Water is Life and Kashmir is Key

FCCollege Irrigation

When I saw the irrigation system at FCCollege, I asked my usual geographer’s question--where does the water come from?  This question eventually led to a fieldtrip arranged for me to Ravi Syphon to learn more about the irrigation system and the politics of water while in Pakistan.

Ravi Syphon is just that—a syphon where an irrigation channel goes under the Ravi River through the forces of syphoning rather than physical pumping.   According to the material from the Punjab government website (https://irrigation.punjab.gov.pk/) controlled irrigation to allow year-round agricultural production began in 1859 with the completion of the Upper Bari Doab Canal on the Ravi River.   But by the early 1900s, it was clear that the river waters were not apportioned appropriately to the irrigable land so this led to projects that linked the river basins of the Jhelum, Chanab, and Ravi Rivers.

Ravi Syphon where the water drops below the River Ravi

The canal as it reappears on the Lahore side of the River Ravi

The BRB Canal feeds into the Canal Street Canal that goes by FCCollege.

Ravi Syphon allows the Banbawali-Rav Bedian Canal to cross the Ravi River. It is also a place where ferry’s cross the River. No bridges exist in this area because of the proximity to the border. Just north of the syphon the River Ravi forms the border and then upstream it originates within India. When I was at Ravi Syphon, it was during the dry season so the channel was quit shallow and narrow within the expansive flat floodplain. You could see where the sediment deposits formed banks of the river during the rainy season and how the ferry owners had to build roads down those banks for the dry season. On one side of the River Ravi a large levee has been built to protect farm land behind it.

Broad, flat River Ravi basin

Road constructed down onto the dry season river bottom

This man’s job was to constantly feed river water into the tube in order to keep the engine cool.

As part of understanding irrigation in Pakistan I also had to learn about the difference between a barrage and a dam.  Both are artificial barriers across rivers to prevent flooding and aid irrigation.  However, a dam has a reservoir and a barrage diverts water into a channel. Pakistan has 16 barrages and only 3 major dams due to the flat topography.  Punjab has 2 syphons (one is the Ravi Syphon) across major rivers and 13 barrages.

At partition in 1947, the irrigation system, which was developed as a whole, was divided between India and Pakistan.  Needless to say, this was difficult—India controlled Kashmir which held many of the headwaters of the rivers and had dam sites available and Pakistan was downriver with a topography that was primarily flat plain.  This led to the international water dispute of 1948 which was finally “resolved” in 1960 with the Indus Waters Treaty which gave India the waters of the three eastern rivers—Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej and the three western rivers to Pakistan—Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab.

Notice how many of Pakistan’s Rivers originate in India and Kashmir in particular. Waterbasin map: By Keenan Pepper - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66085475

A recent Foreign Policy publication tells of the threat by the Indian government to divert that have been going downstream in retaliation for a terrorist attack in Kashmir (https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/25/are-india-and-pakistan-on-the-verge-of-a-water-war-pulwama-kasmir-ravi-indus/).  The ability of either Pakistan or India to survive and thrive are tied to water.  Even if India has rights to this water through treaty, the reality is that a significant amount has continued to flow into Pakistan even after India’s extraction but now India is saying it is going to impound more water from the Ravi River.  Water is life and Pakistan is one of the world’s most water-stressed countries.  The country depends on water for irrigation of agriculture and agriculture is the main industry of the country. It allows for a two crop yearly crop cycle of rice in the summer and wheat in the winter. In addition, the groundwater table has been dropping a meter a year from over-pumping.

The tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir will not go away.  The partition and the Indus Treaty did not change the reality that the waters of the Chenab and the Jhelum—awarded to Pakistan under the IWT—flow through Kashmir before they flow into Pakistan and that demands for water will only increase.  Water is life.