THE per capita fresh water availability is seen to sink below 1000 cubic meters while nothing serious and different is likely emerge from the current water policy discourse.

Some politicians draw their political power from water. The other two forces which can play meaningful role are the media and NGOs. The former has too little information and the ‘civil society’, a more acceptable name for NGOs, hardly knows anything about the subject.

However, it must be realised that the future of economy, society and politics in coming decades would depend on better management of its key natural resource like fresh water.

Pakistan has over 41 million acres of canal-fed irrigation land ( this is more than entire Africa, including Nile-fed Egypt) and nearly 100 million acre-feet water is diverted to crop lands through 19 barrages, 43 main canals, branch canals, distributaries and minor canals and over one million watercourses.

This canal diverted water was robbed from riverine areas (area within two embankments of Indus in lower Indus basin areas of Southern Punjab and Sindh). Huge diversions also take place in upper Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with slightly different river patterns. These water diversions have had debilitating effect on the ecology and communities in the riverine and delta areas in Badin and Thatta districts, arguably the most prosperous communities in the Subcontinent in 19th and early 20th centuries.

As per Sindh government official statistics, over a million acres of precious agriculture land in these two districts have been lost to intruding sea over last few decades. These lands are now a part of sea. The ex-landowners have become fishermen, now engaged in regular battles for fishing rights on their water-submerged land areas.

These water diversions are overwhelmingly used for irrigation, up to 90 per cent, the rest is used for municipal purposes including for Karachi city (it must be put here that upstream cities also draw water from mainly Indus source all over Pakistan but water is returned to the system in the form of sewage pollution and again becomes part of system but Karachi sewage,
untreated, flows into the sea).

Hence the largest form of mismanagement of water is in irrigation which warrants a serious reform. The current proposed reform sadly is fiscal in nature and stops at ‘ending financial subsidies’. The reform must aim at environmental sustainability and ecological resuscitation.

These reforms should be in two phases as far as water as commodity is concerned. In phase one, spanning over 10-15 years, irrigation operations should be made financially viable by phasing out of irrigation subsidies. Farmers use irrigation water as intermediate good for an economic function, called farming, and there is no justification, apart from national politics, for irrigation subsidies.

The subsidy aids farmers in head command areas of canals who virtually get free water (at the vast expense of tail-end growers and the environment) and helps irrigation bureaucrats sell their otherwise un-sailable irrigation service.

When the government is the paymaster for irrigation service, rather than farmers who are users of this service, there is no rationale or incentive for ‘managers’ to improve the service.

Farmers should continue to receive irrigation water as their business of farming is essential sustenance of society but irrigation water availability (or in other words diversions from its original course and environmental function) should be minimum and must be based on the current level of technology available in 2012 rather than old paradigm of desert bloom syndrome of 1912 when irrigation system was taking root in the subcontinent.

Wastage must be discouraged through pricing mechanism, technological change and personnel reforms. The too well-served, head command area farmers would oppose this reform tooth and nail. However, they do not represent all farmers or all growers’ opinions.

The opinion of tail-end farmers would be helpful as they are certainly ready to pay market rates for irrigation, given their astronomical expense on ground water, if they are lucky enough to be based in fresh groundwater area. Challenge would be how to reach this group of farmers when political will is lukewarm, at best.

The second phase of the reform which admittedly is more radical and may come into operation after about 15 to 20 years from now would be to de-link water entitlements from land holding size. Current water entitlements are akin to a state economic policy of pledging free petrol (or diesel for that matter) matching fuel needs of the limitless buses or vehicles you could purchase! This must end in a proper timeframe.

Among all obstacles for reform, the most difficult one would be what to do with the country’s current irrigation service structure. I know many bright irrigation engineers and conscientious civil servants who opted for immigration (and may be doing odd jobs abroad) rather than be part of collapsing irrigation system (for millions of tail end farmers it collapsed many years back and is in a fast state of incremental collapse).

The current public sector managers should be offered a ‘first right of performance’ with a new management structure which brings farmers in the pivot, making them as full paying customers (in a phased manner). These managers may be paid performance bonus along with current government remunerations if customer satisfaction is achieved at a certain benchmark level.

In case the current public sector managers fail, which is more likely based on years of inaptitude and ill- training, the policy should envisage bringing pure private sector national and international irrigation service companies. A nation of nearly 200m souls (or may be soon given our birth rate efficiencies) should not be hostage to an unassailable and unsustainable irrigation and water service.

email aijazniz@gmail.com

THE per capita fresh water availability is seen to sink below 1000 cubic meters while nothing serious and different is likely emerge from the current water policy discourse.