Why Sindh Has Concerns About Kachhi Canal Phase II, and Why Balochistan Also Stands to Lose
- In the late 1900s, we were handed an outright deception: “Don’t worry, Manchar Lake won’t turn saline; our advanced engineering has it covered.” The fallout was severe—Manchar deteriorated rapidly, worsened by our own institutional shortcomings and political failures
By: Mohammad Ehsan Leghari
After every major flood in Pakistan, announcements for large engineering projects dominate the news, kicking off a damaging cycle. These projects appear to offer fast fixes for flooding or water shortages. However, a closer analysis reveals they often hide long-term costs and create real dangers for downstream communities. The debate over Kachhi Canal Phase II highlights this problematic trend clearly. On one hand, it looks like a development boost for one province, but in truth, it’s a misleading promise that could spell disaster for another—while deeper examination shows it may not even deliver lasting gains for Balochistan’s vulnerable farmers (Irfan & Salman, 2025; Khan, 2024).
In the late 1900s, we were handed an outright deception: “Don’t worry, Manchar Lake won’t turn saline; our advanced engineering has it covered.” The fallout was severe—Manchar deteriorated rapidly, worsened by our own institutional shortcomings and political failures. This history underscores how flawed designs can lead to irreversible environmental harm, eroding trust in such initiatives.
The planned Kachhi Phase II seems poised for similar or greater issues. Analytically, its drawbacks outweigh the hyped short-term advantages, as evidenced by past phases’ underperformance and unaddressed risks (Audit General of Pakistan, 2017-18).
To break down the context, the Kachhi Canal aims to divert water from Taunsa—the final barrage on the Indus in Punjab—across hundreds of miles through Punjab to irrigate Balochistan’s Kachhi plains, targeting over 700,000 acres for farming. Yet, Phase I has only cultivated about 70,000 acres so far, plagued by design errors, construction delays, and management lapses (Audit General of Pakistan, 2017-18). As Phase II proceeds under WAPDA, Sindh’s Irrigation Department has flagged valid, pressing, and data-backed concerns on technical, environmental, and ethical fronts. The design repeats Phase I’s mistake of ignoring natural water routes, slicing through hill torrent paths from the mountains—much like the 1990s LBOD Spinal Drain disrupted Dhoro Puran’s flow. This oversight not only endangers Sindh but also disrupts Kachhi’s own farming ecosystem, potentially leading to soil degradation and reduced productivity over time (Sindh Irrigation Department, 2023).
Sindh’s position isn’t driven by inter-provincial rivalry; it’s grounded in geographical realities, hydrological patterns, and the topography of hill torrents. Heavy rains on the Kirthar and Koh-e-Sulaiman mountains send torrents flowing naturally to Sindh’s plains. This age-old system has sustained ecosystems for centuries, depositing nutrient-rich silt and moisture via rivers and streams, enhancing fertility in rain-fed zones across both provinces. Interfering artificially—by blocking, channeling, or diverting—disrupts this equilibrium, with analysis showing it could cause widespread agricultural losses along the shared border, affecting yields and livelihoods in Sindh and Balochistan alike (Federal Flood Commission / RJPN, 2024).
The 2022 Floods: The Scale and the Forgotten Lesson
During the catastrophic 2022 floods, intense hill torrents from Koh-e-Sulaiman breached the Kachhi Canal at multiple points, following their inherent paths. This left the canal inoperable for two years, illustrating how ignoring natural flows leads to infrastructure failure (Irfan & Salman, 2025). Rather than adapting based on this evidence, Phase II’s design incorporates Flood Carrier Drains to “safeguard” the canal. But critically, this approach concentrates floodwaters like a bottleneck, directing them toward Sindh and risking widespread inundation of areas, including overflows at Hamal and Manchar lakes (Khan, 2024).
For Sindh, this risks a 2022 repeat, with dire consequences: Hamal Lake holds under 0.1 million acre-feet, and Manchar’s shallow expanse overflowed severely in 2010 and 2022. These drains threaten settlements along the Indus’s right bank, from upstream to Manchar and further, potentially displacing communities and destroying crops. Balochistan loses out too, as the drains squander valuable water and silt that naturally disperse (as in Kachho), moisturizing Kachhi soils for local cultivation. WAPDA’s fix merely relocates the problem downstream, diminishing the natural benefits of local flows and undermining sustainable water use (The Water Channel, 2022).
