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Who is responsible for the National Drainage Programme's failure?
Dawn, By Sikander Brohi, 24 February 2003

Agriculture is Pakistan's most important sector providing livelihood to majority of the population and playing a pivotal role in food security, employment and income generation.

Including forestry, livestock and fisheries, it accounts for about 26 per cent of the GDP and more than 45 per cent of employment. It generates directly and indirectly about 70 per cent of export earnings.

The growth in the sector has declined from an annual average of 4.1 per cent in the 1980s to 3.4 per cent in the 1990s. The deteriorating productivity and increasing environmental damage has threatened the
sustainability of agricultural output. Inefficiencies in the irrigation system have emerged as the main factor behind deterioration in agriculture productivity, besides other small scale problems like imperfections in land market and land distribution; increasing deterioration of land quality; an inadequate rural transport network;
inefficiencies in public sector marketing of certain agricultural inputs and outputs; poor quality of research and extension; and restricted access to credit by small farmers.

The main problems related to the irrigation system of the country include low delivery efficiency due to system losses, inequitable irrigation water distribution, inadequate operation and maintenance, inefficient use of irrigation water, lack of proper drainage system, etc.

Such inefficiencies in irrigation sector have threatened the agriculture sector, especially with the menace of water logging and salinity. At present roughly 38 per cent of the total irrigated cropped area is waterlogged to the extent that the water table is shallower than 10 feet below the surface. Of this, 15 per cent is severely waterlogged, meaning the water table is shallower than 5 feet below the surface. Another 14
per cent is salt-affected.

The impact of water logging on crop yields is startling - a decrease in the depth of the water table to within 5 feet inhibits root growth and causes yields of all major crops to decline rapidly. The impact of salinity on agricultural productivity is also severe, robbing Pakistan of about 25 per cent of its potential production of major crops, or about $2.5 billion per year. Water logging and salinity problems are most severe in Sindh, where more than half of the waterlogged and salinity-affected areas are located.

To prevent such a growing threat to the agriculture sector, the government with the financial support of international donors, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, launched the National Drainage Programme (NDP) in 1997. The NDP primarily aims at decentralization and creation of a multi-tier system of autonomous institutions comprising stakeholders down to grassroots levels. The NDP consists of the following three complementary components:

* Sector planning and research to improve policy formulation, sector and project planning and the technical knowledge base.

* Institutional reforms, involving redefining and decentralizing functions of Wapda's water wing, involving a strategic reorientation towards integrated Indus River basin management and regulation, PIDs through their reconstitution as financially self-sufficient Provincial Irrigation and Drainage Authorities (PIDAs) and pilot transition of irrigation and drainage systems to the area water boards and the farmers organisations who are to be responsible for system management at the canal command area and distributary levels, respectively.

* Infrastructure investments for the construction and improvement of both on- and off-farm drainage and irrigation systems as well as performance-based operation and maintenance contracts awarded to the
private sector.

Given the deterioration in the agriculture and irrigation sector, the NDP emerged as a ray of hope. It was its participatory approach which created attraction for the programme among the common growers as well as
independent agriculture and irrigation experts of the country despite the bitter experiences of failure of the mega drainage projects of the past, especially Left Bank Outfall Drainage (LBOD) which failed mainly
due to lack of participatory approach in the planning and implementation phases of the project.

Launched with great fanfare three years back, unfortunately the NDP has miserably failed in freeing itself from the clutches of bureaucratic centralized policies despite the promises by the World Bank and Pakistan
authorities of making the project a living example of participatory approach of development.

As such not only progress of the programme is hampered but the programme itself is fast becoming ambiguous in the eyes of independent irrigation and agriculture experts as well as common growers of the country. Although the over-centralization and bureaucratic delaying tactics have hit various components and sub-components of the programme hard; however, here issues related to two important components of the
programme, i.e. research and information dissemination, are discussed as examples.

Research is one of the major components of the programme because it is the research activity which generates fresh information and knowledge about various issues related to any programme. Although institutional setup in the NDP has been decentralized from the NDP headquarter to the provincial NDP cells, from PIDs to PIDAs, area water boards, and farmers organizations, the research component in the NDP has still been kept as a centralized activity being handled by the Wapda headquarters in Lahore. Due to such centralization the whole process is facing bureaucratic delays.

Besides this, research has been confined to some selected, in many cases, irrelevant topics by some 'favoured' institutions of Lahore, while completely ignoring the diversity of the issues of irrigation and
drainage in different areas/provinces as well as the diversity of public and private sector institutions working in different provinces. The act of centralization is perceived by many independent experts and institutions as conflicting with the participatory approach of the NDP.

