“Water,
Water, Everywhere…”
By Mohammad Ashraf
Chaudhry,
Pittsburg, CA
The title line taken from
Coleridge’s famous poem, “The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner”, graphically relates
to Pakistan’s water situation. The poem
deals with the supernatural punishment and penance
of a seaman who heartlessly kills an albatross,
a bird of good omen in Antarctic regions. The
mariner narrates the story to a reluctant listener
who is on his way to a wedding, and while doing
so himself becomes a part of the penance. “Water,
water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink: Water,
water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink”.
The bird of good omen, the albatross, is democracy-cum-good
governance; the leadership and politicians bear
remarkable resemblance to the fascinated, but
reluctant listener on his way to a wedding; and
the mariner, of course, can be easily likened
to the people, cursed to live under recurring
penance.
PAKISTAN: BETWEEN DELUGE AND DROUGHT
Pakistan is a very peculiar country. It cannot
be likened to the 40 most poor and drought-prone
countries of the world. It has abundant supply
of fresh water, which it willingly flushes out
to the Arabian sea. The heavy snowfall this winter
was a blessing in disguise. If the Gilgit, Swat
and Kabul rivers are in flood now, it is understandable
because even a first-grader would tell you that
when snow melts, it turns into water.
But not our politicians. Like King Kafuta who
wished to turn ordinary things into gold by touch
and got buried in gold and died of starvation;
the people of Pakistan, too are dying of thirst
though they are surrounded by water from all sides.
In the arid plains of Fateh Jang, near Rawalpindi,
during summer, Noor Bibi walks 10 miles a day,
seven days a week for more than three hours each
day to fetch some 16 gallons of drinkable, not
necessarily fresh and pure, water. The formula
to calculate this labor is simple. If the source
of water is .62 miles away from a dwelling, one
needs to walk 30 minutes a day. Imagine how many
miles a day people, mostly women, living in Mianwali,
Dera Ghazi Khan, Sindh, Baluchistan and in many
other southern parts of Pakistan would be constrained
to walk each day? Roughly five hours a day.
The UNO and the UNICEF recommend 50 liters of
water a day for an average family of four for
drinking, washing, cooking and sanitation. Pakistanis
get between 20 to 25 liters a day. The average
size of a family in Pakistan, according to the
Economist’s World in Figures, is 7.1 with
a fertility rate of 5.4 per woman. This hints
that one does not need to be a Thucydides to figure
out what Pakistan urgently needs: not readiness
for war, but people’s access to drinkable
water. In the past 58 years, this elixir of life
has never emerged prominently in the government’s
list of priorities. The reason being: the starved
poor, teeming in millions over time have learnt
to live in thirst (the less they drank of it,
the better chance they have to live longer because
80% of the water they drink is either toxic or
is contaminated); and the rich did not feel any
compunctions to hook themselves to, the “bottles”.
We know the earth’s water exists in three
forms - as ice, salt water and as drinkable fresh
water. The seawater, which is 97% of the total
available water, is saltish. Of the remaining
3% available for human consumption, 2% is ice-caped
and only 1% is fresh water, and out of this 1%,
it is the hundredth part of it that is good for
drinking. 20% of all the fresh water available
on Earth lies in Russia’s Lake Baikal, and
the rest 80% for the world’s over 6 billion
thirsty.
A quarter of the world’s armed conflicts
of recent years have involved a struggle for natural
resources, and water is emerging as a major cause
of friction. Once an abundance of natural wealth
was counted as a blessing of God; now it can prove
itself to be a country’s biggest curse.
Oil-rich countries have known it first hand and
water-rich countries will know soon. If the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Zambabwe, Uganda and Rwanda
are in perennial conflict, it is not that they
are ethnically diverse; it is all due to Congo’s
gold and diamonds which are eyed by all and which
claimed 3 million lives in 1998 alone.
The water of the Niles will never let Egypt and
Ethiopia live amicably in peace. Big Egypt will
never be happy to live with what is left by Ethiopia
of the Niles water. Boutros-gali was right when
as minister of state for foreign affairs in 1985
he said, “The next war in the Middle East
will be fought over water, not politics”.
In less than 20 years his prediction has come
true. The Nile flows through 10 countries where
half the population lives below the poverty line,
and in less than next 25 years it will be doubled.
Their claim is: The Nile is not for Sudan and
Egypt alone.
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh face a similar
situation. Replace the Nile with the River Ganges.
