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.
It is a wake-up call for the nation.We must work to built dams as required where ever possible and ,” Don’t let our enemy Number 1 (india) to grab our water illegaly.”
Do you have any idea which is the deadlier curse for Pakistan, floods or Taliban? Click here to find out: https://fmeducation.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/which -is-the-deadlier-curse-floods-or-taliban/
As Naeem Bukhari so aptly put it in his interview with Sheikh Rashid – “if we go for consensus in everything we do, our sisters won’t ever get married”. For the enemies of Pakistan who are against building dams in the country, there is no argument left. However it is the political will and a drive to move the country forward that is missing in our decision making. How did we ever build Tarbela and Mangla dams? By one count, Tarbela returns the money spent on its construction every 2 years, while Mangla does the same in one year. China’s 3 gorges dam is producing over 20,000 MWatts of electricity. The operational cost to produce hrdro electricity is nominal, while our planners keep going to the most untenable option possible – thermal plants which are both an environmental and a financial disaster for Pakistan’s frail economy. It is high time to build dams in Pakistan – focus on getting Neelum hydropower project to completion, channel all your resources into building Bhasha, and get on with planning for any other projects.
Owais, thank you for these pictures. These two images give a really powerful comparison. One that should jolt us all into thinking about all the implications of these two pictures seen side by side.
What a pity.For ten months a year we keep on praying for Water and for two monsoon months we keep on flooding ourselves.Time for building Big Dams in Pakistan is overdue and to hell with any opposition.Even if after these bloody floods the opposition persists, they could be dispatched along with the flood waters to the Arabian Sea for good.