Water for Kharif crops

Irsa has released 32,000 cusecs of additional water from the Tarbela reservoir downstream to make up for the reduction in water flow into the Indus River and its three tributaries. The decrease is from 0.5 million cusecs to about 0.3 million cusecs, largely because of 25 percent less snowfall in the catchment areas of Kabul River, says a Recorder Report. Water release from Tarbela has been made to maintain the current quantum of water supply for Kharif crops.
River Kabul, which submerges into River Indus near Attock, contributes around 50,000 cusecs to make 0.215 million cusecs of water gush downstream from Chashma Barrage towards Taunsa, Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri barrages for release into the irrigation canals of Punjab, Balochistan and Sindh.
The total water requirement of all the provinces during Kharif season, which starts from April 1, has been calculated at 71 Maf. There has been an acute shortage of water in Sindh for early Kharif crop, as in other provinces. Rabi season concluded on March 31, with low price of wheat crop in Sindh, and with no subsidy.
Sindh required 80 to 90 percent of water availability in April because the Kharif sowing in Sindh starts much earlier than in Punjab. This is also said to be one of the causes of water distribution problem between the two provinces.
Experts maintain that water management and distribution has been an important, though rather neglected, process in Pakistan, to which adequate heed has not been paid. As most of Pakistan has been categorized as arid or semi-arid zone, the Indus River system plays a vital national role to ensure sustainability of our agriculture sector.
The Indus Basin is a single, highly complex inter-connected ecosystem. The watershed irrigates 80 percent of the country's 21.5 million hectares of farmland, through a network of canals, while the other 20 percent is fed by rainfall, which is under 240mm a year.
And there is no additional water to be injected into the system. Non-availability of water in sufficient quantities is therefore the most pressing problem the country is facing today, which has hampered the growth of our agriculture sector.
Experts believe that in the Kharif season, sowing of drought-resistant crops should be undertaken for obtaining optimum crop yield to support the country's economy. Agriculture provides food and fibre for the country's growing population, as well as fodder for domestic animals and raw material for most of the industries.
It is the largest sector of Pakistan's economy, accounting for 25 percent of the country's GDP, and providing employment to about 54 percent of the labour force. Directly or indirectly, agriculture supports about 70 percent of the population, and contributes 70 percent to the foreign exchange earnings, besides meeting the needs of raw material used in domestic industry to a large extent.
Fortunately, Pakistan is endowed with valuable agricultural assets that include a fertile soil, a generally favourable climate and an elaborate irrigation network that is said to be the best in the world.
However, there are some liabilities as well, which have hampered agriculture's growth and development. These include low productivity of land caused by water-logging, salinity and soil erosion; primitive methods of cultivation; small and fragmented land holdings; conservatism and illiteracy of cultivators which makes it difficult for them to go in for modern agricultural practices.
Other liabilities are poor marketing facilities and inadequate transport facilities. All these problems need to be addressed to revitalize the country's agriculture sector. Pakistan's dependence on a single river system means that it has little of the robustness that most countries enjoy by virtue of having a multiplicity of river basins and diversity of water resources. If the water/sediment/salt system of the Indus Basin goes wrong, it may prove disastrous. There is therefore no margin for error.
Secondly, the country badly needs additional water storage capacity, as 30 maf of water flows down into the sea unutilized each year because of insufficient storage capacity. In this context, Wapda's Water Vision programme is a good initiative, the execution of which needs to be expedited.