Intensive Cultivation Threatens Aquifers in Punjab

A study of the Irrigation & Power Department (IPD) of Pakistan’s agricultural province, Punjab, has found that 65% of its underground water is not fit for animals and crops — humans as well. Bahawalpur, one of its southern division, stands out as the largest loser where underground water has been found unfit to the tune of 75 per cent. DG Khan is another region that has attained this ratio. How should this deficiency be overcome? The Punjab Agricultural Research Council is in the process of formulating the ‘right’ strategy — now!

Bahawalpur’s one-third area makes a green strip, fairly understood as the cotton belt. It lies between the dried-up river Hakra and the near-to-dying river Sutlej. When the people at the helm of affairs were signing the Indus Basin Treaty with India, the phenomenon of expansion and contraction of a desert like Rajasthan was either not taken into account or the defunct princely state was not consulted on the matter of selling its lifeline to India.

Only rivers can alleviate the sufferings of life in the desert. Filled with fresh water the whole year, Sutlej was such a river. The river has been the last hope of the Bahawalpur region, a part of Rajasthan, since centuries after the disappearance of the Hakra from the face of the earth. The population of the desert would turn to this river to save its livestock from the onslaught of the drought. For the green belt, it kept the aquifers intact. The Abbasids, who established their rule in the Bahawalpur region through conquering 17 forts on the lower banks of the Hakra in the late 17th century, had brought various tribes from Sindh who were predominantly agriculturalists. It was the first encroachment on the desert. The social space available to the Rohillas, the herding community of the area, was somewhat reduced but not so effectively as occurred later.