By Irfan Shahzad*

KEERANWALA, Pakistan, Nov 21 (IPS) – Mansha, a middle-aged farmer here in this village in Punjab province, surveys his ready-to-harvest rice crop with delight and is optimistic about the next wheat crop to be sown after the rice harvest in mid-November.  

   “It should be more than 50 maund (1,866 kilogrammes) as against 28 maund (1,045 kg) the previous year,” said the hopeful Mansha of Keeranwala village in Punjab province, some 200 kilometres south of the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

   Mansha’s optimisms stem from an ample supply of water coming from a brick-lined water channel that flows directly to his farm, ensuring minimum losses and increased water availability.

   The watercourse, called ‘khala’ in the local Punjabi language, covers some 116 hectares of land owned by 57 small farmers. It was upgraded under National Programme for Improvement of Watercourses (NPIW) in May 2007, done jointly by the government and farmers themselves.

   “Water availability has (since) increased by around 60 percent and I am pleased to contribute in the refurbishment of the watercourse,” Mansha adds.

   Under the participatory approach used by the federally funded NPIW since it started in 2004, the government contributes 80 percent of the cost while the farmers share the remaining one-fifth. Amounts allocated by the federal government go to provinces, which then pass the money on to the district government.

   “NWIP is one of the most successful programmes in the history of our country,” explains Muhammad Anwar, Gujrat district officer for On-farm Water Management, a government project developed in 2000 that aims to develop land productivity and efficient use of water with the farmers’ active involvement.

   In 2006-2007, Anwar’s district was given a target to smarten up 40 watercourses. His team exceeded its target by more than 50 percent, completing improvement work on 61 units.

  A total of 40,300 watercourses, out of a targeted 87,000, have been improved under the NWIP as of the end of fiscal year 2006, which ended on Jun. 30 this year. There are 18,000 more watercourses targeted improvement during the fiscal year 2007.

   The total estimated cost of the programme, which seeks to address the decay in the irrigation network, is over 66 billion rupees (1.1 billion U.S. dollars).
   Pakistan has one of the world’s largest gravity-flow irrigation systems, having three reservoirs, 19 barrages, 12 river inter-linking canals and 59,200 kilometres of distribution canals.

   More than 160,000 watercourses come at the end of the distribution network and take water to farms. More than half of these watercourses exist in Punjab – the largest of the four provinces and the biggest agricultural producer.

   The system commands a land area of 14.3 million hectares, making it the backbone of Pakistan’s agriculture through its contribution of a quarter of total gross domestic product (GDP).

   While the three big reservoirs store some 20 million-acre feet (MAF) of water, farmers across the country also pump an estimated 40 MAF of groundwater to irrigate their lands.

   However, after decades of use, the country’s water network is on the decline. The dams are losing storage capacity due to silting. Likewise, huge volumes of water seep through canals in poor condition. It is estimated that up to two-thirds of the total available water is wasted every year.

   Two types of watercourses are now being improved under the NPIW. Watercourses emanating from canal tributaries – dug manually by farmers for decades – are being lined with bricks and cement.  Those taking water from tubewells and motor pumps – mostly in the ‘barani’ (rain-fed) region – are to be replaced by underground polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes.

   Anwar defines the participatory approach as having the “involvement of people, sense of ownership and minimisation of wastage as people themselves are the executers of each and every scheme”.  

   To qualify for resources under this system, at least five farmers need to form a Water Users Association (WUA), with a minimum irrigated area of five acres. Once their application for resources to improve watercourses is approved, independent consultants then approve the design prepared by the On-Farm Water Management Department.

   Having as members all the farmers who use water from the watercourse, the WUA constitutes an executive committee comprising up to five members. The committee coordinates with government officials and executes the project after the design is approved.

   Subsequently, the government’s share of financial support is released in three installments – and after the WUA puts its 20 percent share in the designated bank account. However, Anwar says that the On-farm Water Management Project is now releasing up to 70 percent of funds in the first installment to facilitate fast implementation.

   Because the farmers themselves are in charge of purchasing the material for upgrading the watercourses, there are significant cost savings. These savings are then used to fund the improvement of more watercourses beyond the quota.

   Farmers here say that there are substantial savings on water after their local water systems were given a new lease on life, and some add that their crop production has risen by 30 to 50 percent.

   Just a few kilometres from Mansha’s farm, Mian Irfan, a young farmer in Chak Pearana village, narrates another benefit that comes with brick-lining the watercourse coming from his tubewell.  “I can irrigate the same land in only 45 minutes, when it used to take me three hours to do so,” he points out. “Electricity cost to run the tubewell has also been reduced significantly.”

   Mohammad Afzal Janjua, a local councillor in Sidh village of Kharian sub-division, says having his 1,400-feet long watercourse pipe lined has made a huge difference. “The underground pipe has reduced the time required to irrigate my land to one-fourth of what it used to be,” he says. “I now also provide water to my neighbours from my tubewell.” (END/IPSAP/EN/DV/IS/LLC/ME/07)

(*This story is being distributed by IPS Asia-Pacific under a communication agreement with the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, in Singapore, which produced it.)