Pakistan's Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, in view of the monumental shortage of water in the country, has asked the farmers to not cultivate rice.
This comes amid reports that in three years, Pakistan will be staring at acute water scarcity, a situation which would leave millions of people and their land gasping for a trickle.
The Chief Minister made this request to the farmers while speaking with the media at Dost Khan village in Sehwan Sharif on Saturday. He expressed deep concern over the unequal distribution of water. The CM said that the water must be distributed equally throughout the country, reported Radio Pakistan.
Besides the crippling inadequacy in developing robust water infrastructure, the most compelling reason for Pakistan becoming a `dry` country in the near future rests with the civilian and military leadership of the country which invested more in traditional security needs and not on urgent public issues like water.
Even water, like other natural resources, was labelled as a security issue and not as an existential issue for the country. This collective leadership failure has put Pakistan in dire straits in terms of water security in the near future.
This monumental water crisis has not happened all of a sudden. It has been gradually building up with water resources getting depleted and its management caught up in corruption and poor policy options and, most important of all, intra-provincial conflict.
According to the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources, a premium think tank on water issues, the crisis has been building since the 50s and it first reached the "water stress line" in 1990 and the 'water scarcity line' in 2005.
According to a 2022 report from the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, over 80 per cent of water resources were utilised by four major crops -- rice, wheat, sugarcane and cotton -- which contribute only 5 per cent to GDP. Though the agriculture sector accounts for one-fifth of GDP and almost half of the country's employment, it contributes less than 0.1 per cent to total tax revenues, leaving little funds for maintaining the old irrigation system.
The only way out of this crisis is for the civilian and military leadership to give up their futile game of politicking and take up the challenge of addressing the most pressing problem facing Pakistan and its people today. It requires a dramatic change in mindset, one that cares for its people and nation. No amount of guns and bullets can bring back the vanishing sliver of water from Pakistan.
( With inputs from ANI )
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