National Irrigation System of Pakistan

Pakistan is blessed with one of the best irrigation systems and being densely populated agrarian country it is still facing backward agricultural situation. More than 65% of the population is living on the agri-based fields or industries. Although Punjab is the most populated and developed province of Pakistan. Yet its Irrigation system is not very developed. Present irrigation network system is almost hundred year old. The management of current irrigation system is a big challenge with increasing population. Burden on limited irrigation system is also going complicated and situation is becoming more and more serious. The problems with management of national irrigation system include social as well as technical ones. A loss in agriculture production is massive due to mismanagement of irrigation system.

Country is experiencing the issue of water wastage at large scale. The farmers are still busy in applying the old methods of irrigation like flood water through which about 50 to 60 percent of water is almost wasted. The recent flood which was biggest of this century bestowed Pakistan a gig resource of water, but the lack of water reservoirs wasted it carelessly. A new irrigation system called drip irrigation system has been introduced in many parts of the world. This not only saves water but also gives proper quantity of water according to the needs of plants. But Pakistan is still not willing to benefit from it.

Water logging and salinity is expanding day by day. Government of Pakistan has not taken any sustainable steps to resolve this issue. With the decreasing storage capacity of dams due to silt accumulation the farmers, therefore, are installing more and more tube wells to irrigate their crops. This is another reason behind spreading salinity in the major areas of Punjab and Sindh.

India has constructed a number of dams violating the Indus Water Treaty of 1960. This kind of Indian interventions has started to dry the rivers of Pakistan. The average annual flow has been decreased to an alarming level. While the designed cropping intensity of Pakistan’s irrigation system was low from 60 to 70%, but now cropping intensity has crossed the level of 120% indicating increased water demand. On the other hand

Delay in building new water reservoirs in Pakistan has played vicious role in complicating the irrigation problems. If Pakistan had timely built the Kalabagh dam, all the irrigation issues would have been resolved. No province except Punjab, is ready to go forward with KBD project.

Water management is almost handled by the provincial governments in Pakistan. Although a reasonable slice of the total budget is cut away for irrigation and canal system but this allocation of funds is not sufficient to address all the problems regarding irrigation. The difference between the required and the allocated amount is estimated to be more than 24%. This situation has resulted in the deterioration of the canal system.

Pakistan needs more dams to be constructed on Indus, Jehlum and Chenab rivers. This will enhance not only the storage capacity of water but also will minimize the per acre cost of all the crops with increasing water productivity of the crops. This act will also lessen the salinity chances of the lands as less number of tube well water would be used to irrigate the lands which are expected to be saline. Model shifts are needed in government policies and the legal and institutional framework of water management if water use is to improve and those effective changes can fruit very big gains in agriculture output.

Due to serious threats to irrigation system, the wise use of available water resources has become essential.  Planning, design, and operation of land reclamation projects and irrigation system, therefore, have to take into account the new issues. At this time efficient organization and planning of irrigation and drainage system, is one of the most critical goals to achieve the widely accepted approach of integrated water Resources Management.