Sanjh story

Whenever I go to University of Gujrat, I collect something worthwhile. I was glad that my friend Yaqoob invited me when I happened to be in area, on a personal visit, last week. I had a chance to meet some of the top academics in the country who are in the University taking it to the next level at a fast pace. I also saw some more facilities coming up. The construction is still going on but more blocks have become functional since I visited last. Trees are growing fast and at this time of the year everything looks lush and refreshingly green.

Given my association with printed words, I am very impressed by the University of Gujrat Press. The state of the art machinery installed at the Press can adequately cater to any printing needs. And UOG Press publications include very useful productions from handbooks to general books and Sanjh – a set of 101 cards that has a history. The Sanjh set is now part of my collection and proudly sits on my desk and not only it keeps reminding of the University of Gujrat but also keeps pointing to a Sanjh story -  how artists of Pakistan cared for flood 2010 victims and moved people for contributing to the relief efforts. The inspiring act of Sanjh team (Zahraa Assad Saifullah and Zahra Mirza of RetroArts, Foaad Nizam of Danka, and Visual Artists, Imran, Sajjad and Usman) will go a long way and will be remembered in times to come. 

After the flood

This article appeared in daily the Nation, October 03, 2010 issue

After wreaking havoc across the country, the flood waters have slowly surged south along the Indus River, leaving the survivors with numerous daunting issues. According to raw estimates, the worst flood in the history of the country killed more than 1,750 people, forced out at least 10 million people from their homes and caused over $43 billion in damage. The tour of sodden districts highlights more loses and more worries.

Flood began in July. The swollen waters then poured across the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province in the northwest before flowing south into Punjab and Sindh. It is feared that flood may have dangerous long term effects on the stability of the country.

No government could cope well with such a large scale catastrophe, and Pakistan’s is unusually incapable due to lack of will, skills, resources and most of all state of unpreparedness for managing any disaster brought by humans and or nature. There is no single authority working in the country that focuses on disaster management. The National Disaster Management Authority was established in 2007 under the National Disaster Management Ordinance to deal with all aspects of natural as well as human disasters from preparedness and mitigation to recovery and rehabilitation. Disaster management authorities at provincial and district levels were to be established under the ordinance so that disaster management systems could be brought into mainstream planning process. Ironically, three years have passed but this has not happened so far. Punjab government is still thinking that in the presence of existing Relief and Crises Management Department and now also 1122, Punjab province does not need The National Disaster Management Authority in the first place. Absence of any uniform system for planning and preparing to fight any disaster results into poor response. That in return increases sufferings of the effected people.

The sufferings of people of this country are already a great deal worse. Economic growth has plunged down from an annual average of 7% in the mid 2000s to 4.4% last year. Unemployment is estimated to have risen to over 15%, and inflation, currently 13%, and the proportion of people living below the poverty line has fallen from 34.5% to 17%, according to the World Bank. The flood 2010 has made matters much worse.

It is hard to categories but scouting reveals that predominantly small farmers with little holdings and unskilled laborers who work on daily bases to earn their living are most severely affected. Inherently, poor are among the most vulnerable segment of population and almost all live below or just above the national poverty line. More than 60 percent lost immediate access to their primary livelihood and are faced with a drop in their already low income by more than half. Political analysts think that the significant increase in food prices in flood affected areas (and exultantly elsewhere also) is giving it a more dangerous twist.

After the flood, the real danger is to the stability of the country and if not managed efficiently, it may pop up once the first phase of the flood crisis is over. Human beings can accept immediate hardship, but are less able to withstand prolonged hunger, homelessness and helplessness. With no immediate respite in sight, the stalemate could lead to destabilize the country in the times to come and can aggravate the already deep regional security fissures. Life of people who have been displaced and are forced to live in camps established by the government or under makeshift arrangements on their own is very hard. Slow management of the disaster and sluggish relief efforts are adding to their hardships. This has added to the distrust that many people already feel for their governments. “The people say this (flood) was an act of God,” Salman Taseer the governor Punjab, rightly said in an interview after reassuring the crowd, “But what comes now, they say, is the act of man. If we don’t deliver, they will not forgive us.”

