Bhati Dilwan, Sheikhupura: At dawn, a woman heaves an empty container onto her bicycle and heads down the cracked mud path toward a communal well. For generations, the village well in Bhati Dilwan, as in much of rural Punjab, was a lifeline. Now it lies bone-dry. She sighs, “It’s been months since a drop appeared.” Nearby, trucks from Nestlé’s bottling plant rumble as workers tap water from deep below.
Villagers here watched in 2013 as Nestlé opened a factory on land just outside the village, atop a rich deposit of groundwater. Since then, locals say, the ancient aquifer has been drained and children have fallen ill. “Our well was our bank,” says one villager, “now we only have its ruin and bottled water we can’t afford.”
“A hand-dug well in Dera Ghazi Khan district, Punjab, Pakistan.”
Nestlé’s arrival in Pakistan was no accident. In the late 1990s, the Swiss multinational targeted Pakistan for its global water strategy, launching its “Pure Life” bottled water brand there in 1998. The company strategically built its plants over Punjab’s deep Indus Basin aquifer, one of the world’s most stressed underground water systems.
In Bhati Dilwan and elsewhere in Sheikhupura, two Nestlé plants now sit atop this aquifer, pumping millions of litres daily. In 2013, villagers even staged protests outside the Nestlé factory, accusing it of “depleting our ancient groundwater”. The company placated them temporarily by installing a small filter unit for local water, but critics note this skirted the real issue — the aquifer itself was sinking by “hundreds of feet” under unregulated pumping.
In much of Pakistan, groundwater use has historically been virtually free. Under the colonial-era Easements Act of 1892 (still on the books), a landowner is entitled to “collect and dispose… of all water under the land”. In other words, if Nestlé owns the land, it legally owns whatever water lies beneath. Indeed, a government concession granted Nestlé the right to build factories on a tract above a major well near Bhati Dilwan.
By law, Nestlé then gained “ownership rights” to that portion of the well — effectively “the right to drill and extract water until the well is dry”. In practice, this meant Nestlé paid almost nothing for billions of litres of water. A 2018 forensic audit revealed that from 2013 to 2017, Nestlé Pakistan extracted 4.43 billion litres of groundwater from nine wells at its three plants (Islamabad, Karachi, and Sheikhupura) while “virtually paying no amount” to the government for it. The company did pay a token land lease (even that was rent-free), but the water itself was free for the taking. Meanwhile, at Pakistan’s first-ever Supreme Court hearing on bottled water, the Chief Justice scolded industry executives: bottled water companies were selling water after extracting it “almost for free”.
“A rural hand-operated water pump in Sindh, Pakistan.”
The Imbalance of Price and Value is stark. Nestlé’s drillers pay a pittance for raw water; the audit found the company is charged only about Rs 0.00021 per litre (≈USD 0.0000016), yet they bottle it as “Pure Life” and sell it in stores for Rs 40–90 per litre. In other words, rural villagers pay thousands of times more per litre than Nestlé does to pump it out. (For comparison, in Switzerland, Nestlé pays for almost all its water withdrawals).
In a 2023 interview, Nestlé Pakistan’s CEO acknowledged public disquiet and said the company complied with “all regulatory obligations”, but offered little detail on water fees. Independent observers note that Pakistan has no effective law charging industrial users for water, despite urgent water stress.
At the same time, Nestlé’s marketing amplified urban anxieties about water safety. The “Pure Life” brand was advertised as pure, modern and healthy, implicitly contrasting with unsafe tap water. Critics pointed out that Nestlé actively promoted its product as a “healthier replacement for tap water”.
In effect, ordinary groundwater was being repackaged and sold as a luxury commodity, “not affordable for the people in need of safe and clean drinking water”. This resonated in Pakistan’s growing cities, where residents were already wary of municipal water quality. Even Nestlé’s own statements hinted at this dynamic: in a 2005 press release, the company rebutted criticism by noting that its water was sold as a safe alternative to unknown piped sources “at prices many cannot afford”. (Nestlé’s internal reports from the period, later leaked, counselled that any price hikes must be limited lest they trigger political backlash.
For ordinary people far from the factories, the effects have been severe. In Bhati Dilwan and similar villages, women and girls now hike several kilometres to fetch water from streams or hand pumps. A local health worker reports rising cases of fatigue and dehydration among villagers since the Nestlé plant began operation. “We worry for our kids,” one mother says.
By 2018, the Supreme Court and media scrutiny forced the issue of “water justice” onto the national agenda. The court highlighted that while Nestlé and other bottlers make millions, they “pay virtually nothing” for what is essentially a public resource. Civil society activists have echoed the legal principle from an earlier case: as one Pakistani court ruled in 2005, groundwater is “a gift of nature… a public trust” that must be “made freely available to everyone”. In other words, water cannot be privately hoarded or commodified without regard to communities’ rights.
Pakistan’s regulatory framework is catching up slowly. In 2019, the Punjab government passed a new Water Act to license all groundwater use and form a Water Resources Commission. In a landmark supplemental order the same year, the then Chief Justice mandated that bottled water companies begin paying a token per-litre surcharge on their extractions. But key provisions are not yet implemented: five years later, the Punjab Commission still has not been set up, and volumetric pricing rules remain only on paper. Even so, Nestlé has quietly started remitting a few paise per litre under court order, a fraction of its total margin. Observers worry this may be a token gesture. “We are tired of promises,” says a water rights campaigner.
The Nestlé saga in Pakistan thus lays bare a paradox: water, a fundamental human need, has been transformed by marketing into a luxury good for those who can afford it. It raises hard questions of corporate accountability and public trust. What recourse do impoverished villagers have when their wells run dry? At stake is the very notion of water governance. Experts argue Pakistan must enforce the public trust doctrine in practice, for example, by legally declaring groundwater a state resource and charging realistic prices to all users.
Moving forward, the country’s courts and policymakers face a choice. Will Nestlé and others continue to pump and profit under outdated rules, or will stronger oversight ensure that water extraction is sustainable and equitable? The Punjab Act provides a roadmap, but requires political will and monitoring. Public trust demands not only pen-and-paper reforms but genuine enforcement so that villages like Bhati Dilwan are not left parched, and children need not fear drinking from their own taps. As Pakistan’s water crisis deepens, the Nestlé case is a clarion call: without urgent action, access to water, already scarce, risks becoming a privilege rather than a right.The paradox of Nestlé’s Pure Life is that it claims to provide health and safety, yet it thrives on a system that leaves the vulnerable more exposed. What was once a shared, free-flowing resource has been bottled, branded and priced beyond reach for many of those living right above the aquifer. Villagers like those in Bhati Dilwan know this paradox intimately; their wells lie empty, while trucks carry away water labelled with a promise of purity.
As Pakistan edges deeper into its water crisis, the debate is no longer only about one company or one brand. It is about how the country defines ownership of its most basic needs. Will water remain a common good protected under the public trust, or will it continue to be packaged as a luxury? The answer will shape not only consumer choices but also the survival of communities across Punjab and beyond. Without firm regulation and public accountability, Pakistan risks allowing its aquifers to be drained twice, once by pipes and drills, and again by silence.