Our parliament is no stranger to rowdyism and Tuesday’s assembly session saw more unseemly behaviour when the Kalabagh dam project suddenly came under ‘discussion’. Legislators shouted at each other and matters came to a particularly sorry pass when a parliamentarian’s patriotism was questioned just because he happens to be opposed to the project. The behaviour of some legislators was uncalled for and deserves to be censured. But there is a more important point to raise here: why did the Kalabagh dam issue crop up in the first place?

The ongoing assembly session is supposed to be dedicated to a general debate on the new budget and there ought to be no place on the agenda for unrelated topics. Yet an MNA from Punjab saw it fit to raise an issue as controversial as the Kalabagh dam, in the process derailing the business of the day. Such sidetracking, the voicing of any random thought, suggests that our parliamentarians are not focused on the job at hand. This apparent frivolity is almost as distasteful as the name-calling witnessed in the house.

The MNA whose remarks triggered the uproar insisted that the Kalabagh dam project “is not a dead issue.” That may be so but it needs to be remembered that the proposed dam has always inflamed nationalist passions and nothing constructive can come of bringing it up out of the blue. Punjab is the only province that is in outright favour of the project while Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have consistently rejected it. And there is more at stake here than inter-provincial discord of a political nature, which is a grave outcome in itself. In particular, serious concerns have been raised about the dam’s impact on the environment and the livelihoods of lower riparians. These are important and sensitive matters that need to be addressed in a composed manner. Arriving at a consensus is all-important and that can only be achieved through honest dialogue. If the Kalabagh dam project must be revisited for some reason, our parliamentarians could call for a session devoted to that issue. Shouting matches won’t help anyone’s cause.