New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 2 - Spring 2015 | Page 50

Water Disputes between Punjab and Sindh: A Challenge to Pakistan

inequality in Pakistan, all of the state’s resources are effectively placed at disposal
of the landed elite. If the poor want to save themselves or access these resources,
they could only do so through feudal in their district. The system in Pakistan, at
the best times, is based on political patronage (Shah 2011).

Development of Irrigation System

B

oth Punjab and Sindh have a good network of river system, which had been
exploited by the rulers to encourage agriculture in the region and increase their
revenues out of such activity. Mainly, during the Mughal period (1526–1857),
the canals were built in both provinces for irrigation of agricultural land. During this
period in Punjab proper, a small system of canals was brought into existence in the
Upper Bari Doab. The best known of these was the “Shahnahr”, excavated in the reign
of Shahjahan. It took off from the Ravi at Rajpur (or Shahpur) close to the hills and
carried water up to Lahor (Lahore)—a distance of about 37 kurohs, or 84 miles (Habib
2014, 37). In Sindh, in 1628–1629, a local zamindar (landlord), Mir Abra, cut a canal
from the Indus into the waterless country of Northern Sindh, enabling kharif crops
to be raised in an area of 100,000 jaribs (bighas), besides the rabi crops. Then the long
Begar Wah in Upper Sindh, its very name signifying a canal excavated with forced
labour (begar), and the Nulakhi in Naushahro Division, are supposed to have been dug
before the beginning of the sixteenth century (ibid 38).

The real development in irrigation system in both provinces began during the
imperial rule. After the British annexation of two important “irrigation provinces”—
Sindh in 1842 and Punjab in 1849—hundreds of inundation canals which had served the
valleys of the Indus and its tributaries for millennia came now under the management
of the Public Works Department (Whitcombe 1983). In Punjab, plans were first
completed for irrigation of East Punjab, and later in the valley of the Sutlej and the
Indus itself. Projects were constructed (and in part renovated from pre-British works)
for a total capital cost of barely Rs 200,000 in the districts of Multan and Montgomery,
respectively, between 1886 and 1888. Within 10 years of these first experiments, the
pace of canal colonization was greatly accelerated by the construction of the Lower
Chenab Canal at a capital cost of Rs 900,000, and the development of colonial settlement
in its command area (already, by 1899–1900, close on 1 million acres) over the years
1892–1905 (ibid). The transformation of 6 million acres of desert into one of the richest
agricultural regions in Asia was seen as stupendous engineering feat that was seen as
colonial government biggest achievement (Talbot 2007). The farmers were encouraged
to grow “cash crops” instead of food grains (Surinder 2004,365-387) which was a reason
for intermittent famines and starvation deaths in India, including in water-rich areas.

The building of canals was also related to the political imperatives of state
building in the Indus Basin region. For the British, as much as for earlier Indus Basin
states, the link between canal building, agricultural settlement, and political control
was central to the construction of state power (Gilmartin 1994). Sir Charles Aitchison
maintained: “It is of greatest importance to secure for these tracts manly peasantry
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