Inadequate Data and the Certainty of Design Failure
Sindh engineers have critiqued WAPDA’s data quality sharply: flood models draw from distant stations like Jacobabad and Sibi, while excluding 1988 and 2012 floods as “outliers” (data points deviating from norms). This exclusion creates a falsely secure design on paper, but in practice, it’s built on distorted facts, increasing failure risks (Sindh Irrigation Department, 2023).
More alarmingly, the system targets only a 40-year flood return period, despite Pakistan experiencing three 100-year floods in the last 15 years. Climate change threats are sidelined entirely, meaning investments in Balochistan could collapse under the next heavy rain, squandering public funds and failing core objectives (Federal Flood Commission / RJPN, 2024).
Spate Irrigation and Resilience
Spate irrigation is a time-tested farming technique that harnesses sudden floodwaters from hill torrents or rivers, spreading them across fields in arid regions to irrigate crops naturally, without massive infrastructure.
Paradoxically, the 2022 floods revealed a superior, resilient alternative for Kachhi plains. Post-recession, retained moisture enabled farmers in Bhag Nari Tehsil to cultivate winter crops like chickpeas, wheat, and coriander across thousands of acres. Analysis from The Water Channel shows this yielded significant agricultural gains from saturated soils and residual water, proving spate irrigation outperforms rigid canals in efficiency and adaptability (The Water Channel, 2022). Rooted in local knowledge, low-cost, and concrete-free, this method—proven in Sindh’s Kachho and Balochistan—can be scaled up. It provides affordable, enduring, and equitable benefits for vast desert ecologies, empowering small-scale and poor farmers, unlike megaprojects that favor elite landowners, influencers, and contractors (Irfan & Salman, 2025; The Water Channel, 2022).
The Question of Water Scarcity and Equity
Water allocation is a core equity issue. IRSA certified the Kachhi Canal in 2003 with Sindh’s input, but that node of ‘yes’ never factored in the massive flood burdens now proposed by WAPDA (Khan, 2024).
Thus, Phase II poses a double threat: it heightens Sindh’s flood vulnerability, erodes Balochistan’s adaptive farming like spate irrigation, and channels funds into a misplaced, poorly designed project blind to climate realities (Audit General of Pakistan, 2017-18).
Sindh’s Proposals for a Shared, Rational Solution
Sindh supports Balochistan’s progress but calls for intelligent, collaborative, climate-resilient planning. Sindh recommends:
- Drop the Flood Carrier Drains immediately, as they channel vast flood volumes to Hamal and Manchar.
- Manage hill torrents and flash floods locally in Balochistan’s plains through retention, spreading, small check dams, and spate irrigation promotion—this optimizes their agriculture.
- Incorporate 100-year flood standards and climate change realities into the design.
- Avoid any upstream drainage projects that direct water downstream to Sindh.
Ultimately, Sindh asserts: The project’s fundamental flaws—from inadequate design to selective data omission—render it unstable. Phase II is likely to falter amid intensifying climate-driven rains, inflicting ongoing damage in wetter years ahead. The 2022 floods taught a vital lesson: align with nature, not oppose it. Pakistan’s water strategy must now emphasize fairness, collective security, and natural flows over hasty, politically motivated megaprojects (Irfan & Salman, 2025; Khan, 2024).
Appendix: References
Irfan, A. & Salman, V. (2025). Evaluation of Balochistan’s Kachhi Canal Project. PIDE RASTA Conference Paper.
Khan, M. H. (2024, October 27). Divisive canals. Dawn / Riphah Information Portal.
Audit General of Pakistan. (2017-18). Performance Audit Report on Kachhi Canal Project WAPDA.
The Water Channel. (2022). A flood with a benefit: using the extensive moisture in Kachhi Plains. TheWaterChannel Blog.
Federal Flood Commission / RJPN. (2024, May 2). A Case Study of Sori Lund Hill Torrent.
Sindh Irrigation Department / Resources. (2023, February 3). Analyzing the Impact of Ungauged Hill Torrents…
Read: Don’t Do the Maths That Way!
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Mohammad Ehsan Leghari is Member (Sindh), Indus River System Authority, and former Managing Director, SIDA.
