Babarloi Sit-Ins and the Struggle for Sindh’s Autonomy

The Babarloi canal sit-ins are seen by some as desperation, by others as dominance. It reflects on how water projects are used by the Centre to assert power, yet with the same stroke, it also reveals the erosion of Sindh’s provincial autonomy alongside the fragility of federalism in Pakistan. There is a Sindhi proverb, ‘Ander bud, bahar aatan un jo’, which translates to ‘What is inside (hidden) eventually comes out in one’s actions/words.’ This criticism of hypocrisy and false appearances, as reflected in the proverb, is what is enabling the sit-ins. The Centre is adamant on presenting the project as a hallmark of development, but in reality, the scheme is being seen as yet another tool of exploitation. 

Retrospectively, in 1991, the Water Appointment Accord (WAA) allocated Indus waters among provinces: Punjab: 55.94 MAF, Sindh: 48.76 MAF, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: 5.78 MAF, Balochistan: 3.87 MAF. Crucially, it mandated that no unilateral water projects should harm downstream (lower riparian) provinces like Sindh. Over the years, Sindh has repeatedly claimed that Punjab often breaks the Accord by taking more water than it should, building canals like Chashma-Jhelum and Taunsa-Panjnad without Sindh’s agreement, reducing water flow, and harming the ecosystems downstream. The brunt of this is faced by Sindh in the face of environmental damage to the Indus Delta, aquifer salinity, declining agricultural yields, mass livelihood losses, etc.

Green Pakistan Initiative

In April 2025, a series of sit-ins began at Babarloi Bypass near Sukkur opposing the federal Green Pakistan Initiative, which planned the construction of six new canals on the Indus for corporate farming. While this appears as a significant initiative towards progression, the protesters cited threats to Sindh’s water share, ecological degradation of the Indus Delta, as well as violations of the 1991 Accord. Both sides argue their case, but the real issue lies in the escalation and its enormous impact. The issue lies in the use of water as a tool for central dominance. Under the guise of ‘initiative’, the government’s tendency to centralise infrastructural decisions without provincial consultation is not only extractive but highly parasitic as well.

The disproportionate benefits that Punjab’s agrarian elite derive from this issue remain unaddressed. It is a matter of deepening resource inequities. Sindh sees it as a threat to its autonomy and survival, especially when the WAA and IRSA are ignored. The general public is viewing it as localised protests about canal construction, but it needs to be realised that this is, instead, the surface expression of a deeper and more frequent fault line in Pakistan’s federalism. The issue revolves around the control of vital resources, particularly water.

Additionally, a particularly striking feature of the Babarloi protests was the involvement of lawyers, civil society, and nationalist groups, rather than solely traditional political parties. Their mobilisation directly shows that federal overreach has activated newer forms of political resistance that are more rooted in civil institutions than party patronage. The lawyers’ boycott of courts and sustained sit-ins also shifted the balance of negotiation, aptly forcing the state to respond. All in all, this event highlights an important discussion on how professional groups can act as guardians of provincial autonomy when political channels prove inadequate or dull.

Not only that, but it also signified how Pakistan’s Federalism is more procedural than substantive, which connotes that institutions like the CCI are reactive and convene only when a crisis explodes into major street power. Quite literally, true federalism requires preventive consultation. not some post-facto firefighting. In this sense, the Babarloi case shows a pattern: the Centre pushes projects unilaterally, provinces resist, a deadlock ensues, and concessions are extracted only after disruption. This cycle corrodes trust and normalises confrontation rather than cooperation. At the Centre, such an environment is not a good look. 

Eminently, at an allegorical level, the sit-ins echo a form of resource nationalism at the provincial scale, too. Just as nations resist external control over oil or gas, similarly, Sindh resists what it perceives as Punjab’s monopolisation of water. The slogan ‘Sindhu taan Sindhi aahe’ (Sindhu is Sindhi) reveals how resource struggles have become enmeshed with identity politics.

Such resistance carries both a defensive strength in the form of cultural resilience and a danger that comes forth as the hardening of provincial identities into antagonistic nationalisms. The Babarloi sit-ins are more than a protest because they are a symptom of Pakistan’s federal malaise, and if unresolved, such disputes pose a risk of perpetuating deepening fissures in the federation. Amid Pakistan’s ongoing crises, deepening federal fissures are the last thing the country can afford.