With a history stretching back to the mythical and historically foggy period of Mahabharta, the Jehlum area (or now district) has travelled through millennia and taken influence from Persians, Greeks, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs and Britishers to be what it is now.

Though hotly contesting the exact spot of the battle between Alexander the Great and local hero Raja Porus, historians agree that it (clash of Hydaspes) took place a few kilometres downstream, where the city resides now. That small village has now become the city of Jehlum, deriving its name from Jal (water) and Ham (snow).

Similar to the debate over the exact spot of the encounter, historians argue whether the local chivalric spirit is the cause or the result of one of the biggest wars of Greek and sub-continental history that was fought here. However, what cannot be contested is that the chivalric spirit has not left the area ever since; Jehlum, also tagged as “City of Soldiers” has provided a fighting force to its rulers through history, and still does — producing the finest army men for Pakistan. More recently, its sons won laurels fighting World Wars and later between India and Pakistan.

Agricultural is a subsistence activity for those who are unable to make it to the military or abroad

This crusading spirit also defines the local psyche and sociology: people are emotionally attached to the soil, but not economically dependent on it. After the army, the second most important economic refuge is settling abroad, remitting money to the residual family and winning local social influence. The trend is regional and afflicts the neighbouring districts of Gujrat and Mandi Bahauddin as well — as written earlier on these pages.

The inevitable victim of this social and economic preference has been agriculture. Local topography, mostly of verdant hills and uneven landscape that does not allow vast tracks for cropping, only added to agricultural woes. Since the district also includes rain-fed areas and saline soil (because of the salt range that runs across part of the district and pollutes soil and water tributaries), its agriculture has borne the brunt of them all.

Basic statistics of the district’s acreage, as recorded by the Punjab government, explain agricultural poverty: out of a total of 883,310 acres, only 394,812 acres (less than half) are available for cropping and merely 260,762 acres are actually under some kinds of crops. Forests claim another 106,699 acres. In nutshell, around 70 per cent of district land is not available for crops.

The list of crops sown is long, but none of them yields enough to make the district or its dwellers part of the provincial, let alone national, commodity market. Agricultural is subsistence activity for those unable to make it to the military or abroad. Wheat, rice, groundnuts, fruits, vegetables and oilseed crops are part of local production. However, wheat and maize hog major shares of the meagre acreage which the district can ill-afford. Their average yield is much lower than the provincial average.

Wheat, for example, was sown on 182,000 acres last year, and the Punjab Crop Reporting Service recorded its average yield at 16.20 maunds against the provincial standard of 32 maunds per acre. Maize, which took over 22,000 acres, faired a bit better last year with 91 maunds; up from 57 maunds a year earlier. This erratic yield also highlights the increasing irrelevance of agriculture when it comes to surviving strategy in an area that is largely dependent on weather vagaries. Weather assumes added significance in an area that is partly rain-fed, partly irrigated and partly tubewell-dependent. Groundnuts, a historical speciality of the area, seem to have largely disappeared because of old varieties that yield too little to make commercial sense.

The successive governments only added to agricultural issues by implementing plans of dubious utility. The recent attempt to turn Pothohar (of which Jehlum is a vital part) into an “Olive and Grapes Valley” was one such effort. The grapes part, sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development, made an early exit when the Trump administration squeezed funds. The olive part still exists with mixed results: shifting parentage of the olive initiative — from Italian donors to the federal government to Punjab, and now back again to the federation — has compromised results and left a bad example for the area.

Long demanded, and needed, Jalal Pur Canal is another intervention that the government has made recently made in the area. It is designed to serve part of Jehlum and neighbouring Khushab. The non-perennial canal is expected to increase Kharif crops yield by 50pc. The canal operation, as envisaged in the project, is a matter of debate among experts. As per the design, it would provide flood water through 200km of canals and distributaries and benefit more than 200,000 people. Experts, however, plead for changes in its operation.

“Gravity canals, supplying water to farmers turn-by-turn to flood fields is an old model that leads to wastage. It must not run on the wasteful model,” says Iqrar A Khan, vice-chancellor of the Agriculture University (Faisalabad). During Kharif, the area gets over 850 millimetres of rain. The canal will merely supplement supplies. The government of Punjab must supply water on a different model: make people built pond and storage on each outlet, make them store water for subsequent usage (mainly Rabi when it is required the most), provide water on demand (not on predetermined turns) and sell it for a price.

“The four-point operation plan would bring a paradigm shift in canal handling and sensitise farmers about the water’s worth,” the VC insists. The price may be subsidised, or even notional, but it is a must to increase the utility of canal and water efficiency. Otherwise, farmers would continue flooding fields as they do with the rest of the canals in the province, compromising on its utility,” Iqrar concludes.

“The paradigm shift should also be applied to agriculture to turn it into a designer’s cropping plan,” insists Muhammad Saeed, a local businessman and horticulturist. A plan tailored for topography, smaller, even minute, land holdings, vast valleys and ecological realities to produce high-value crops, orchards and vegetables. That is where the government needs to step in. Soils along the river banks are fertile, so are tracks falling between hills and acres served by dozens of lakes and dams dotting the district.

The massive culturable waste provides huge potential. However, it can be done after some land integration effort, which is necessary to give agriculture commercial viability. Otherwise, small pieces of land would continue to be wasted on wheat with no one benefitting, he fears.

Since the parent sector (agriculture) is poverty-stricken, its sub-sectors are even poorer. With half a million large animals (279,757 buffalos and 222,042 cows), the district hardly has anything to boast about. “Some investment did come into the dairy sector,” says local livestock officials, but ran out of steam as neither manpower nor fodder is available at commercial scale — people either have gone abroad or planning to do so, chasing dollars instead of hard-earned rupees on farms. Some 31 farms are still surviving but none of them is turning out to be a commercial attraction. “Yes, backyard poultry is flourishing on official subsidy. But, despite having verdant hills and greenery galore, even goats and sheep number just over half a million (448,906 goats and 72,750 sheep). Nothing special, nothing extraordinary, just routine stuff,” he concludes.

The same poverty extends to mines and minerals of the area. The list is impressive, with the second-largest salt deposits, coal, marble, gypsum, bentonite and limestone etc. However, the technology to bring them out is outdated, rather archaic — making a mess of them more than an addition to national or local income.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, September 6th, 2021