[Reader-list] Indus Delta: A River Ran Through It

[Zulfiqar Shah]

A River Ran Through It
Zulfiqar Shah 



The delta that supported a thriving population is threatened by water scarcity and salinity

 

Noise erupted in the still, foggy morning as the captain revved the boat-engine, signalling the beginning of our voyage to the Indus delta at Ibrahim Hyderi, a coastal town near Karachi. After half an hour, the fog had dissipated with the rising sun and we found ourselves between two tiny islands covered with dense mangrove forests as numerous eagles hovered in the sky above. The Indus delta is a fan shaped network of seventeen major and numerous minor creeks covering about 30,000 square kilometres. It was formed in an arid climate under conditions of high river discharge – 4 billion tons of sediment per year. It experiences the highest wave energy of any river in the world; during the monsoon season, the delta front receives more wave energy in a single day than the Mississippi delta receives in the entire year. 

 

By noon, we had sailed past Korangi, Phitti, Paityani and Khudi and entered the channels of Khai creek, the most beautiful landscape of the Indus delta channels. Two channels intersect at one point, creating a waterway with lush green mangroves on the banks. As the crew began to fish for lunch, I discovered that the water is actually transparent, though it had appeared green because of the reflection of the mangroves. A big green turtle, an endangered species, lay dead among the roots. 

 

The Indus delta mangrove ecosystem spans an area of about 600,000 hectares between Karachi and Sir Creek. Dense mangroves grow in numerous areas such as Korangi and Khudi in the north, and Pakar and Sir Creek in the south. Medium level mangroves are widely scattered across the Indus delta, forming about 35 per cent of the total vegetation. Studies indicate that from 1985 to 2000, the mangrove cover decreased from 228,812 to 73,001 hectares. Large swathes of dense mangrove forest have thinned, while sparsely covered islands and creeks have become entirely bare. The situation has had adverse effects on the livelihoods of the people of the region – both fishery resources and livestock levels have been depleted. The diverse habitat the delta had provided for many birds, including herons, vultures, kingfishers and larks – as well as reptiles and fish – is under threat. There is also the threat of cyclones as the Sindh coast comes within the proximity of tsunami waves in the Indian Ocean;
 mangroves play an important role in creating resistance to such waves. 

 

The disappearance of the mangrove cover also exposes soil that is easily eroded by the river water, in due course causing submerged soft-mud flats. The main reason for the problem is the absence of Indus river water in the delta, which has lead to the landward inclination of seawater from the Arabian Sea, resulting in increased salinity levels and a reduction in sediments and soil nutrients. 

 

By the evening, trailed by two dolphins that had been following us for an hour, we reached Ishaq Dablo, a village of the Keti Bandar tehsil consisting of a cluster of islands with a few wooden huts on each one. Inhabitants of the islands in the delta, particularly women, are often isolated from the mainland. They live in wooden huts, usually with a communal gathering hut per village. Generally, two or more islands form one village, mostly representing the same tribe. 

 

Visiting Keti Bandar, an active port town during the British Raj, the destruction caused by the sea’s intrusion is agonisingly visible. According to Mohammad Ali Shah, chairperson of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, “rice was the main crop and most of it was exported to the coastal regions of India and the Gulf. The harbours of Keti Bandar and Shah Bandar were full of boats from Muscat and the Persian Gulf ports. Populations of these delta ports were well over 15,000.” Today, Keti Bandar is an island surviving sea occupation through a safety bund, a stone-pitched mud wall resisting the sea from all directions. 

 

Freshwater pushes seawater back, while mangrove forests provide natural fences for the coastal plains saving them from destructive waves. Reduction in downstream water discharge in the Indus River has allowed the sea to take over the coastal plains and reduce the mangrove cover, thus allowing erosion and the high tide occupation of coastal plains. Consequently, 1,220,360 [1.22 million] acres of fertile land in the Thatta and Badin districts were under seawater by 2002. Today, the figure is 2.2 million acres, causing billion rupee losses to the agricultural economy. Tehsil Keti Bandar is comprised of 43 dehs with an area of 144,083 acres, out of which 28 dehs have been submerged by the sea while 14 dehs have been damaged partially. 