The main negative impact of such centralization has been on the NDP reform processes in Sindh. Despite the fact that the NDP reform processes are quite ahead in Sindh than Punjab and other provinces, the NDP reform managers in Sindh have been rendered helpless in further strengthening and crystallizing their reform process by initiating research on various irrigation reform -related local/provincial issues with the help of the provincial public and private sector research institutions.

Without proper research initiatives there is not only fear of flaws in the reform process in Sindh, but the local research institutions which were supposed to work as partners and stakeholders in the whole reform process have been kept away from this process and as such the reform process in Sindh has failed in developing institutional linkages.

Meanwhile, it is also pertinent to note that according to the original NDP plan the local provincial and national research institutions were to be financially supported and their capacity was to be built through research grants and by providing them infrastructure facilities from the NDP funds; however due to the centralized and 'pick and choose' policy in the research component, the research institutions of Sindh have been deprived of the capacity building and other support mechanisms from the NDP, which would have encouraged and facilitated them to further their research activities for the improvement of agriculture and irrigation sector of Sindh as well as Pakistan.

Another matter which is also badly affecting the performance of the NDP is the delayed as well as centralized process of 'information dissemination', including publicity of the NDP and its activities. The NDP was launched at a time when still the memories of the failure of LBOD project were fresh in the minds of the people of Sindh. Therefore, it needed wide information dissemination activities to make the main stakeholders as well as general masses aware about the programme's goal, objective, strategies, processes as well as main activities.

Being alarmed about the possibilities of community/ stakeholder opposition to the programme despite its unique participatory approach, the initial project documents of the NDP are carrying a number of promises with regard to ensuring sustainable information dissemination processes for the stakeholders.

For example, the NDP Staff Appraisal Report (SAR) while discussing the agreed action plan about information disclosure/release of documents of public interests reads: "The borrower, provinces and Wapda would translate the Drainage Sector Environmental Assessment (DSEA) and other project related documents of public interest into local languages; and summarize these documents and release them to the public before the mid-term review through the media and public information centre and library to be established by Wapda under the project.

"Wapda would translate all 'three-year rolling business plans' and investment project feasibility study reports into the local languages and disseminate them widely to stakeholders, including through the local press in English and Urdu. Wapda would arrange for the full EIAs and RAPs to be available in the local language on demand from affected populations and NGOs."

However, interestingly not a single step has been taken so far with regard to the above-mentioned plans of information dissemination in a decentralized manner in local languages. Even the attractive plan of establishing the NDP Public Information Centre and Library has still not been materialized despite passage of three years.

It is also interesting to note that according to the original plan, such information centre and library was to be established not only at the Wapda headquarters, but such information dissemination centres were to be established also in the provincial headquarters of Wapda and the NDP as well as at the level of area water boards as the project documents says, "Wapda's water wing would establish and maintain a public information centre in Lahore, regional offices and other publicly accessible offices of Wapda, PIDAs and AWBs, which would be used as collection, storage and dissemination centres for public information regarding the project, water resources development issues."

Similarly, according to the initial project plan, the annual report and audited financial statements, the annual monitoring and evaluation (M&E) report, and the environmental and resettlement reports of the project as
a whole, or their substantive excerpts were to be published in local press to make the local grower communities and other stakeholders aware about the programme performance. Besides that the NDP provincial cells were to publish and distribute nationally a quarterly bulletin or newsletter to educate and inform the public and project affected persons about the project's objectives, activities, policies, programmes and achievements.

However, nothing has been done as yet despite the fact that the first three-year phase of the project implementation is coming to its conclusion.

In practice such a sensitive programme is being run without providing information to the stakeholders, especially the growers' community. Again it is Sindh where the NDP reforms are suffering due to lack of proper and decentralized information dissemination strategy and process. As such doubts with regard to the NDP are increasing in Sindh with the passage of each and every day. It is also feared that such slowly and gradually developing opposition and misunderstanding about the NDP may culminate in the mass opposition to the NDP in Sindh, which would certainly be a great blow to the irrigation reforms in the province.

It is said that the provincial NDP authorities have been requesting the central NDP and Wapda authorities to provide them the needed resources and authority to launch their information dissemination processes according to their provincial/ regional needs and requirements; however, they have still not succeeded in motivating the central NDP and Wapda authorities in this regard.

It is high time that those at the helm in the NDP at the central level should acknowledge the importance of decentralized and participatory research and information dissemination process for the success of NDP and should develop proper and sustainable mechanisms for enhancing such processes especially in the regions/provinces where the NDP reforms are making headway so as to avert any kind of opposition to the reform process.

http://www.dawn.com/2003/02/24/ebr12.htm