WATER resource management has always been a difficult task for a water-scarce province, like Balochistan. The recent drought made this subject tougher to handle.

The provincial capital Quetta and its adjoining areas present the worst case of managing the available water resources. Ground water exploitation has taken place at a very fast pace in this area due to the availability of electricity and good quality of water. Uncontrolled development in this regard is increasing the stress on available ground water resources. This over exploitation of meagre water resources is also drastically decreasing the ground water recharge. Unfortunately the public and authorities remained indifferent in recognizing the extent of this problem and it’s aftereffects.

Agricultural land had been irrigated through traditional means of “Karez” for centuries in Balochistan. These ways complemented water recharge in natural reservoirs and kept the water table intact. However, with the advent of diesel engines and electricity, tubewells replaced the traditional irrigating methods. Quetta also underwent the same metamorphosis.

Tubewell irrigation began in early 70’s in and around Quetta. During the last two decades hundreds of tubewells kept pumping out water, changing the barren outskirts of Quetta into green orchards. But no one bothered to take into account the future cost that was to occur. Farmers, today, watch their 20-year-long investments going in drain, as tubewells are rapidly going dry with the depleting water table.

On the outskirts of Quetta, Hanna Lake, a few months ago, told the sad but true story of water shortage in and around the city. The lake that once used to be a full water reservoir, stood empty with wide mud-cracks.

It was astonishing to hear about a French geological expedition that visited Quetta somewhere in early 1900s, in a discussion of concerned citizens deliberating on the same issue. According to them the French team had warned that in the following 50 years Quetta Valley could drown in water because of an ever increasing water table. The first impression, after hearing this, from anyone, keeping in view the present conditions, would have been a negative head-shake in disbelieve. The credibility of this information is doubted but things must have been far better and manageable than they appear to be now. However, the British did warn city dwellers against using water for extensive agricultural and farming purposes.

The government, to control over exploitation of water, had applied distance restrictions on tubewell installation. Unfortunately it has been unsuccessful in enforcing the said rule. According to reliable information there exist more than 10 tubewells in under 0.5 square kilometres in the city. In most cases every neighborhood has opted for installing a tubewell. This runs very much contrary to water conservation ideas.

The bad state of affairs, today, is also attributed to the flawed official policies regarding water resource management in the provincial capital. Recharge dams were supposed to be built a few years ago for controlling the continued water table depletion, unfortunately this could not be materialized. Instead more tubewells were dug.

According to the agricultural statistics of Balochistan 1998-1999 the total number of tubewells in the province was 22,456. This included 20,346 in the private sector and 2,110 in the public sector. Building recharge dams was the perfect idea had it been carried out. Dams on four sides of the city could have improved the devastating situation. No logical reasons were given when the project was discarded. Water experts have rightly suggested the provincial government to put domestic water supply on the priority list in a report published last year. They also endorsed the idea to heavily tax those who use pumped water to grow orchards or farms. And supported arrangements for the supply of treated sewage water for agricultural use.

Today we are clear that the city is running short of water supplies. And water conservation, now, needs to be our top priority. A collective will is required by the authorities and the public to understand this problem and act wisely. Keeping the short and hard to manage resources it is true that orchard growing in and around Quetta now onwards would be a luxury that few could afford.

IT may be semantic nit-picking but the New Zealand tour was not called off. The tour had proceeded without a hitch and the three One-day Internationals had been played as well as one Test match. It was just the last match that was abandoned for reasons that had nothing to do with cricket.

It is imperative that it is understood that the New Zealand team was not the target if they were in any danger because of blast, so too was the Pakistan team who were staying in the same hotel. There is no denying that it must have been traumatising and cancelling the Test match was the most obvious course of action, players of both teams being in no mental frame of mind to play.

There is much pessimistic talk that the future of Pakistan cricket has been put in jeopardy and no foreign team is likely to tour Pakistan in the near future. Particularly at risk is Australia’s tour. If Pakistan is a high risk country, so too is every other country in the world. We are living in extremely dangerous times.

