Usman Qazi

English | اردو In a relentless pursuit of growth and development, the Pakistani state has ignored colonial-era strategies—that took natural risks, like monsoon floods, into consideration. The Indus River is unique in more ways than one. If we ignore this, we do so at our own peril. In the last three decades, or more, the Pakistani state has been putting aside concerns for the uniqueness of our river, and relentlessly pursuing multi-billion rupee constructions, endangering existing infrastructure and the lives of our people. Colonial-era designers were more aware of such natural forces, planning with and around them to prevent the sort of floods we have seen over the last three years. The Pakistani state has not only ignored, but worked against some of the colonial-era planning that helped the British avoid the devastation that we see today. Water flows at incredibly different speeds through the River Indus—anywhere between a few thousand, to millions of cubic feet per second (or cusecs). Colonial era designers of the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS)—the largest contiguous irrigation system in the world—were well aware of these huge fluctuations in water flows from one monsoon season to the next. Since the IBIS was primarily built on the left […]