SIDA and devolution
This surprise move of Sindh government seems to be in contravention of the devolution plan of the present government.
Our present irrigation system is a legacy of British colonial empire. It is highly centralized leaving a little scope for participation of common farmers and end-users in managing the equitable water distribution. The participatory irrigation management (PIM) is considered to be farmer-friendly system and has been successfully followed in many parts of the world.
The basic principle of this system is to ensure the participation of water users in all aspects of water management through their organized associations. But the concept is quite new to Pakistan. As a matter of fact there is nothing wrong with the concept and philosophy of the 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 hands of 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 farmer’s 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.
One more thing to point here is that the farmers’ representation in SIDA is less than the number of officials, therefore in any decision making, these officials are very likely to prevail over the farming community.
Whatsoever was left is diminished by making irrigation minister as chairman of the SIDA. This also seems to be very undemocratic and against the interest of farmers and the very idea of the participatory irrigation management.
The functions of SIDA were to operate and maintain the parts of the irrigation system such as barrages and outlets assigned to operate and maintain the parts of the drainage system assigned to it including spinal drains and inter-AWB drains; carry out river flood protection and maintain the infrastructure in the province of Sindh; advise government on any matter strategic or tactical related to its functions and tasks or to the water management system as a whole e g irrigation or drainage contribution rates, drought management and sea water intrusion; manage the transition process, to promote the formation, growth and development of the AWBs and FOs into self-supporting and financially self-sustaining entities within a period of seven to 10 years of their establishment and perform any other function conferred on it under this ordinance.
It will be worthwhile to note that at the time of promulgation of SIDA Act in 1997, it was planned that provincial irrigation department will be replaced by SIDA by the year 2005. Now, what we see today is that in spite of the earlier commitment of replacing Sindh irrigation department with the SIDA, the Sindh irrigation department is still working as a parallel body in the irrigation sector.
Consequently, SIDA has failed in many cases to assert itself in spite of the SIDA Act. Thus, the overall performance of SIDA over the past several years is far below its projected development programme and thefts and inequity of water distribution continue at a significant scale.
The system is still not complete. This can be judged from the fact that although under the Ordinance, all the three barrages are to be shifted to SIDA, but so far no barrage has been handed over to it. Out of 14 canals, so far Area Water Boards, only four canals viz. Nara Canal, Left Bank Canal (Fuleli and Akram Wah) and Ghotki Feeder Canal, have been formed while AWBs on 10 more canals are yet to be established. Besides, powers as laid down in the Ordinance are yet to be given to SIDA authorities.
At the time of promulgation of SIDA ordinance, it was declared that the main reason lying behind the poor performance of the provincial irrigation system was the institutional problem. 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.
Growers are of the view that since the pilot project has failed to bring significant improvement in the irrigation system of the project area, there seems no justification to increase the jurisdiction of SIDA to all over Sindh. They feel that the failure could be judged by the fact that even the donor agency has indicated to withheld further financing of the project for its poor progress during the period of over five years.
There is no dearth of such examples in Pakistan when foreign funded projects met such fate, for instance Rs 20 billion foreign funded Salinity Control and Reclamation Project (SCARP) of Wapda to reclaim 5.07 million hectares of land failed to achieve 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 sea.
Anyway, it is the responsibility of the government to review the hasty decision of making irrigation minister the chairman of SIDA. It is required that a debate in the assembly must be held on this vital issue to consider all pros and cons of the SIDA ordinance keeping in view interests of our farmers and poor condition of the provincial irrigation system.
To better understand the uneven response to the irrigation reforms in Pakistan, it is important to highlight the unique geographical disadvantage of Sindh. As the lower riparian province in Indus Basin with a coastal boundary, water logging and salinity are most severe in Sindh with 88.3 per cent of its irrigation command area water logged. In Punjab, water logging has affected only 25.2 per cent of its total area.
Sindh is mainly underlain by saline ground water. While in Punjab there is a 19.6 million acres fresh ground water zone, Sindh has only 2.6 million acres of fresh ground water zone to supplement its unreliable surface irrigation supplies. While NWFP receives 577 mm of annual rainfall, Sindh does not receive more than 164.8 mm in an average year. No other province is threatened with phenomenon of sea intrusion which, so far, has affected 0.62 million acre of land.
In such bleak scenario, it is required that the government of the day sets its priorities and decide to go either with Provincial Irrigation Department (PID) or the SIDA, as no two parallel systems can work together efficiently rather develop rivalry among them to put blame on each other for water shortages, unscheduled closures of canals, etc.
If the government is planning to implement irrigation reforms truly, a very wisely defined policy needs to be drafted and a message must be sent to the bureaucracy to follow this policy in letter and sprit.
Strong political commitment governs the direction and quality of the change. Absence of these ingredients would invariably defy any change initiative. Further, no system can be expected to deliver fully until and unless its organizational structure, as originally envisaged, is complete and all requisite powers are vested to its authorities.
The irrigation system has been almost predominantly politicized in Sindh. Undue external political interference in transfers and postings and pressure to ‘sanction’ new outlets, lift systems and change rotations is a chronic problem of this system. To overcome this, progressive depoliticization is an essential requirement if we are interested to make the provincial irrigation system operate efficiently and to control water logging and salinity problem through participatory irrigation management and to develop a model where farmers are empowered in operating, maintaining and distribution of water.