Unlike the IRA and the Tamil Tigers which can be described as vertical terrorism, the terrorism against which a war is being waged, is horizontal. It knows no frontiers, no boundaries. There are no obvious targets. Who, in his wildest imagination, could have foretold the attack on the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon? Or, for that matter, what happened at the Sheraton Hotel, in Karachi?

International terrorism must come in the same category as a natural disaster. This is the case that the PCB must place before the Australian Cricket Board. Whatever is humanly possible to provide security to the Australian team will be done, as it was, in the case of the New Zealand team. Can the United Cricket Board of South Africa give a water-tight guarantee that terrorists will not strike during one of the matches of the World Cup 2003? Of course, it can’t.

International media, particularly television channels, have done a loathsome job in projecting Pakistan as a volatile country. Pakistan’s law and order situation may not be as good as we would want it to be but life goes on as it does in other countries which are as safe or as dangerous. Let me just add here that as far back as 1974, when I was manager of the Pakistan touring England, we twice had to evacuate our hotel rooms because of bomb threats. The IRA was pretty active in those days. The thought of abandoning the tour never crossed our mind. These bomb threats were real.

I think there is a need to be level-headed. At the time of the bomb blast, a certain amount of hysteria was perfectly understandable as it is understandable that the New Zealand players should feel traumatised though I must say that the Pakistan players who too were “five minutes away from death”, (Stephen Fleming’s words) seem to have steadied their nerves.

The West Indies are concerned with the form of Brian Lara but the Indians should be concerned with the form of Sachin Tendulkar. At the start of the series, there was much hype about the series deciding who was the greater batsman. But cricket is a great leveller. As in the case of Inzamamul Haq who too went through a wretched lean patch and bounced back with a triple century, I am sure that both Lara and Tendulkar will soon shrug off this lean patch and runs will start flowing from their bats. Presently, they are proving that, like the rest of us, they are mere mortals. And a good thing too because cricket is a team game and no individual is bigger than the game. But what you lose of the swing, you gain on the roundabout.

Tendulkar’s failure have placed a greater responsibility on the other Indian batsmen and Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Vangipurappu Laxman are coming through and as a bonus so too is Ratra with a superb hundred.

For the West Indies, Carl Hooper and Shivnarine Chanderpaul seem to be in top form while Ramnaresh Sarwan continues to bat with great fluency but seems to lose his concentration just when it seems that he is set for the big one.

Sri Lanka will find the going tough since they are touring in the first half of the summer when it is cold and wet and the ball seams about. Without Muttiah Muralitharan, they are half the team.

England have chosen to go backwards and have recalled Alec Stewart and John Crawley and Sri Lanka on its part have included that old war horse Aravinda de Silva. Strange that I should call him an old war horse since I first saw him play as a teenager and I still remember him hooking Imran Khan for a six at Faisalabad. I was doing the commentary and was momentarily speechless.

The recall of these ‘veterans’ is an admission that there is a lot of difference between Test cricket and the one-day game. In Test cricket, the premium is on experience.

Sir Vivian Richards was a part of the commentary team for the Antigua Test match. I think it would be fair to say that he was a better batsman than he is a commentator. But he is still capable of being outrageous. He was asked by Harsha Bhogle (with great reverence) why he (Richards) did not wear a helmet. He said that he liked to chomp on his chewing gum and the helmet interfered with that.

“You have to be comfortable when you are batting,” he said. What an advertisement for chewing gum. He could have made a fortune from Wrigley’s.

Viv is also somewhat guarded in his comments. He would have liked to say more about Hooper’s decision to put India in after winning the toss. Hooper probably thinks he still has Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose in his team.

Star Sports interviewed Wasim Jaffer and the interview ended up as a coaching lesson by Geoff Boycott. The young batsman had played a jewel of an innings. It seemed singularly inappropriate to be telling what he was doing wrong.