 

The road from Keti Bandar to the riverbank of the Indus near Kharo Chhan town is either surrounded by sea or barren tracts. During three hours of travel, we encountered only one orchard of palm trees, comprising barely 200 acres. Red rice, a prized crop once cultivated in the area, has long since been abandoned. According to the revenue department, 86 per cent of the 235,485 acres of fertile land in Kharo Chhan tehsil have been intruded upon by the sea. The people of this region work mainly as fishermen, with some subsistence farmers. Gradually, they are moving on as their livelihoods disappear. In the last decade, the population of the town has decreased from nearly 15,000 to just 5,000. 

 

We anchored at Kharo Chhan after hiring a boat at the pattan [bank] of the Indus River. A small waterway used to flow through the heart of Kharo Chhan, an island between two distributaries of the Indus. The town and its curved bazaar were built on its banks. People from the suburbs, ferrying to the bazaar, anchored their boats and purchased whatever they needed. Though the dried waterway has become a pedestrian’s track, the bazaar remains a source for everyday needs. Kharo Chhan was a port town, exporting thousands of tons of cereals, fruits and other agricultural products. 

 

Adding to their woes, a great proportion of the population of the region face diseases such as malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis and measles. Doctors blame malnutrition and water impurity for the illnesses. Villagers generally lack vitamin C, calcium and vitamin B12. The deltaic areas in Kharo Chhan and Keti Bandar face acute shortages of drinking water. Fishermen still travel to nearby towns to purchase water, while water tankers are sold at prices ranging from Rs 700-1,200. 

 

A majority of the deltaic population depends on fisheries, which also indirectly provide the basis of other minor trades and occupations. In 1999, the Indus delta contributed 333,047 of Pakistan’s overall marine fish production of 474,665 metric tons. A drastic reduction in the catch of fish has been observed in recent years. For example the palla, a species of marine fish that swims from the sea through the Indus River for hundreds of miles up to Sukkur Barrage and back to the sea, has been severely depleted by declines in the Indus water flow in the deltaic region. Palla previously accounted for 70 per cent of the total catch in the past; today that figure has dwindled to just 15 per cent. Production in 1980 was 1,859 metric tons; this fell to only 265 metric tons in 1995 and just 222 metric tons 1999. Livestock has faced similar losses. According to the Provincial Directorate of Animal Husbandry, animal populations suffered the following declines between 1991 and 2000: 38 per cent
 of cattle, 45 per cent ofbuffaloes, 40 per cent of sheep, 37 per cent of goats, 40 per cent of camels, 57 per cent of horses and 35 per cent of donkeys. 

 

Back at Kharo Chhan, where four distributaries of the Indus River take their paths, our boat sailed on a much-awaited journey to Sokhi Bandar, the ruins of a port city near the Indus’s meeting point with sea. Sokhi Bandar was initially colonised by the Portuguese in the early 19th century, before falling under British India after Charles Napier’s conquest and it became prosperous in the early 1920s. The island was well established, with rice mills, a bazaar, firebrick homes and a rest house for British officers, a mosque and a temple. The architecture and number of remaining buildings bear witness to the civic planning and wealth of the port under British rule. Ali Patni, an elderly resident of Kharo Chhan, told me that in the 1930s, Sokhi Bandar was populated by more than 20,000 people, mostly traders, shopkeepers and fishermen. Silk, rice, wood and large boats were exported to Arab countries. 

 

According to a study conducted by the Institute of Chemical Studies at Sindh University, the flora in the riverbed below Sijawal Bridge is completely of marine origin. The report indicates that fertile agricultural land on the bank of the Indus near the village Sunda, a town near Hyderabad, changed into barren land (with salt contents 10 to 20 times higher than the riverbank bed) due to the use of Indus water with high salt contents. The backflow of seawater is also affecting underground water in the delta region. The fishing village along the left bank was using underground water with total dissolved solids (TDS) up to 4,300 ppm (parts per million). The World Health Organisation’s maximum permissible limit for human consumption is 1,500 ppm. 

