There is something fundamentally dysfunctional about how we have known and imagined water under modernity. Colonial knowledge systems have been deeply intertwined with the project of modernity. Term like, cubic meters, average flows, parts per million of pollutants, hydraulic gradient among others, form the foundational vocabulary for knowing and interacting with water, waterways, rivers and springs across spatial scales. A decolonial imaginary and practice would incorporate the different ways of knowing and living with water, in addition to, and not necessarily instead of the colonial (scientific?) tropes that have imprisoned hydro-social imaginaries. Water has been thought of as a resource or a hazard within colonial water imaginaries. A decolonised praxis would emphasise the experience of water as variegated lens through which to know and live with water. Drawing upon the examples of 2022 floods in Pakistan, and the case of mountain springs in the post-conflict Swat valley of northern Pakistan, I make the case for a decolonial praxis of water, that may usher in a more gender and class inclusive experience to water from national to local scales. Water as an instrument of producing a national scale of water management is the real villain of the decolonising agenda in water. Re-enchantment of local waterscapes and re-democratization of hydro-social praxis is our best hope in negotiating a climate change present.
