Punjab has revised its water rate under the Punjab Irrigation, Drainage and Rivers Act 2023, replacing the old crop-based assessment with a flat per-acre charge of Rs 1,650 for kharif and Rs 850 for rabi, alongside revised rates for garden supplies and state lift irrigation. The ensuing debate has focused almost entirely on whether irrigation water should cost more. The serious answer has long been yes. The real questions are whether this increase has been designed well, imposed at the right moment, and whether the government's own budget supports the case for asking farmers to pay more.
Principle of Pricing: Why Water Must Cost More
Punjab operates one of the largest contiguous irrigation systems in the world, an asset worth well over twenty billion dollars. Infrastructure on that scale cannot survive without sustained maintenance. Roads, ports, and power plants all require regular investment to preserve their value, and irrigation infrastructure is no different. For decades, Punjab has attempted to maintain this vast network while recovering only a fraction of what its upkeep requires. Canals silt up, structures deteriorate, and maintenance is deferred because the fiscal space has never existed to undertake it properly.
Nor is canal water expensive even after the revision. It remains substantially cheaper than the diesel or electricity required to pump groundwater when canal supplies fail. Anyone arguing that irrigation water should remain permanently underpriced is ultimately arguing against both economics and arithmetic. Pakistan has also committed itself to revising irrigation tariffs in Punjab and Sindh as part of its broader programme of fiscal and water-sector reforms. The direction of travel was therefore never really in doubt.
Design Flaw: Flat Rate Ignores Water Use Efficiency
The first problem is its design. A flat rate now asks the wheat grower to pay the same as the rice and sugarcane grower, even though those crops place vastly different demands on Punjab's scarce water. The previous schedule, despite its many shortcomings, at least recognised that irrigation pricing could serve two purposes: raising revenue and encouraging more efficient water use. That principle has now disappeared. If pricing is intended to influence cropping decisions, the reform moves in the opposite direction. It raises revenue while abandoning one of the few elements that linked irrigation charges, however imperfectly, to water demand. Pricing has ceased to be an instrument of water management and become simply an instrument of revenue collection.
Budget Disconnect: Maintenance Allocation Remains Low
The second problem emerges not from the notification but from the budget that follows it. The Punjab Budget for 2026–27 estimates irrigation receipts at Rs 43.6 billion, compared with a revised estimate of Rs 13.5 billion for the current year. Yet the same budget allocates only Rs 8.9 billion under the Irrigation Department's Repairs and Maintenance head. These two figures should change the terms of the debate. For years, governments have argued that Punjab's canals deteriorated because irrigation charges were too low to finance maintenance. The province now expects irrigation receipts to increase dramatically, yet the maintenance allocation remains modest. If higher abiana is justified primarily because the canal system needs more investment, why does the budget not show a commensurate increase in spending on maintaining that system?
No one seriously argues that every rupee collected through abiana should be spent on repairs alone. Irrigation departments have legitimate responsibilities beyond maintenance. But neither can maintenance remain the principal justification for higher water charges while receiving only a relatively small share of the additional fiscal capacity the revised tariff is expected to create. This is not simply an accounting question; it is a question of credibility. Farmers rarely object to paying for a service they trust. They object to paying more for a service that appears unchanged. Irrigation is not merely the delivery of water. It is the maintenance of canals, functioning control structures, timely desilting, reliable rotations, and equitable distribution from head to tail. If those outcomes improve, resistance to higher charges will gradually diminish. If they do not, the increase will increasingly be viewed as another fiscal extraction rather than an investment in the irrigation system.
Timing: Farmers Face Severe Financial Stress
The third problem is timing. This increase arrives at one of the most difficult moments Pakistan's farmers have faced in years. Agriculture has recorded one of its weakest performances in nearly a decade. Wheat growers have seen government procurement largely disappear while market prices have fallen below production costs. Cotton production has fallen by almost one-third, the steepest decline among the major crops. Potato growers have watched prices collapse after export markets contracted. Citrus, heavily dependent on a single border for much of its export trade, has seen that market severely disrupted. Mango production has suffered from poor flowering. At the same time, electricity for tubewells, diesel, fertiliser, and other inputs have all become substantially more expensive. Few sectors today face the combination agriculture does: lower prices for much of what it sells and higher prices for almost everything it buys. Farmers are caught in a scissors movement, with falling output prices on one blade and rising input costs on the other. This was always going to be the most difficult year in which to ask them to shoulder a substantially higher water charge.
Implementation: Transparency and Trust Are Key
That is why implementation matters as much as policy. Punjab has every right to argue that irrigation water cannot remain permanently underpriced. But pricing reforms succeed only when users can see where their money goes. The government should therefore publish annual figures showing irrigation receipts, actual collections, maintenance expenditure, and measurable improvements in service delivery. Farmers should be able to judge whether higher abiana has produced cleaner canals, fewer breaches, more reliable supplies, and better maintenance. Pakistan has repeatedly demonstrated that it can legislate reform. It has been far less successful at implementing reform in ways that build public trust. A sound policy, introduced in a year of severe financial stress, designed without sufficient regard to water use and followed by a budget that leaves maintenance far below expected irrigation receipts, risks becoming another reform that is resisted before its benefits can ever be realised.
The province is right to say that water should not remain permanently underpriced. But when it asks farmers to pay more, it must also persuade them that the additional money will strengthen the irrigation system upon which they depend. Until the budget tells that story more convincingly, the debate is not really about the price of water. It is about the price of credibility.
Mohsin Leghari, a former Senator, MPA, MNA, and former Minister of Irrigation Punjab.