 

Moving towards the deltaic strip between Kori and Sir Creek at the Runn of Kuchh in Badin district, a 14-hour drive from Kharo Chhan tehsil, we crossed the historic city of Thatta, once the capital city of the Sindhi kingdom. It was termed the Waterloo of Alexander the Great when, after wars in Afghanistan and northwest India, Alexander decided to travel back via Sindh and experienced a tough time. HT Lambrick, a former commissioner of Sindh, wrote that “there was a subtle power in Sindh which created the will to resist the foreigner.” 

 

The hamlets and villages of the deltaic districts of Thatta and Badin form a fragile rural society. Settled inland near the coast, agrarian communities comprise mainly sharecroppers, animal owners and herders. They carry the general features of Sindhi rural society. Villages are mainly based on one or two castes. Inter-family marriage is a common phenomenon. If a village has electricity, television provides the only and favourite source of entertainment. 

 

We next drove to adjoining areas bordering Gujrat, near the tomb of King Dodo Soomro. The area is particularly vulnerable to floods due to an ill-designed Left Bank Outfall Drainage (LBOD) project which, despite emptying into sea, inundates the villages and land in coastal Badin. In Shadman Lund, a village in Sindh’s part of the Runn of Kutchh, we met the elderly Sufi Natho Faqeer, embodying a living history of the area. He complained that local people were not consulted before the foundations of the LBOD were laid. According to him, with their knowledge of the delta’s tide, villagers could have suggested many amendments to the designs of the LBOD and other drains. 

 

The castes of rural Sindh, including the deltaic areas, had specific occupations: Syeds were engaged in agriculture, Memons in trade and Jats in camel rearing. Due to land degradation, migration and decreased livestock there has been little socio-economic development of rural society. The majority of the people of all the three castes had to adopt fishing as a profession. This has ultimately increased the pressure on fisheries’ resources. Sindhi is the majority language. However, some Punjabi settlers, who were awarded agricultural lands after the construction of the Sukkur Barrage, live in Badin’s coastal talukas . 

 

A recent study conducted by the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum points out that the ecological degradation process of the Indus delta began with the development of mega irrigation infrastructures on the Indus River during the pre-partition era. This process began in the 1890s, when the British developed the Punjab irrigation system, followed by the development of the Sukkur Barrage in 1932, the construction of the Kotri Barrage in 1955 and the Guddu Barrage in 1962. Subsequently, two huge dams were constructed, the Mangla and Tarbela dams in 1967 and 1974 respectively. There are now 19 barrages and 43 canal systems with 48 off-takes on the river system in Pakistan, creating the world’s largest contiguous man made system of 61,000 km of canals and 105,000 water courses, irrigating 35 million acres of land. Three storage reservoirs – Mangla on the River Jehlum and Tarbela and Chashma on the Indus River – were built, with a total storage capacity of 20 MAF (million-acre feet). As a result the
 Indus River freshwater discharge in the deltaic region has been reduced to one-fifth of its natural flow and the river has been confined to a single channel almost down to the coastal area. According to ecological studies undertaken by the IUCN (world conservation union), today the delta needs 35 MAF of water a year to maintain the ecological balance necessary for the continued existence of the delta and its communities. The oil-rich Badin people live in horrendous conditions. 

 

We left the salt-white flat plains of Sindh’s Runn of Kuchh in the full moonlight, as music echoed from the huts of the gypsies bidding us farewell. I couldn’t help but think of the Indus River, then and now. According to the myth popular in the region, the Indus is the ‘lion river.’ Mythology tells us that the Brahmaputra emerged from the mouth of a horse. Its waters are cold, and any one drinking them will become as sturdy as a horse. But the waters of the Indus are warm, and the person who drinks from it will become as strong as a lion. Today, sadly, both the Indus delta and river are threatened from both sides: upstream, the water is being sucked away, and downstream, the sea continues its relentless advance. 

 

Weekly, The Friday Times, Lahore


		
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