LAHORE: I read with interest Mr Salman Rashid’s article “Water” (July 28), regarding the wasteful practices of the people of Lahore when it comes to water. He is right. Water is being wasted in a similar manner in other parts of the country too.
I was appalled at the response Mr Rashid got from people about the way they wasted water: “Water is God’s gift to us and there is no way he will permit it to run out”. It is not only common people but even the rulers of the country who adopt this attitude when it comes to Pakistan’s natural resources. Let alone Pakistan, even Mother Nature is endowed with but a finite quantity of water. It may come as a surprise to some that less than one per cent of total water in the hydrosphere occurs in liquid form, which is considered available for use.
In my assessment, the total annual renewable water resource of Pakistan is of the order of 155.60 MAF. Only 110 MAF or so is being used right now, while the rest washes away to the sea. A good 93 per cent of usable water is consumed by the irrigation system over 44 million acres of crop land annually.
According to Mr Rashid: “In 30 years, Lahore will be an arid cinder. The canal that makes the city pretty will just be a wind-blown ditch filled with the city’s rubbish”. I, however, would not worry about the canal. It has served Lahore faithfully for 153 years since being commissioned in 1859. It should continue to do so as long as the River Chenab remains in flow at the Marala Barrage. My focus is on the rest of the country, particularly the Indus plain, including the Peshawar Vale served by the world’s largest contiguous irrigation system that is sustained by the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus rivers. Mr Rashid may be worried about Lahore’s state 30 years from now but the real worry is whether the rivers Chenab, Jhelum and Indus will still be flowing in from occupied Kashmir uninterrupted, in the next few years, let alone the next 30. My fears arise from the scores of storage dams that India has built on the western rivers that, in my opinion, is a flagrant violation of the Indus Waters Treaty. This is a highly worrying state of affairs that needs to be looked into by higher authorities immediately or things may turn out to be extremely difficult for Pakistanis in the future.
Bashir A Malik
Published in The Express Tribune, August 2nd, 2012.
