A smaller and relatively young district of little less than 600,000 acres, Lodhran was carved out of Multan in 1991. With Multan turning more of a cosmopolitan urban and commercial centre in the last three decades, its offspring preferred to stay as a parental extension: socially conservative, culturally traditional and predominantly agricultural.
With industry almost non-existent, agriculture is the way of life for the district dwellers all its 600,000 acres are cultivated and divided into smallholdings for two reasons.
The massive inflow of settlers from other parts of the country during the last century was never expected to purchase bigger chunks of land. Big local, traditional and politically influential land-owning families saw their heritage divided during the same period and most of them have lost the feudal lustre. The district is thus more of a social relief in the otherwise feudal belt of South Punjab.
If an entire area can be considered unfortunate then the district of Bahawalnagar is that region. One of the ten bottom-most districts in terms of poverty and social indicators, its misfortune has diverse dimensions: water quality and quantity, agricultural, industrial, livestock, connectivity and marketing, etc.
Tucked in the remotest region of South and stretched along the Indian border, this thin line of semi-arid area has an overwhelming brackish aquifer. Being situated on the right bank of River Sutlej has not helped it with water. Even the sporadic sweet water layers created along canals through water seepage are so thin that small tube wells (only 25,000 in the entire district) start pumping out brackish water after a few hours of running.