QUITE a bit of the blame for the economic backwardness in rural Sindh can be apportioned to the poor governance in the province. One such example is the execution of a Rs22 billion federally-funded watercourse lining programme. First, the programme size suffers from a serious anomaly. The original number of water courses put at 29,000 by the Sindh Irrigation Department on which the project was based, turned out to be incorrect.

A survey later by the Agriculture Department which is the executing agency of the project, showed that the actual number was 33,000. It shows amply that the department had not done its homework.

The programme prepared by the provincial government under a national plan was designed to bring about improvement in the delivery and distribution system of water and to minimize on-farm application losses. The water saved was intended to be profitably used for additional land as the water resources in the province are scarce.

Under the project, the department has to recruit 4,615 officials of grade B-11 to B-19 and arrange 2,326 motor-cycles on hire-purchase basis. However, so far none of the staff has been given a motor-cycle, although the federal government has released Rs1,142 million for completing the project.

The pace of the project can be assessed from the fact that the department has not completed the recruitment process. Some 3,258 applications have been received from growers for lining their watercourses, out of which 950 have been surveyed, 468 designed, 258 sanctioned, earthwork of 106 started and the lining of 20 is in process. Only one water course has been completed.

The department claims that there were over 40,000 such watercourses on the three barrages while new one was to be created from main canals, branch canals and minors. A departmental survey says that there are 33,000 watercourses. The assistant engineers maintain such records but there are snags as some watercourses are bi-furcated into two or more and each one flowing 24 hours a day. They are categorized as 5-A, 5-B and 5-C and so on. On the original record, it may be watercourse No 5. Thus, the confusion in enumeration is bound to exist and has to be properly reconciled for future planning.

On-farm water management programme started in mid- 70s of the last century and continued up to 1998. Life of a lined watercourse is considered to be 40 years. Normally, bricks are set into cement mortar. If the watercourse is in the perennial area., the cement will keep getting stronger in time and its life may exceed 40 years. Some bridges built by the British on various canals during the last quarter of 19th century and early 20st century are still in use. Thus brick in mortar will have much longer life than projected 40-years. There may be isolated cases when watercourses lined by the department are abandoned. Thus, shortfall in watercourses should not exceed a few dozens but this is not the case at the site.

Some experts say watercourse lining has not been improved, as out 1450 watercourses in LBOD area, not a single extra acre has been brought under cultivation during these 126 months. There is very little seepage from watercourses but most of it is from fields not properly levelled.

They maintain that watercourses lining saves 33 to 40 per cent water which is true in case of sandy and gravel areas of Balochistan and NWFP but not in case of Sindh and Southern Punjab (below Panjnad) where soils are comparatively heavy. Some seepage may take place in Northern Punjab but to put it at 30 to 40 per cent is a grass exaggeration.

These experts state that the seepage does not exceed five per cent but leakage can be 25 per cent. Leakage by overflow can take place even from a lined watercourse, if it is not properly maintained. Due to inadequate slopes of land, siltation takes place an water can overflow from the breaches in the embankments. One advantage of lining is that desilting is easy and fast, as bed level and width are fixed.

Leakage takes place most of the time from breaches in the embankment for supplying water to various fields. Some times fields are as small as half an acre They are closed by earth borrowed from the land nearby and are not properly consolidated. The solution lies in providing pucca outlets of bricks and cement concrete for each acre. Another advantage of this arrangement could be that desilting will be easy. An outlet at a distance of about 50 meters will be a reference point for desilting. This factor needs to form part of the planning for watercourse management.

The proposal to line the branch canals is good not as much as for saving water but the channels will take design discharge provided they are maintained properly. The canals are so designed that there be no silting if design discharge is allowed to flow through it during the whole season. If discharge is more, there will be erosion of embankments.

In actual practice, more water has been allowed to flow through canals and in other cases, less than designed fluctuation in discharge causes erosion and siltation. If a canal is lined and carries less discharge, silt will deposit at the bottom and change the cross section of the channel and when extra water is allowed to flow through, it will overflow embankments and the lined portions and breach the canal.

If a land is not properly levelled, at one point it may have six to seven inches of water and at another place one or two inches in the same plot of half to one acre area. Excess water will seep down. The crop will suffer at the one end by flooding and at the other by drought. This can be observed by watching the standing crop just before harvest. It is reasonable to think that precision land levelling should be given priority over any other method for saving water.