Indus valley, History of ancient Civilization:
It is believed that the ancient people of the valley of Indus were outstanding in the field of agriculture and industry as compared to the civilization of contemporary period in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The textile crafts made from cotton are living examples of their expertise. Such was the glory of the ancient people of Indus valley; perhaps they were the first sedentary farmers of the world. The richness and wealth of the Indus valley was the greed of the foreigners. The valley of Indus has always been the cherished goal of the invaders and conquerors that followed one after another from the northwestern passes through the mountain ranges. The Aryans, the Iranians, the Graeco bactrians , the Parthenians, the Kushans, the white Huns, Muslims emperors, and Britishers plundered the rich valley of the Indus from time to time and ruled over the valley and northern India. Entire history of Indus valley reveals that one invader or another has treaded the present Pakistan. The Muslims of the sub-continent first tried to shake off acentury old rule of British in 1857 and finally succeeded to drive them away in 1947, and the great valley Indus became part of Pakistan. Pakistan lies between latitudes 24 degree and 37degree North and longitudes 61 degree to 76 degree East. Its surroundings include Iran on thewest, Afghanistan on the northwest, Gilgit Agency, Azad Kashmir and disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir lie on the northeast, India on the east and the Arabian Sea exists on its south.
Catchments of Indus River system:
The Indus basin is a part of the catchments of the Indus river system that includes the northwest mountains, the Katchi plain, desert areas of Sindh, Bahawalpur, and the Rann of Kachh. The Indus and its major tributaries flow in longitudinal valleys in structural troughs paralleled to the mountain and invariably take an acute bend descending to the alluvial plains by cutting through mountains. These plains are stretched over a distance of 1528 Kilometers (950 miles) to the tidal delta near the Arabian Sea. The total catchment area of Indus River system spreads over 944,573square kilometers (364,700 square miles). Of which 553,416 square kilometers (213,674 squaremiles) exist in Pakistan with a varying width of over 320 kilometers (nearly 200 miles) in the Punjab to about 80 kilometers (50 miles) in the narrow neck between the Thar Desert and the Khir thar mountains. The flat plain of Indus basin is made up of highly fertile alluvium deposited by the river Indus and its tributaries. Agriculture is concentrated essentially to this plain, where ithas been developed by harnessing principal surface water resources available. Since, evaporationis high with meager and unreliable rainfall over Indus plains, hence, agriculture is whollydependent on irrigation supplies. The river Indus and its tributaries are like a funnel, they rise inthe northern mountain areas, receive water from various resources (snow, glacier melt, andrainfall), converge into a single stream at Panjnad (Mithankot), cover about 1005 Kilometers(625 miles) through the Sindh province, and finally discharge into Arabian sea.
Historical Perspective:
The Almighty Allah has gifted Pakistan with abundant water resources with water flowing downthe Himalayas and Karrakurram heights from the world's largest glaciers, a free and unique bounty of nature for this land of alluvial plains. As a result of this natural resource, today wehave the world's marvelous and the largest contiguous irrigation system that currently irrigatesover 16 million hectares of land, out of 34 million hectares of cultivable lands available. Thisland lies within the plains formed by river Indus and its tributaries. Britishers started the barrageirrigation system during 1930s. However, before that the residents of Punjab, Sindh, and Frontier had constructed a number of inundation canals to irrigate their lands. In the Punjab, 38 suchcanals had been taken out of Sutlej, Indus, and Chenab rivers to irrigate areas around Bari Doab, Multan, Muzaffargarh, and Dera Ghazi Khan. In Sindh, water level of the Indus during summer had always been higher than the surrounding lands, thus, 16 inundation canals in this area hadconveniently carried out the irrigation water during past century. However, British ArmyEngineers undertook construction and improvement of several irrigation canals in the sub-continent. Subsequently, remodeling/construction works on Bari Doab Canal; Sidhnai Canal,Lower Sohag, Ramnagar Canal, Lower Jhelum Canal, Kabul Canal, and Lower Sawat werecompleted by the end of l9th century. However, at the time of independence country had 29canals to provide regulated supply to an area of about 11 million hectares, beside an area of about 3.2 million hectares irrigated through inundation canals leading from Indus and itstributaries. These main inundation canals included Upper Sutlej, Lower Sutlej, Shahpur, andChenab in Punjab; whereas, Rohri, Fuleli, Pinyari, and Kalri in Sindh. However, after theconstruction of barrages these canals are no more inundation canals but get regulated water supply and some of them have become perennial while few are nonperennial.
Facts and Figures:
We have entered into 21st century with world's largest and unified irrigation system that consistsof three major reservoirs (Chashma, Mangla, and Tarbela); 18 barrages (Ferozepur, Sulemanki,Islam, Balloki, Marala, Trimmu, Panjnad, Kalabagh, Sukkur, Kotri, Taunsa, Guddu, Chashma,Mailsi, Sidhnai, Rasul, Qadirabad, and Marala); 12 link canals; 45 irrigation canals; and over 107,000 water courses and millions of farm channels & field ditches. The total length of maincanal system is estimated about 585000 Kilometer (36932 miles) and that of watercourses &field channels exceeds 1.62 million Kilometers (over 1.02 million miles).
