There is more than a grain of truth in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s lament that the whole nation is paying the price for its former rulers’ lack of vision and foresight. Addressing reporters after the groundbreaking of Tarbela 5th Extension Hydropower Project, he pointed out that the plan to build Bhasha dam was first conceived in 1984, but it never materialised because “either they (former rulers) lacked vision or they thought of their five years of power and our nation suffered dearly in its wake.” There can be no denying that for the longest time most of our rulers were so detached from reality that the country turned from a water-abundant one to a water-scarce one right under their noses and they didn’t so much as lift a finger about it. For, surely, if some study commissioned forty years ago could identify the need for water reservoirs and dams then the least that the government of the day, or any subsequent government, could have done was follow up on it. Yet no such thing was done; not even when international financial institutions like the World Bank were knocking on our doors, even offering to finance much needed hyrdro projects in the country, simply because the rulers were just too occupied with building their own personal and political empires, complete with sugar mills inside the country and premium real estate outside it. There’s also something to be said about the limitations of the five-year model of government that we follow. While it puts no limitations on the plans and projects that governments can undertake, especially since the constitution mandates that they act in the interest of the people, it does make governments opt for high visibility projects that can fetch quick votes as opposed to tending to the country’s long term needs, the results of which are not immediately visible. Perhaps sitting governments should also be required to prove their long term commitment to the people and the country by showing what they have done to improve the overall direction of the most important sectors when they go fishing for votes. *