feet of water was drained into the sea within three months. “One MAF is equal to $1 billion of agriculture product,” he carried on. “So you poured 25 to 30 billion dollars’ worth of water” into the sea.
Then he mentioned the water storage capacity of the country, at 13 to 14 MAF, and underlined that next year there will be even more rains, then let the thought trail off by saying the media should be talking about “storage and its canals”.
Rarely, if ever, does one see an actual substantive issue being given actual substantive treatment on prime time television.
“Our population is increasing, we need food security for them, we need to increase cultivable land, we need to, for the sake of the economy, properly exploit our mineral resources,” he said, as he urged the media to talk about these (and other) things, “and tell us this is the proper way to do it”. He concluded by telling the questioner that there are not “dozens, but hundreds of issues” to talk about, but the media seems to have made up its mind to keep its focus on “he says, she says” and what people are saying to each other rather than concentrating on the actual problems plaguing the country.
So let’s start by acknowledging that the DG is absolutely correct in pointing out that Pakistan’s public conversation is heavily saturated with the “he says, she says” of politics. Rarely, if ever, does one see an actual substantive issue being given actual substantive treatment on prime time television or any actual investigative work in print publications. Journalists rarely make the effort to ask whether a claim that is being made is true or not. They simply report what somebody said and leave it at that.
One result is that inaccurate claims gain widespread circulation and journalists, of all people, don’t ask simple questions, like ‘is this true?’ More than anything else, it is the economy that suffers because wild claims presenting quick fixes, or elaborate cons disguised as ‘innovation’ enter the policy conversation, are backed by dodgy numbers and data, get reported in the media as if they were factual, and perceptions grow around them that somehow a magical fix of all our economic problems can be had if only we can do this one thing, whatever it may be.
Take the example cited by the DG himself, the claim that 1 MAF of water equals $1bn of agriculture output, which he apparently supposes to mean that $25 to $30bn worth of water is being drained into the sea every year. On this supposition he builds the understanding that if we could only harness this water, using dams and canals, we could recover all this value and ensure our food security, and presumably also shore up our external account weakness, since he gives the value of the water in dollars.
But does 1 MAF of water really equal $1bn of output? The last mention this claim finds is when the Punjab member of the Indus River System Authority — Rao Irshad Ali Khan — told a Senate committee that “we and our coming generations would die of hunger if we do not build dams” and used this figure to buttress his case back in 2020. But if you look carefully, you will notice something.
It seems a crude calculation was performed to derive this figure. They seem to have taken the GDP contribution of agriculture, forestry and fisheries for FY2019, as reported by the State Bank, converted that amount to dollars at average exchange rate for that fiscal year, then divided that figure with the total availability of surface water in FY2019. If you do this, you get a figure close to $1bn per MAF.
But there are problems here. The first and biggest problem is an underlying assumption that is faulty. If it takes roughly 1 MAF of water to produce $1bn worth of agriculture output today, does that mean we can secure another $1bn worth of agriculture output with every incremental 1 MAF of water? The answer is no, it doesn’t work like that. The costs of building all the infrastructure required to arrange that incremental 1 MAF of water will have to be deducted from the present value of the anticipated future cash flows of any agricultural output that will result from the storage. Once you do this, you will notice that any increase in cultivable land brought about by building more water storage capacity does not break even for at least a decade if not longer.
Space prevents a more detailed examination and rebuttal of the Punjab member’s claims. But suffice it to say that it is a defective idea to build a vision for national renewal out of assumptions built on the claim that 1 MAF of water can add $1bn to our economic output. The lack of focus on substantive issues in our national conversation is what gives currency to such dubious numbers. It is a good idea to take them with a heavy dose of scepticism.
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2025
