FIGURES for wheat output in 2023 are emerging as Pakistani farmers — starting from southern and eastern Sindh — plant Kharif crops such as cotton and rice. According to the Federal Committee on Agriculture, the wheat output this year is expected to be 26.81 million tonnes against a national target of 28.4m tonnes. According to the government, the area under wheat cultivation this year is half a million acres less than last year. This agriculture data is, at best, guesswork as we still rely on manual (and bureaucratic) means to collect data for tens of millions of acres under crop cultivation. GIS imagery coupled with AI for interpretation can give more reliable data for crops and water availability and be a better guide for policymaking.

The Russia-Ukraine war has jolted the world commodity market including the market for grains; it is predicted that the current year will be even more volatile. With wheat nearly 1.5m tonnes short of the target, Pakistan’s poor would suffer devastating consequences, unless the government introduces a workable mechanism to ensure its availability.

In fact, the lack of wheat flour is a far bigger threat to the PML-N than Imran Khan. Bureaucratic measures for the poor’s welfare aren’t working as evident in the number of women who have already died at free wheat distribution centres. This is a PR disaster for the rulers, particularly the PML-N.

Farmers in Sindh are experiencing water scarcity as well as the fear of excessive rains. They face a severe irrigation water crisis — according to Irsa, there is 27 per cent less water in the Indus basin for their needs. The shortage is affecting cotton planting and rice nursery preparation in southern Sindh. Farmers are also concerned that they will once again suffer a deluge of rainwater as they did during last year’s monsoon.

There is no way out other than restoring natural waterways across Sindh.

The Sindh Development Watch organised a seminar ‘Will Sindh drown again?’ on the issue in Karachi. The seminar was a welcome development; it showed that society’s intellectuals were responding to issues like the 2022 damage wrought by the rains, and drawing policymakers’ attention for future preparedness. The answer to the question the seminar posed depends on the extent of rain Sindh receives and the volume of water from the hill torrents’ catchment area in Balochistan that drains into Sindh. If it rains as it did in 2022, sadly, Sindh will drown, as no major infrastructure rehabilitation is possible within a few months.

A most alarming piece of information was provided at the seminar by an irrigation department official who said there was no option but to allow Balochistan’s hill torrents to run the entire length of the 234-kilometre-long flood protection bund into the Manchhar Lake on the right bank before it enters the Indus. We have seen last year what havoc this drainage and rainwater alignment, originally under the Right Bank Outfall Drain, caused in K.N. Shah, Mehar and Dadu on the Indus bank. The strategy does not work and has killed dozens of people while displacing or marooning millions. It is hoped that this time international lenders and donors who pledged billions of dollars at the Geneva conference in January are more willing to listen to the affected communities than ‘professional opinion’ as the one proffered at the seminar.

Policymakers (read: politicians), who ultimately face the voting public, may want a second opinion on the rainwater’s route or the right bank alignment. As individuals, we get a second opinion on personal issues like health. In this case, the fate of millions is at stake, and policymakers should seek a second opinion rather than blindly follow ‘prescriptions’ that have not worked. Luckily, there were people from local communities as well as independent experts at the seminar who identified the natural course of drainage on the right bank side which could allow rainwater to drain into the Indus and thus save communities from havoc.

What is also important is that the Sindh chief minister is from the affected area and in a position to get firsthand information from the local people and to tell the irrigation department to come up with a logical solution. Before last year’s deluge, the chief minister had no information about the matter.

The left bank of the Indus in Sindh from Ghotki in the north all the way down to Badin is no different. The Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) project, funded by several international lenders in the mid-1990s, was meant to provide drainage to only three left bank districts of Nawabshah (Shaheed Benazirabad), Sanghar and Mirpurkhas out of 10. We saw the misery it wreaked in 2022. Sadly, LBOD, though conceived and largely operated by Wapda, is still a cash cow for the irrigation department.

There is no way out other than restoring natural waterways across Sindh. In this context, no place is more important than Badin district where the old river course of the Puran should be allowed to follow its natural path to the natural, freshwater Shakoor Lake in the Rann of Kutch. This waterway was blocked in the implementation of the LBOD project. It was and remains an environmental crime. The mantra which irrigation people provide for blocking the Puran is that India may object if Pakistan dumps its rainwater and drainage water in its territory. This is ridiculous as we see Indian Punjab’s water, both sewage and drainage, pass through our towns and terrain, running more than 2,000km with the Indus.

Finally, some good news. A Met department official told those attending the seminar that the current global climate seems to be moving from the La Niña phase to El Niño. He also said that the global weather seems to be in a neutral phase, which would mean average rainfall in Sindh and parts of Balochistan. We seem to be safe not because we have improved our water infrastructure but because nature seems more benign this time. We will wake up again when disaster strikes.

The writer is a hands-on farmer and farm entrepreneur.
aijazniz@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2023