In Pakistan’s crisis, sowing of crops such as dams run less, India tightens chainb flow. Bharat News
New Delhi: Pakistan is staring at a sowing season of a foggy kharif (summer crops) with a major dip in live storage in its two major dams – Mangala on the Indus and Mangala on the Tarbella river – and the Pahalgam Torler Attack “suddenly” after the regulation of water flow by India.The situation in this month may increase further, which may increase during early kharif sowing and it is probably that Pakistani PM Shahbaz Sharif raised concerns to attract global attention to India’s decision to suspend India’s Indus Water Treaty last week to express concern at a conference on glacier conservation in Tajikistan’s Dushanbe.The latest estimates of Pakistan’s Indus River System Authority (IRSA) suggest that the country is already facing a overall decrease of water flow and about 50% in live storage of two major dams that play an important role in providing water for irrigation and making hydropower in Sindh provinces of Punjab and Pakistan.Referring to its latest assessment of water availability for the operation of summer sowing during the May-sept, the IRSA in its statement “mentioned with anxiety” that “the short supply by India would result in a greater decrease in the Kharif season as a result of a sudden decrease in the river chainb in Marrala”.
It announced a overall reduction of 21% and advised the monitoring agencies of dam officials and irrigation supply to use water from reservoirs, “taking into account the crisis created by the Indian small supply in the Chenb River”.Although the situation may improve with monsoon rains in the catchment sector, by next month, the operations of Pakistan’s farming will depend more on how India controls the flow through limited infrastructure of its own reservoirs – Baglihar and Salal – On Chenabs in Jammu and Kashmir.India has so far flushed these reservoirs and provided additional water storage by cleaning the sediment. In addition, it stopped sharing water flow data with Pakistan after the 1960 Treaty with Pakistan.Publicly available information on live storage of Pakistan’s important reservoirs shows that Mangala Dam currently lowers less than 50% of its fill level (2.7 million acres than the total capacity of 5.9 mAF), while the live storage of Tarbela Dam is slightly higher than the total capacity of 11.6 MFA. Officials here believe that since India is suspended after suspending the IWT, there is no compulsion to share the water flow data with Pakistan, so it will be difficult for the neighboring country to manage the floods during the extreme flow season, once the monsoon hits the catchment areas of the Indus River system as it falls within India. In two provinces of Pakistan, Punjab and Sindh, the operation of farming, completely depends on the irrigation canals associated with the Indus river system, which receives almost the entire water from western rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenabs. Although India has full rights over the water of Eastern rivers (Ravi, Sutlage and Beas) under IWT, the benefits of the Indian side have insufficient infrastructure to use water by Pakistan. India is allowed to manufacture water storage facilities on western rivers up to 3.6 MAF, but it is not able to fully use Pakistan, making Pakistan a default beneficiary.
