Follow the river
IT is election season — political parties and pressure groups will resort to anything, stoop to any level, to make their opponents look bad, basically to prevent themselves from looking worse. Blaming opponents for one’s own lack of performance does not appeal at the emotional level, however, hence nothing like an extra topping of parochialism.
Just as when the country has nothing to show in terms of development and management of its water resources, it is always the neighbouring upper riparian country, the arch foe, the devil incarnate, who is blamed for ‘stopping’ our share of water. On the flip side, when the country gets inundated with floods, it is never our lack of disaster risk management, early warning systems, or the worsening ecology in which glaciers are melting faster than you can say freeze. The floods, too, are a conspiracy of the upper riparian. Since it shivers in fear of our ‘strategic assets’, the ‘cowardly enemy’ unleashes the fury of surplus water on us.
To go by our leaders, everyone and no one is to blame.
The same warped theory is employed by lower riparian provinces against the upper riparian within the country’s water system. The other day, the ever entertaining Nisar Khuhro of Sindh’s ruling PPP held a press conference in Hyderabad to thunder against Punjab, which he alleged is stealing Sindh’s share of water under the 1991 water accord. He warned the upper riparian to mend its ways or else Sindh’s farmers would block traffic going through the province towards Punjab and also hold a protest in Islamabad.
Being a small, tail-end stakeholder in Sindh’s irrigation system, one would welcome every drop of water in our parched canals and watercourses at this time of year. However, we cannot allow the elected representatives to insult our intelligence by passing the entire blame for Sindh’s water woes on to Punjab. Can anyone point out when and how it stopped Sindh from undertaking water sector reforms? Is it Punjab that dictates to Sindh’s large landholders to use their political and administrative muscle to divert smallholder and tail-enders’ share of water?
The law governing the Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority was passed in 1997, yet the Sindh Irrigation Department still exists in parallel to Sida. Why could only three area water boards be established in 21 years, when 14 were envisaged in 10 years’ time to manage the irrigation water in a participatory manner? Why has the number of farmer organisations, who were to be given the management of irrigation water at the distributary level, not risen beyond 300 or so, and why has that number remained static since 2009? Was it the federal entity called the Indus River System Authority or the Punjab government who did not allow Sindh to develop and manage its water resources? Do question Irsa if it runs Taunsa and Chashma link canals without surplus water availability, but also address the equity question within the province regarding the water that does reach Sindh.
While we are at it, would anyone in the provincial administration care to enlighten us as to how many thousands of acres in Sindh have been shifted to a high efficiency irrigation system using the drip method that provides water direct to crops’ roots, saves inputs like fertiliser and pesticides, and increases yield manifold? Or are we still tethered to flood irrigation, where most of the water goes to waste because the small farmer has no voice and the large holders can steal water, get bigger outlets, special allocations and have loans written off.
In only March this year, the Balochistan Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Sindh stop stealing its share of water. Neither was it the first time that Bolan had this complaint against Mehran. There was also some noise at the PPP presser that, while Sindh was faced with an acute shortage, water at Mangla reservoir was being used to generate electricity. Remember the fracas some time ago, when the federal ministry of water and power asked K-Electric to not rely heavily on cheaper hydropower from the national grid, and run its thermal power plants, which were sitting idle in breach of the privatisation agreement? At that time, it was a conspiracy against Sindh to deprive it of hydropower.
To be fair to Sindh, the rest of the country also needs to understand that the flow of fresh water downstream Kotri into the Indian Ocean is not a waste at all. It is an absolute necessity to keep the mangrove forests alive, our best bet against sea intrusion.
If we allow everything to become a zero-sum game, very soon we will have districts competing with provinces for water, and cities protesting against rural areas, claiming that people in villages have the audacity to water their crops while people in Karachi lack drinking water. Winning an election is important, but not by misleading the electorate.
The writer is a poet and analyst.
Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2018