Death & the delta

Zarrar KhuhroJuly 22, 2019

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The writer is a journalist.

THANKS to Mao Zedong and the Red Army, the term ‘Long March’ has become firmly embedded
in the political lexicon of Pakistan. Rarely though have its Pakistani variants been actually involved
in much marching, as most of the participants opt to travel by car, train or sometimes even planes,
to reach the appointed gathering point to press whatever political demands they may have. Every
such march has garnered round-the-clock media coverage and analysis. Airwaves have been
saturated and front pages dominated by the demands of the marchers, their every move examined
and dissected ad nauseam.

But a few weeks back, a true long march took place when a group of desperate and poverty-stricken
farmers — numbering a few dozens — walked from Kharo Chan on the Indus Delta all the way to Thatta
city. In the scorching heat they walked close to 150 kilometres and by the time they had reached their
destination their numbers had swelled to close to 2,000 marchers. Away from the spotlight, with little
media attention, they walked and suffered to draw attention to their pain and plight.

These are the children of the dying Indus Delta, trying and failing to draw our attention away from the
constant political wrangling to the disaster that has been unfolding for decades now, a disaster that has
turned these once happy and relatively prosperous communities into the downtrodden destitute.

A few weeks ago, desperate farmers undertook a true long

march in Sindh.
Flowing for 3,000 km from the Himalayas to the delta, the Indus river has historically been the birthplace
of civilisation, providing life and livelihood to countless millions. But now, thanks partially to climate
change and largely due to bad and shortsighted policies, this mighty river has, in many parts, been reduced
to a trickle with disastrous consequences for those who lived in, and off, the delta itself.
The Indus delta stretches along the coastline of Pakistan, some 150 km in length, and once covered an area
of some 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) from Karachi to the Rann of Kutch. There were forests, creeks and
mudflats, many of which now no longer exist except perhaps in memory. The area was once home to 97
per cent of Pakistan’s mangrove forests, an essential habitat and breeding ground for fish, shrimp and crabs
and a natural shield against cyclones and tsunamis. But over the years, this crucial resource has dwindled
just as the flow of the river has dwindled, and just between 1966 and 2003 we lost 86 per cent of the
mangrove cover.

The further upcountry you travel, the more often you hear the refrain that Sindh ‘wastes’ the water of the
river Indus by letting it flow into the sea. It is a view born largely of ignorance with a dash of parochialism,
a patronising statement made by those who wilfully choose to remain blissful in their ignorance. If only
that ignorance didn’t have such disastrous consequences. Because when freshwater no longer flows into
the sea, the sea flows onto the land, eroding it and gradually inundating it; as far back as 2001, the Sindh
government declared that over 1.2m acres of land in Badin and Thatta had been claimed by the sea and one
can imagine what the position must be now.

And if imagination fails, one can simply ask the marchers what they have endured. Because the sea is as
insidious and it is relentless, we can measure the land lost to it but what is harder to detect is the sub-
surface creep, which sees saltwater infiltrate groundwater aquifers, making agriculture impossible and
rendering entire tracts of once fertile land barren, to the point that entire villages have been abandoned
simply because the water is unfit to drink. Take Keti Bandar and Shah Bandar, which were once thriving
communities relying on trade and the port facilities they provided, but are now, in the words of prominent
architect and activist Arif Hasan, ‘ghost towns’.

What should we blame? Certainly the diversion of waters from the Indus into various canals has helped
irrigate large tracts but with little concern about the costs to the delta. Certainly, there is a case to be made
that dams are needed, but where is the realisation that the root of our water woes is largely management
and supply? The 1991 Water Accord prescribed that at least 10 MAF of water must be allowed to flow
below the Kotri barrage to keep the fragile delta alive, but this has rarely actually happened.

It’s going to get worse. As the effects of the climate crisis unfold and the ice sheets continue to melt at
unprecedented rates, sea levels as a whole will rise, adding a global dimension to this crisis. Here in
Pakistan along with human and economic suffering we will see waves of climate-caused internal
migration, adding to our miseries. Meanwhile, the marchers camp out in Thatta warning us of what is to
come, and no one is