Nandipur should not be treated as another power-sector embarrassment to be filed away under "lessons learned." It is part of a wider failure: a state that can announce large projects, negotiate contracts, arrange financing and stage ceremonies, but repeatedly fails at the one task that matters most - execution. The same weakness runs through Nandipur and Neelum-Jhelum. One was a thermal power project delayed by administrative paralysis and then damaged by hurried revival. The other was a flagship hydropower project that took far longer than planned, cost far more than originally envisaged and then suffered serious tunnel problems after commissioning. Different technologies, different sites, same disease.

Nandipur was supposed to add urgently needed electricity to the grid. It had approvals, a contractor and financing arrangements. What it did not have was timely decision-making. A required legal opinion for financing was not issued for years. The consequences were predictable: cost escalation, contractor claims, remobilisation costs, financing costs and lost generation. This was not an earthquake, a war or a global commodity shock. It was a file stuck inside government. That is what makes Nandipur so damaging. A power project can fail at site because of poor engineering. Nandipur began failing in Islamabad, inside the machinery of clearance, vetting and inter-ministerial hesitation. In this case, a file became more expensive than a faulty turbine.

The legal and administrative machinery bears principal responsibility for the early delay. But the sponsoring power-sector authorities cannot be treated as innocent bystanders. If a nationally important project remains stuck for months, the matter should be escalated immediately. If it remains stuck for years, the failure is no longer procedural; it is institutional negligence. In Pakistan, however, delay is nobody's property. Files move, reminders are sent, meetings are held and everyone behaves as if activity is the same thing as decision. Then came the second failure: revival without discipline. Once Nandipur was restarted, it became a symbol of quick delivery. That created pressure to show generation before the project had fully achieved technical and commercial readiness. At one stage, power was produced at an extremely high cost because the plant was run on an unsuitable interim fuel. That was not project management. It was optics dressed up as delivery.

Neelum-Jhelum tells us what happens when a flagship project is delivered late at enormous cost, and then cannot deliver reliable output because underlying engineering and........

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