Water in west Pakistan

Abstract

This article describes several of the salient problems about water and the administration of water programs in West Pakistan. The separation of India and Pakistan in 1947 divided the Indus Basin, leaving three major tributaries in India and most of the irrigated lands in Pakistan. The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty provides for a series of waterworks, financed primarily by Western countries, that will reroute much of the surface water in the Basin. Part of the water allotted to India will be replaced, and hopefully there will be a more dependable water supply for the 20 million acres of land in the Province's agricultural base. There and elsewhere severe waterlogging and salinity conditions have been growing rapidly, and other water problems abound. Since 1958 a semi‐autonomous government corporation has managed these water programs, as well as generating and wholesaling most of the electric power. The corporation currently spends well over a quarter of the total provincial budget for economic development purposes. Allowing such an agency to play so predominant a role is of course a matter of conscious policy choice. It may be argued that thus far this Pakistan corporation has performed constructively in the field of water and power, resource administration. (Key words: Agriculture; economics; planning; water management; water resources)