Following are the two photos of River Indus at Kotri barrage – taken approximately a year apart. In the first photo you can see people walking on the dry Indus bed and second photo is from 2 days ago where the whole barrage structure is under threat due to super flood here.
(1) June 29, 2009 This photo was part of our post on the Indus Day in 2010 where we wrote about depleting Water Resources of Pakistan. Today this photo seems so unreal!
(2) August 25, 2010. Note the tags with our post today as well as the post on Indus Day are ‘environment’ and ‘disasters’ but within 6 months the disaster has menifested itself in such a starkly opposite form.
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Our highly honorable neighbor to the East even diverted polluted industrial waste water into rivers flowing into Pakistan:
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-d aily-english-online/Politics/16-Aug-2010/India-rel eases-polluted-water-towards-Pakistan
The problem is not just not enough water (except for now!) but the absolutely ridiculously wasteful way we use what we have. For example, we waste an incredible amount of water in growing sugarcane; should be strictly prohibited and sugar imported. Pakistan, among the most water short countries in the world, grows sugarcane, among the most water-intensive crops there is. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan also has among the world’s lowest sugar yields of major producers.
Building more dams will just make the situation worse unless we improve existing usage regimes.
It is not only Kotri Barrage, I know Chashma Barrage was almost in the same position, yet not sure about others barrages but it is time to not waste time to construct few more.