At the end of the nineteenth century, the tract that would become Lyallpur district was still sparsely populated. Within a generation of the arrival of perennial canal irrigation, it had become one of the most productive agricultural regions in South Asia and home to more than a million people. The change came with water. It is difficult now to appreciate how fundamental that change was. Before perennial irrigation, large parts of Punjab depended on rainfall, seasonal inundation, wells and the uncertain behaviour of rivers. The canals changed that. Water could be taken far from the river and delivered according to a schedule. The result was not just more cultivation. It changed settlement, land values, markets, towns and the provincial economy itself.

The British did not build this system out of generosity. Revenue mattered. So did settlement, agricultural expansion, political control and military recruitment. The canal colonies were instruments of government as much as engineering projects. But that should not prevent us from recognising the scale of what was built. The Lower Chenab Canal transformed the Sandal Bar. New chaks were laid out and populated by settlers from other parts of Punjab. Lyallpur was established as a planned town in 1896 and soon became the centre of a new agricultural economy. In Bahawalpur, the Sutlej Valley Project pushed perennial irrigation into areas that had depended on uncertain river flows and rainfall. Towns and markets followed the canals. Then came the larger works.

The Triple Canal Project connected the Jhelum, Chenab and Ravi systems and demonstrated that water could be transferred between rivers to support canal commands elsewhere. Sukkur Barrage, completed in 1932, stretched across the Indus with 66 gates and supplied seven major canals serving millions of acres. These were remarkable structures. But the more interesting part of the story is that they continued to work.

A canal dug in the 1890s did not remain useful simply because it had been well designed. It had to be inspected, closed, desilted and repaired. Gauges had to be read. Banks had to be watched. Gates had to work. Outlets had to be checked. Discharges had to be measured. Someone had to decide when a canal........

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