ISLAMABAD: In the village of Shah Allah Ditta, on the outskirts of the capital, there is small thicket of Banyan trees. Locals say the trees were planted to provide shade to travelers who passed through the area.

Sustaining the trees is an old rain-fed pond. A relic of an era when catchment areas were considered the life blood of communities such as this small village, this water source has long since fallen into disuse.

This particular type of reservoir is not unique to Shah Allah Ditta. Such natural catchments are a common sight across the Potohar plateau.

“Our ancestors lived in harmony with nature; they harnessed it. This used to be a source of clean drinking water for the whole village, but now people dump sewage and rubbish here,” said a health department official, who is posted in the village.

As a water crisis looms and food prices skyrocket, the city’s planners need to revisit old-school farming techniques

On the other side of the village, another such pond has been turned into a public parking lot, and of the majestic Banyans that once shaded it, only two are left.

Locals and officials agree that the main issue is a complete lack of interest from the authorities, who do not prioritise the development of rainwater catchment areas, which are essential for the replenishment of that region’s groundwater table.

Dire straits

Scientists and researchers have repeatedly warned that Pakistan may already be suffering from an acute water shortage, and Islamabad is no exception.

A recent report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revealed that Pakistan is the most water-intensive economy in the world, but the annual water availability (per capita) is 1,017 cubic metres; a whisker away from the scarcity threshold of 1,000 cubic metres.

In July, there was outrage in the Senate when members were told that private water tankers were selling water from the Capital Development Authority’s (CDA) own hydrants.

CDA Chairman Maroof Afzal told lawmakers that while Islamabad requires 140 million gallons of water daily, only 65 million gallons daily was available to the city. “On average, each resident of the federal capital uses 60 gallons (227 litres) of water a day,” he said.

Official apathy

The lack of official interest does not stem from a lack of concerned departments; Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) has a full-fledged department tasked with promoting food production in the capital, but their work limited is to certain areas only.

Incidentally, among the various departments in the ICT Agriculture Directorate, the Department of Fisheries is actually larger than the Food Department or even the Water Management Department.

The only mandate of the fisheries directorate is issuing angling permits for Rawal Lake and Simly Dam. They do not even maintain record of the varieties of fish in the lake or their approximate number.

The CDA does not seem interested in promoting food crops and the ICT administration has not taken any conservational initiatives to support agriculture and livestock, despite the fact that there are six separate wings under the Directorate of Agriculture that deal with such matters.

“The best example of the authorities’ lack of interest in agriculture is the move to convert the research fields of the National Agriculture Research Centre (NARC) into a high end residential and commercial area,” said NARC spokesperson Sardar Mustafa.

The premier agricultural research body in the country, the NARC was shocked to discover that its sprawling agricultural lands – which account for a sizeable chunk of all the small-scale cultivation that is currently underway in the capital – were on the anvil, to be converted into housing societies and commercial areas.

The agriculture department’s main role is to develop a liaison with farmers in Islamabad and help them modernise, while the soil conservation department provides heavy machinery to farmers at subsidised rates for the levelling of fields and to encourage step, or terrace farming.

“The best solution to promote agriculture is to facilitate modernisation and mechanisation,” said an official from the agriculture department. “Advanced countries are now working on growing plants vertically, but our farmers are still sticking to traditional methods.”

Farmland to farmhouses

The provision to maintain farmland also exists in the original master plan for the capital, but despite this, prime cultivable land has been sold off to real estate developers. There are farm houses and orchids schemes on the outskirts of the city, but these have been bought by the wealthy and converted into farmhouses where actual agricultural activity rarely takes place.

The capital’s planners not only foresaw the need for agro farms and orchids near the urban areas, but also accounted for dairy and sheep-rearing farms to cater to the needs of the growing city and designated locations along Lehtrar Road and Kahuta Road.

However, like most of the other works the CDA is ignorant of its responsibilities in this regard too.

“There was some movement on this when former chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary took up this issue, but nothing really happened after those hearings,” a CDA official said.

Officially, two departments of the Planning Wing – the Building Control Directorate and the Directorate of Regional Planning – are responsible for ensuring that agro-farms are not turned into luxurious farmhouses.

In addition, the Regional Planning director should be keeping a record of farm produce from these agro-schemes, including the number of farm animals raised there and the total milk production.

“The average size of an agro-farm and orchid is about 20 kanals, and there are also 100-kanal farms for goat and sheep-rearing,” said an official of the planning wing. “But the ground reality is that only influential people, such as politicians, the friends and family members of bureaucrats and army personnel and even judges are living in these villa-like farmhouses.”

If 1,000 such farms became operational, officials believe that Islamabad could become self-sufficient in meeting the food requirements of its citizens and the bulk of seasonal vegetables could be grown within city limits.

Even CDA spokesperson Ramzan Sajid admitted that due to the rising demand for residential units, there were around 54 legitimate housing schemes that were currently under development in Islamabad. This is apart from the various other schemes, launched by the CDA itself, such as the 1,750-kanal Park Enclave.

Officials acknowledged that there were a number of unauthorised housing schemes that continued to thrive in city, which were developed on land originally intended for cultivation.

Safety in numbers

According to the ICT administration’s statistics, rural Islamabad has 231,826 acres of arable land, of which 119,274 acres is cultivated and 27,149 acres is designated as forest area.

Islamabad annually produces some 22,000 tonnes of wheat, grown over 32,123 acres, while other minor crops such as maize and seasonal vegetables are also grown.

“Small red grapes that are sold by roadside vendors are all produced locally,” said Mohammad Ghufran, deputy director of the ICT Agriculture Department.

However, getting all three relevant departments – the ICT administration, CDA and the NARC – under one roof is a difficult task, because all of them fall under different ministries and getting permissions for such a venture might take too long.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2015

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