This would be the next flashpoint of tensions
between Bangladesh and India. India plans to interlink
its more than 30 rivers by diverting their water
towards its other drought-prone states. That will
reduce a water-drenched Bangladesh to a parched
and sooty riverbed where once water flowed. Bangladesh
has already sounded the alarm bell over this scheme
by calling it “weapon of mass destruction
in the offing”. India’s dispute with
Pakistan on Bagliar dam and over the equitable
distribution of water of other rivers has already
taken the two countries for mediation to the UNO
court.
In the year 2000, some 2.2 million people died
from diseases associated with lack of access to
safe drinking water, and poor hygiene according
to the WHO, and patients suffering from water-borne
diseases occupy half of the world’s hospital
beds. The rich countries can afford the same average
amount of water while cleaning their teeth with
a running tap (10 liters), per day as a person
living in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Gambia,
Somalia, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and
certainly in some parts of India and Pakistan,
too. England and Wales, according to a 2000/1
report, can afford leaking out water from their
pipes every day to the tune of 3.2 billion liters,
but not Pakistan where 70% of the available water
in taps leaks out before it reaches the faucets
which keep whistling with air for 16 to 18 hours
a day, sucking in as much bacteria as their ruptures
can allow them, an arrangement made by the local
governments to keep people sick and thirsty.
A health official told IRIN, a news organization,
in May that an outbreak of water-borne diseases
has been reported in central areas of Pakistan’s
southern province of Sindh caused by polluted
domestic water supplies. Over 1,100 people with
diarrhea visited the public health facilities
in just two weeks. In Shahdara over 10 people
died, and 1,000 suffered stomach-ache after drinking
contaminated water, infested with bacteria visible
to the naked eyes. According to Dr. Solangi, laboratory
tests of water samples confirmed that contaminated
water is being supplied for household consumption,
and in several areas, raw sewage and drinking
water get mixed.
Last year’s tragedy of the death of over
30 people in Hyderabad is still fresh in memory.
Another health crisis is looming when local toxic
lake, Manchhar, which is overflowing and needs
to be flushed out, and in the exercise its toxic
water is bound to mix up with the water of river
Indus which is the main source of drinking water
for many parts of the city and country. Last year
during my visit to Rawalpindi, I counted at least
five leaking pots where water was oozing out from
the underground pipes, and they kept leaking during
my stay of a month there. In one case the drinkable
water pipe passed over and through an open drainage
and it leaked profusely.
I attempted to hire a plumber to fix the problem,
but was wisely warned by the corner bakery man
that it could be construed as an attempt to tamper
with the “sarkari” property, resulting
in lots of inconvenience to me. I saw wisdom in
what he said and bought my daily share of mineral
water bottles from him and walked away.
It is good that the prime minister is heard of
talking about long-term strategy to cope with
the scarcity of drinkable water; and the President
has all along been talking about building dams.
The snowstorms, floods and droughts of this and
last year must have sounded alarm bells that the
problem really had reached a stage that it needed
to be fixed immediately.
When Prophet Joseph said, “Place in my charge
the store-houses of the land; behold! I shall
be a good and knowing keeper”, clearly he
was asking for power, perhaps the only example
in the Qur’an where anyone seeking power
is described in commendable terms. Prophet Joseph
was gifted with a talent; the talent to plan and
foresee things. While explaining the dreams of
the King of Egypt, he gave him the proper advice
on how the king and his people should prepare
for the drought years that were coming. Was it
not due to his advice that Egypt survived the
seven-year famine and was also able to help the
countries nearby?
President Musharraf and, of course, prime minister,
Shaukat Aziz had also sought power over people
because in their own wisdom they thought that
they were the best to run the country. If after
six years of rule, the people still yearn for
a glass of fresh water, or for a respectable living
environment where they feel safe and are free
to conduct their lives as they wish, then it is
matter of regret to say the least.
The situation reminds one of a Greek story of
the king of Crete, called King Minos. He built
a huge structure to contain a monster, called
Minotaur, a half-bull-half man. He sent thieves
and his opponents to this structure where they
invariably got lost and were unable to find a
way out. They wandered through the maze until
they died of starvation and thirst, or were devoured
by the Minotaur. Is it not unfortunate that a
majority of the people of Pakistan tends to think
of their country as a structure in whose labyrinth
they either get lost to die of thirst and hunger
or get eaten away by the Minotaur of inflation?
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