The present essay started with two observations during my visit to Iran twenty five years ago. On my way from Multan to Quetta I saw that the raised railway track and elevated level of the road had created a trough which was blocked at intervals due to the roads that were crossing them. Water had collected in the trough due to rains as a natural storage. It occurred to me that if we were to invest in management and organization, we could either use the trough as a drain to carry a canal along with the road and rail, or make use of the ponds that had been made accidentally to exploit the advantages that we had gained. No great material or financial inputs and labour would be required for this task.
The thought remained with me and perhaps because of it, I noted that the Iranians had done exactly that. Iran is if anything, more water scarce than Pakistan. Iranians addressed the issue of water scarcity in a manner which optimized utilization through management, with a minimum of inputs while greatly increasing its aesthetic value.
An important river, which has fed Isfahan for centuries, is the Ziandarud; the river of life or living river. Compared to the Indus it is a stream which may, at times, carry barely as much water as the virtually dried up Ravi. The ingenuity of the Iranians, however, has spread the river about a quarter if a mile wide. The limited water thus flows at most a couple of feet deep if left to its own device. As this would not suffice, the river has been partially dammed at several places and bridges have been built at these points. The result is a wide flow at the surface with reservoirs in between the bridged locations.
A similarly ingenuous stratagem had facilitated the growth of tall, shady trees along the footpaths. The pavements have shallow, un-lined drains in which trees have been planted. The cultured citizens of Iran do not litter the streets or drains but natural biodegradables do tend to collect in the hollow areas next to the trees. These leaves and other such matter are washed away once every few days to clear the drains by a rush of water released from the higher points of the drain. The actual quantity of water to be released is small, but in comparison with the drainage facility it creates a pressure that washes away all the clutter and simultaneously waters the trees to make their foliage thick.
It is this remarkable feat of management that allowed this water-scarce land to provide an agricultural produce for its inhabitants to sustain botanical and zoological life throughout a long, prosperous history. The Indus and Nile sponsored civilization based on floodplain agriculture, people living on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates had plenty of water for their need. Iran had to discover the art of canal irrigation and developed integrated human management to harness its limited water supply for the world’s first empire-builders.
We can manage Pakistan’s wealth of ecologies by linking development plans in different sectors with the existing infrastructure and institutional framework. Urban Development Authorities need to be coordinated; while the tehsil, district and provincial administration should make joint interprovincial plans of resource management, disaster prevention and mitigation. Areas suffering from floods and aridity should facilitate each other.
A systemic study of tiers/sectors of society, economy and governance such as agriculture, transport, forestry, water, power, electricity, silt management, soil and its replenishment, mining, water-logging, animal husbandry and fisheries should precede the planning stage. The action plan should be designed so that during completion, its functional components would remain serviceable at every stage and its benefits would accrue to the public from its components continuously during the process of construction. Previously a number of initiatives failed because they did not integrate all the relevant sectors.
Here we need to factor in the governance issues of political government on one side and bureaucratic planning procedures on the other. Supply and drainage of water needs to be addressed at grass root level of a locality or village and all the way up to the federal scale of management. Actually, with the implementation of the CEPEC, and the international climate of rivalry, the issue has now been brought into the international arena. Strategic planning must therefore be founded on a comprehensive, sustainable vision which can be managed on a national scale without over-exposing itself to the global community.
A viable national watchword is disaster management. The link of water with power was envisioned many decades ago by bureaucrats of that time. As the electricity conundrum is still a primary issue, at least for the urban Pakistani, this is the place where we can begin a new plan. As an energy scarce country with large arid regions of agriculture and animal husbandry, the government can focus on water and power, a strategic sector for industrial growth and political integration to mainstream pastoral and remote rural communities.
A three tier governance plan for management of water and power should be developed by bureaucrats and presented to the politicians for consensus during the next government of Pakistan. Since the army and judiciary, as institutions have claimed a share in ‘managing’ the strategic resources and interests of our country [the army having been active in flood control/rehabilitation in addition to other types of disaster management, has an additional stake in the issue], their representatives should also be invited to sit in as observers and commentators but not as voters on the APC: The three tiers being the locality [as small as a village or a Muhalla]; the district; and national level. Provincial, Divisional and Tehsil administration need not be directly involved in governance of these matters but political and communal concerns should be addressed to ensure equity at those levels.
The principles of water and power management should be established at a national level, master-plans of district resource management should be drawn up at that level to build a communal consensus based on ecologies and habitats, say on a five year basis; and local disaster management, water/sanitation issues and energy consumption plans should be addressed on a local scale. A slogan was once raised for ‘load sharing’ or ‘power sharing’ as a substitute for load-shedding. Perhaps a variation of the theme could be a communal ‘power allocation’ on a principle similar to rural water sharing which had to be monitored by the patwari, an office that is currently associated with land measurement.
In such a system, communities may be required to assume responsibility of consuming electricity within a budget allocated to them or be subject to load-shedding. Communities could participate in projects of local power generation according to principles laid down by national/district managements. Naturally rural and urban principles of use would vary, as would ecological constraints in rural and urban environments. Existing hydroelectric projects, dams, canals and lakes should be assessed for their potential by locality without disturbing existing drainage networks. Management of water in areas where watercourses exist today would be constructed on one principle while arid regions/deserts would need a different policy. Regions along the Indus west bank have small, seasonal watercourses along the plain and piedmont. On its east side several important rivers cover the Punjab and several drains of the Indus itself take care of irrigation in its non-desertified lands.
Beyond these are animal-husbandry regions, arid in most parts. In places that are distant from more affluent watercourses, ponds, rain-harvesting and other such measures should be used for domestic or zoological consumption. Flood management should be developed in a way that excess is utilized in arid regions with advantages of silt management also.