People already confronted with severe economic and security problems, may not survive the large scale social upheaval and long term hardship from the floods. What is more, political leaders who are responsible to deliver seem to have become absorbed in scoring points and squabbling. Intense tussles for power seem to be brewing beneath the political sparring, giving birth to rumors, which have added to the disillusionment of many people.

At the same time, the threat from the militant groups continues. Militants, heartless as they are, are continuing to pursue their agenda to destabilize the country by killing innocent people (remember bomb attacks against a religious processions in Punjab and Baluchistan that killed scores of people) right when the flood emergency was at its peak).

Having lost what all they had, the victims of recent floods are now destitute. People of Pakistan are very resilient and they have always been sacrificing on one pretext or the other but they have a limit. Crossing the limit may cause even worst tumult. Anyone listening in the din?

Related: Flood and livestock

Where will the aimals go?

This article appeared in daily the Nation, September 11, 2010 issue

Roaming around anywhere in rural Pakistan where floodwater has receded reveals the effects of flood 2010 on human as well as animals. The bloated corpses of buffalos, cows, donkeys and goats can be seen at many places in flood hit areas. Many of the surviving animals are seen suffering from lameness, fever, muscle contractions or swelling of shoulder, chest, back, neck or throat, foot rot and more.

One wonders where the animals would stand on the scale of importance when so many human lives are at stake. The fact is that the survival of the livestock is crucial to the survival of human beings, particularly so in agrarian society like ours.

Livestock is vital for the Pakistan’s agricultural economy and fabric of rural society. Livestock makes up 52.2 percent of the agriculture value and 11.3 percent of the national Gross Domestic Product. The value of livestock is 6.1 percent more than the combined value of major and minor crops, according to the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock. In addition to providing mutton and dairy products, Livestock is one of the major sources of raw material for different industrial sectors of the country including hides to leather sector, animal bones for preparation of crockery and animal blood for preparation of chicken feed to name just a few. Animals are also extensively used for transportation and cultivation.

As a consequence of the large scale extinction of livestock by the devastating floods this year (as per one estimate some 5 million animals were either killed or swept away by the rising tides in Sindh alone whereas another 5 million in other parts of the country), the industrial activities in the country are likely to suffer a major setback and they would have to rely on import of raw material.

Similarly, many who live in the flood prone rural areas rely on animal farming, large and small as per the capacity of the holdings, to make a living and support their families. Depletion of the livestock during the current floods in the country has deprived millions of people from their sources of revenue.

“My betal specie goat was all that I had. Goat was expected to deliver two lambs next month. I was planning to sell one of the lambs to raise money to repair the roof of my house that is leaking since last year and keep another for selling on the eve of Eid ul Azha next year. Selling milk would have been enough for me to live a comfortable life,” narrated Fateh Shahi, an old lady living in a mud and straw hut on the outskirts of village Mirkhan on the bank of Chenab. “I have lost my goat in the flood,” she added with tears in her eyes. Water had entered in Mirkhan during the month long floods that have destroyed homes and marooned people and animals.

Gulzar is a village shepherd. Personally, he does not own any animal. People of village Karyanwala give their goats to Gulzar everyday for grazing. Gulzar takes the herd out early morning and brings them back by sun set when owners collect their animals and keep them at home for night till Gulzar takes them out again next morning. This is a wonderful model of small scale animal farming common in rural areas. Gulzar gets the compensation for his work and people can keep their animals. This system allows everyone in the village to keep animals (mostly goats, cows and buffalos) for fresh milk and as a source of additional income.

“These animals are very important for us,” said, Gulzar Ahmed, while standing in the middle of his herd of goats that he had shifted from village Karyanwala on the Bank of Chenab to the safety on the bank of Rasul-Qadarabad Link Canal. Problem with goats is that they fall sick on wet ground what to talk of grazing. There are no veterinary doctors in our area and I have nowhere to graze and feed them. I am waiting when I will be able to go back to village and normal life.

