January 13, 2003	Monday	Ziqa'ad 9, 1423

The promulgation of the Sindh Water Management Ordinance to broaden the base of the Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority (SIDA) in the province and provide for the transfer of the entire provincial irrigation system to the authority has brought yet another controversy in Sindh where 98 percent of agriculture depends upon irrigation.

By the promulgation of this law, the control of the SIDA has been extended to more canals and drought-hit areas, as well as to schemes to combat floods.

The ordinance is said to be promulgated because the previous SIDA Act of 1997 did not address some important irrigation-related issues adequately therefore desired results of the reforms could not be achieved. It has been planned that the provincial irrigation department will be scraped and the SIDA will replace it by the year 2005.

At present, the SIDA is part of the Sindh government but after enforcement of the amended ordinance, its existing structure will be changed and it will become an autonomous body, which will be free from the Sindh government’s control. The ordinance provides a legal framework for the institutional reforms in the water management in Sindh. Besides, it will be instrumental in expediting the urgently-needed reforms in the provincial irrigation and drainage sector.

Through the ordinance, the SIDA will act as a reform agent, take over the main irrigation (barrages), drainage and flood protection infrastructure, and implement participatory water management according to modern business principles. Besides, the SIDA will perform to promote the formation, growth and development of the Area Water Boards and farmers’ organizations into self-supporting and self-financing entities within a period of seven to ten years of their establishment.

It will be worthwhile to note that the prime objective of the SIDA Act of 1997, which was passed by the then Sindh assembly, was to use the existing water resources of the province more efficiently. It was declared at that time that the main reason lying behind the poor performance of the provincial irrigation system was the institutional problems. Keeping this in view, a pilot project was launched at Nara canal command area on experimental basis. It was announced on that occasion that the base of SIDA in other areas of the province would only be expanded after assessing the results of the pilot project.

The Nara Canal, an offshoot of Sukkur Barrage,is situated on the left bank of the Indus. It is about 350 Km long and has a command area of 1.5 million hectare of land through its 15 branches, 47 distributaries, 135 minors and around 60 lift irrigation in districts of Khairpur, Nawabshah, Sanghar and Mirpur Khas.

Growers of the area are of the view that since the pilot project has failed to bring significant improvement in the irrigation system of the project area therefore there seems no justification to increase the jurisdiction of the SIDA to all over Sindh. They are of the view that the failure could be judged by the fact that even the donor agency has indicated to withhold further financing of the project for its poor progress during the period of around four years.

The reasons behind the failure of diverting supply-oriented irrigation system of Sindh into demand-oriented system as recommended by the World Bank may be termed as corruption, inefficiency and agreeing to every conditionality of the donors without accepting that it might not be possible to fulfil such conditionalities in our century-old system.

There is no dearth of such examples in the history of Pakistan when foreign-funded projects met such fate, for instance Rs20 billion foreign-funded Salinity Control and Reclamation Project (SCARP) of Wapda to reclaim 5.07 million hectare land failed to achieve the desired results due to poor planning and approach, defective operation and mala fide intentions of concerned officials. Similarly, multi-billion rupees Left Bank Outfall Drainage (LBOD) project may be cited as another example which was originally planned to take the affluent water from north to south towards the sea.

Unfortunately, results of both these two foreign-funded mega projects, which were then claimed to change the fate of Sindh, have been extremely disappointing for the farming community of the province. Keeping in view these failures it is apprehended that placing the whole irrigation department under SIDA might have the same fate like other foreign-funded projects, which brought fewer benefits and more debts for a poor country of ours.

Reports emerging from Nara canal command suggest that during the past four years of pilot project, shortage of water in the canal command was a common phenomenon. It is reported that water shortages cost more than a billion rupees in the project area. Not only this but the position of recovery of water charges and other dues are also not very encouraging. In such circumstances, extension of the SIDA to the whole province without evaluating the poor results of the pilot project, leaves certain questions unanswered and is a cause of fuss among the farming community of the province.

According to the approved plan of pilot project, farmers’ organizations should have been formed by now in the project area to help in the management of the irrigation system but it is reported that only 25 per cent organizations have been established so far and most of them do not seem to be effective. Absence of any such activity of broadening the base of Provincial Irrigation and Drainage Authorities (PIDA) in other three provinces of the country is also a matter of concern for farmers of Sindh.

As a matter of fact there is nothing wrong with the concept and philosophy of the plan which is based on participatory irrigation management but unfortunately such concepts are not suited for prevailing social, political and cultural system of our society and country, where governance has remained in the hands of our feudals, bureaucrats and military. For most of the period after independence, true democracy did not prevail in our country. How can we expect democracy in farmers’ organizations as most of the chairman of FOs are selected rather then elected. Moreover all land owners are not made members of water course associations.

More often than not, these influential landlords and the chairman of FOs are able to divert most of the water from the water courses by either tampering their watercourse outlets or bribing the officials of irrigation department thereby depriving tail-enders from their legitimate share of irrigation water. The system of constitution of FOs needs to be more democratic with chairman coming from tail enders. Only then one can expect some sort of improvement in our century-old system through these FOs.

One more thing to point out here is that the farmers’ representation in the SIDA is less than the number of officials, therefore in any decision making, these officials are very likely to prevail over the farming community. This also seems to be very undemocratic and against the interest of farmers and the very idea of the participatory irrigation management.

It is said that prior to handing over to SIDA, Nara canal did not have any direct outlet from main canal upstream Jamrao head. But after the establishment of the SIDA, there are numbers of direct outlets from main canal proximal to the Jamrao head in the project area. Legality of these outlets also seems to be doubtful. Surely, this practice has contributed towards decreased water supply to the tail-enders.

Further, a tug of war between the SIDA and the provincial irrigation department which started after the establishment of the SIDA has rendered this new system almost ineffective. Officials of the SIDA are of the view that the inefficiency of the provincial irrigation department is responsible for water-shortages in Nara canal, perhaps in an effort to fail the irrigation management transfer to FOs/SIDA. The unscheduled and frequent closure of distributaries over past few years have resulted in a sort of stagnancy in the flow of water resulting in settlement of silt in the canal, increasing the canal bed level thereby decreasing the capacity of the canal to carry water. The motive may be to shift the blame of water shortages to the SIDA and FOs.

However, according to officials of the provincial irrigation department, the Nara canal is currently taking water according to design capacity at the Sukkur Barrage. But water fails to reach at the destination because of failure of SIDA to implement judicious distribution of water among farmers and non-maintenance of canal command. As some water may be going to the illegal watercourses, machine pumps, and illegal escapes from main Nara Canal upstream the Jamrao Head as mentioned above.

Anyway it is the responsibility of the present political government to review the hasty decision of amending the SIDA Act through the promulgation of the Sindh water management ordinance. It is required that a debate in the assembly must be held on this vital issue to consider all pros and cons of the ordinance keeping in view the interests of our farmers and not of donor agencies.