Water-logging, salinity threaten to destroy chief minister's home district
Mahadev Kirshan
The northern or upper districts of Sindh, including Ghotki, Kahirpur, Larkana, Jacobabad and Shikarpur were once hubs of agricultural products and cash crops, such as cotton, rice and fruits. The date palm of district Khairpur, the rice production of Larkana, Jacobabad and Shikarpur, and the cotton production of district Ghotki, once contributed a major portion of national agriculture production. For the past few decades, however, the reducing water flows in the Indus River, and the increasing prices of agriculture input, such as seed, fertilizers and fuel, have badly affected these agriculture-rich districts of Sindh.
Beside water scarcity for irrigation,
water-logging and salinity have emerged as ìtwin menacesî in these districts, and have damaged millions of hectares of farmland in the past few decades. Incidentally, Khairpur Mirs, the home district of Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, is the worst-affected of the lot.
This former princely state of the Talpur Mirs (the Ameers of the state)
is now a picture of massive destruction, wrought by water-logging and salinity.
Khairpur Mirs was once peaceful with vast, scattered farmlands. The rich agricultural land and weather pattern made bananas and date palms grow in the same field. Quality date palms from this district are still exported to major markets such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Denmark, Nepal, Germany, South Africa, US, Australia and Canada. Official data reveals that Khairpur Mirs exported dates worth US$38.8 million in 2008.
In recent years, however, salinity has started flooding these vast scattered date-palm orchards.
The local residents fear that if the situation continues, the date-palm orchards will be completely destroyed. The ratio of salinity flooding to soil surface doubles in the winter.
Water-logging and salinity, however, is not a new phenomenon in Pakistan. It began in the British era, after the then government constructed controlled irrigation systems in the Indus plain, and the groundwater table started to rise steadily.
In the 1950s, when water-logging and salinity were reported for the first time in some districts of Punjab, the government took serious notice. In the early 1960s, the Salinity Control and Reclamation Project (SCARP) was initiated under WAPDA with the help of the World Bank. Under the SCARP project, the federal government started installing SCARP public tubewell services in different districts of Sindh and Punjab
to suction salinity and drain out saline water from these tubewells. Surface drain disposal systems and outfall drains were introduced.
With the passage of time, however,
the governmentís lack of interest and bureaucratic corruption has proved that these tubewells and surface drain disposal systems as a failed project. The evacuation of these surface drains was not continued for decades; thus, heavy weed infestation has completely choked these outfall drains, especially in district Khairpur Mirs. Instead of draining out salinity, these choked drains have started flooding lush green agricultural fields and vast date-palm orchards.
Besides choked drains, the tubewells have also become ineffective and individuals have assumed ownership of some of these tubewells. They, however, were unable to keep them functional.
Eventually, a majority of SCARP public tubewell services went out of order, and at many places, water suction pumps were stolen.
With the passage of time, the salinity did not remain limited to farmlands, and started pouring into villages.
According to local residents, tens of hundreds small villages in district Khairpur Mirs have become stranded underneath saline water, but the government has taken no notice whatsoever.
Tens of thousands residents of these salinity-hit villages have migrated to safer places, while the twin menaces -- water-logging and salinity -- have left them with no other option.
Over the past few years, residents of the salinity-hit villages began protesting over the worsening situation; after these protests, SCARP authorities sometimes sent evacuators, but this was rare.
In the summer, the ratio of salinity reduces, but the saline water, after drying up from the land, leaves behind large deposits of salt and minerals on the soil surface. This does not allow crops to grow on these lands.
The increasing water-logging and salinity in the district has thus not only affected date-palm orchards and villages, but underground water sources, such as hand pumps and wells, that were supposed to be sources of drinking water for human consumption, have also become polluted with saline water.
The residents of Khairpur Mirs now demand that the government take notice of this worsening situation and restore the SCARP public tubewell services. They demand immediate relief and the evacuation of surface drain disposal systems.
The writer is a social activist based in Karachi.