Hundreds of thousands of cattle have drowned in the floods and the surviving animals are starving. Deaths due to drowning during the floods, deaths after the floods due to disease and hunger caused by loss of animal feeds has exacerbated the livestock related problems which are quite serious even under normal conditions. This loss of animals is expected to be higher after the ground data comes in. It is also feared that animal feed will not be easily accessible for at least six months, which could result in widespread starvation.

Why would anyone want to live in a place that is visibly exposed to floods every year?

UN's International Strategy for Disaster Reduction remarks, “Communities should have been kept away from flood-exposed river banks in Pakistan. If people had not settled on the river banks, definitely the disaster would have been less, because that is the main cause of the disaster.”

Some analysts have also attributed the current flood disaster to unregulated construction and development on river banks. They think that widespread build up and construction along the river banks and even on dried up riverbeds across the country had blocked the natural course of the rivers. Some others point out that fragility of natural environment in upstream areas of Indus river basin has exacerbated conditions of vulnerability. Pakistan has been left with only 4 percent forest and vegetative cover, in contrast to the required 25 percent, thereby experiencing an intense and uninterrupted discharge of water, especially during monsoon seasons. This coupled with increasing snowmelt in the Himalayan glaciers has intensified flood risks.

Given the local context, “it may never be possible to displace indigenous people from where they are living since generations, says Dr. Hamid Ghani Anjum. “What seems wise is that these areas may be made safer for them to live on,” he adds.

For ages, the Indus River has been a lifeline for the land we call home. The Indus has its source in Tibet. From there, it skirts China, heads into India then enters Pakistan south of the Karakoram Range before starting its long journey — some 1,976 miles — through the heart of the country into the Arabian Sea near Karachi. People and their animals have been happily living all along the banks of Indus and its tributaries since the Bronze Age, when the region was home to the thriving Indus Valley Civilization. Even now Indus Basin is called the breadbasket of Pakistan.

“There should be permanent protective embankments to check and regulate water in flood seasons,” says Dr. Anjum. Sadly, the empirical observations show that embankments, where they were present, did not stand in the face of current floods. “After the flood warning, the villagers had brought their animals on the protective band and at night the flood washed away the whole band along with the animals, thanks to the quality of construction,” tells Qasim Ali a volunteer who had visited flooded areas in Sindh during August.

This social segment living in the flood risk areas cannot be expected to make safe arrangements for themselves and their animals on priority. Need is to release the pressures upon them by providing sustainable rehabilitation and safer environment for future.


Related: Flood 2010

Flood 2010 - Cycle of vulnerabilities

This article appeared in daily the Nation, September 5, 2010 issue

When rivers were raging and floodwater was submerging more areas down the country, I was in my village situated in the beautiful basin (called Bela) of River Jhelum about three kilometers downstream from Rasul Barrage. Most of the green swathe in Bela, where I remember looking for ladybirds as my earliest memories in life, is under flood water. Our location makes us vulnerable to floods more than anyone else.

People living in basin areas are familiar with floods that usually occur in late summer (July to September) when the Subcontinent gets heavy monsoon rains. In the upper to mid reaches of the Basin, it is generally the tributaries like Jhelum and Chenab rivers, which are the cause of flooding rather than the Indus River itself. The monsoon low depression that causes intense rain develops either in the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal. Major flooding is generally associated with the depression from the bay of Bengal moving across India in west/north‐westerly direction and then turning north at the border with Pakistan.

Indus river basin, one of the largest river basins in Asia, covers approximately 70 percent of the country’s area. The largest river in the Basin is the Indus River with Chenab, Jhelum, Kabul, Ravi and Sutlaj rivers as its major tributaries.

Pakistan flood 2010, “probably the biggest emergency on the planet today,'' as UNICEF rightly puts it, has placed most of the Basin areas under water, killing many and displacing and destroying the livelihoods of millions. Flood also contains the germ of many others issues like starvation, epidemics, climate change, and violence, to name just a few. This suffering manifests itself in ways that raw statistics just cannot measure.

