Indus Delta Down To 10% Of Historic Area As Water Diversions, Rising Seas Take Toll

[hatrack]

EDIT

A ferryboat trip costing Rs 25 (31 US cents) is the only way to get to the island. The ride lasts about 15 minutes but the boat will not leave the rickety jetty until it is full and that may take well over an hour. Passengers may have for company chickens, goats, buffaloes, bags of grocery and the odd bicycle. There are waiting areas near the jetty in the form of chai khanas (tea stalls) where endless cups of sweetened milky tea may be had, even on credit, since people here are related to or are known to each other.

Mallah is old enough to remember a time when Deh Bublo was a major town, if not a city. Pointing to the market place with a stick he said: ‘’There was a post office, a proper school, a customs and revenue office, and a police station.’’ ‘’Muslims, Sikhs and the Hindus lived here amicably till the Muslims shouted the slogan of Allah-o-Akbar (God is great), in 1947 and the non-Muslims fled in a hurry, leaving all their property with us to pillage and usurp, ‘’Mallah reminisced. ‘’The barren land that you just came through to get here was once fertile. It was lush green. There were mango orchards, banana plantations, red rice, olive trees, coconut trees etc. We grew maize, barley and various lentils. It rained during the monsoons and we had ample fresh and clean water,’’ Mallah said.

The inhabitants of the Indus Delta who were predominantly farmers and herders have had to take to fishing in order to survive. ‘’Its only when our land became infertile that we turned to fishing,’’ says 56-year-old Abdullah Baloch. Over the years Baloch lost 250 acres of cultivable land to the sea, some 50 buffaloes and around 80 goats. ‘’Altogether my family lost 3,500 acres. We were once considered big landlords in this place with farmers working for us. We even paid tax to the government. Now we don’t even have even an acre to plough,’’ he says wistfully. According to the revenue department, 86 percent of the 235,485 acres of fertile land in Kharo Chhan has been swallowed by the sea. The population, over the past decade, has declined from 15,000 to 5,000.

Migratory birds like the red cranes, swans and geese would come in droves. Now, even the birds peculiar to this part have disappeared, said Shafi Mohammad Murghar, head of Delta Development Organisation, a local non-governmental organisation.

EDIT

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45927