It takes more than ordinary population for a group of
strangers to recommends changes in the efforts of a great nation to
contend with a problem that goes that goes to the very roofs of its
social structure and its livelihood. Yet we did just that in our Report
on Land and Water Development in the Indus Plain[l]. We hoped our
recommendations would be considered sympathetically and debated fully,
that our sound suggestions would be adopted and our unsound ones
forgiven. All this has been granted us, and more. The months since the
Panel's report was prepared have been eventful for the economic
development of West Pakistan. It is hard to cast our minds back to the
gloom that filled the atmosphere when the Panel was convened. Food
production had been stagnant for the past several years, sem and thur
were spreading through the most productive portions of the Plain,
expensive efforts to control these twin menaces had been baffled. WAPDA
knew, of course, that in principle tubswells could do the job, but there
were more failures to report than successes