As always in floods of this magnitude, it is people living along rivers banks and in the foot of hills who are vulnerable and tend to suffer the most – both in the immediate disaster and in the long, uncertain aftermath. It is in this milieu that I talked to the spirited people in Bela of River Jhelum and tried to look into their fears and aspirations.

The influence of the development process on vulnerability to disasters is now well established. Lack of proper infrastructure and having no choices increases vulnerability of people to disasters. Those who are not on the priority list - if there is any list in the first place - of the governments and or are already at an economic disadvantage tend to be more likely to suffer during disasters like current floods. And it is not just due to poverty. “We are locked in a cycle of vulnerability simply because we happen to be living in Bela. Because we are vulnerable, we are at great risk in the face of a natural hazard like current floods. Because we suffer greater losses from a flood, we become even poorer, more vulnerable, and are at an even greater risk of another flood next year,” says Tassadaq Abbas, a contractor who do a business of excavating sand from Bela area and taking it to nearby towns. No one has ever bothered to visit us what to talk of taking any protective measures against floods and doing anything for us. We are at our own and think that there is no government for us,” Tassadaq, whose sand business is closed for many months even after waters recedes, adds.

All the evidence points to a steep and continuing rise in loss of lives and properties from floods since the 1950s and there is general consensus among trend watcher and experts that the frequency and magnitude of floods disasters is on the rise. The rise increases people’s vulnerability. What is more, economic and political environment of the country makes people even more vulnerable. This is most apparent in the economic pressures that force many of the poor to live in cheap but dangerous locations such as basins, even flood plains and unstable hillsides but there are many less visible underlying factors – social and political as well as economic – that affect people’s ability to protect themselves against disasters or to recover from them.

Mahmood Raja, my former class fellow and now a progressive farmer on the River Jhelum bank says, “Earlier floods used to be a yearly phenomenon in Bela. Flooding stopped after the construction of Mangla Dam upstream on River Jhelum and diversion of River Jhelum water to River Chenab (through Rasul-Qadarabad Link Canal). But in 1992, everything we had built was washed away. Now again the water has taken away everything we had.” Blame it on climate change, poor infrastructure, and lack of early warning system or in general lack of any proper disaster management system in the country, Mahmood, who has lost a prize winning bull in addition to ready for market maze fodder crop on the first when River Jhelum swelled out of its banks this year, and all those who are living in river basins are once again vulnerable to floods every year.

Flood 2010 has wiped out the asset base of people living in basins and they face a future where they have to re-build homes, clear debris covered land, re-equip agri businesses and add livestock and more. Given the estimates, anyone can see that the country is likely to lose at least this year's production, and may see food production levels lowered for the next few years because of the combined effects of soil erosion, destroyed irrigation systems, and contaminated soil. “New cycle of vulnerability has just started,” says Tassadaq.

In addition to the loss of life and property and the challenges, the current flood is testing the resilience and capacity of Pakistan and its people to overcome catastrophes. Nadir, another farmer from village Khewa, further downstream on the bank of River Jhelum, who lives and works closer to the River bank says, “It is difficult to move lock stock and barrel after we get fresh warning. Where can we take our live stocks and how can we feed them away from own land,” says nadir who, these days, keeps his important household on a tractor trolley in ready to move position. “So far the water has stayed 500 meters away from my home. We try to hold till the last moment but we have to move in case the situation worsens,” adds Nadir. 

The situation gets worst when the nations don’t have a capacity to withstand disasters (material and human resources that aid in the prevention and effective response to disasters). This includes the resources and skills people possess, can develop, mobilize or have access to which allow them to have more control over shaping their future. It is the ability of the nation to deal with hazards effectively. 

More rain and more floods may be on the way. But when the floodwaters retreat to the river beds, what is next for people living in river basins of Pakistan? It is hard to identify but one thing is sure; we need to build capacities to get people out of circle of vulnerability.

Related: Flood 2010

Looking forward to what

Pakistani flood survivors look out from their make-shift tent after fleeing their village in Sajawal, Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis fled floodwaters after the Indus River smashed through levees. Time photo of the week