Flood control or signal-free corridors?

Islamabad diary
Floods come but once a year. They cause havoc but then, as is the way with nature, the rivers calm down and their fury subsides. Rajanpur and Muzaffargarh and places in Sindh annually visited by the flood-waters, and new regions of devastation such as Chitral this year, recede from the public mind.
All the wild and fierce rhetoric about helping the flood victims and repairing the damage is packed up as if in a box to be opened and reused when the floods strike again, as they must, every rainy monsoon, when the heavy and dark clouds come in from the ocean and strike against the high peaks of the Himalayas.
But signal-free corridors and flyovers and money spent on roads in Lahore and Islamabad last the whole year. What’s that old line? A woman is only a woman but a cigar is a good smoke. Well, floods are only floods but a signal-free corridor is a joy forever. So this is really a no-brainer. We can forget about this year’s floods until next year. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to spend what money we have on making car-riding more fun in our bigger cities.
In most of these cities– Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Lahore, and Peshawar this year – low-lying localities where the patriotic, flag-waving masses live, take on the aspect of flood-hit areas when it pours. Because the drainage is clogged, the rainwater rises and streets become ponds. But who cares. As long as the Gulbergs, the Defence Housing Authorities, the Cavalry Grounds, the Cliftons are safe, the masses can lump it here and look to salvation in the hereafter, where we are all headed.
In this world – on whose transitory nature we of the true faith lay so much stress – salvation has better claimants, those living on the right side of the tracks. We inherited social and other forms of inequality at the country’s birth. But by God we’ve kept raising the bar of distributive justice ever since. The power of prayer and sitting in Eitikaf we’ve allocated to the masses. The bulk of national resources we’ve kept for the use and benefit of their betters.
The Lord of the Worlds wrote cold and snowfall in the destiny of northern climes. As cold, even bitter cold, is part of their lives, they have learnt to cope with it and the snow. The Lord of the Worlds set aside the heat and the monsoons for us. The heat we have learned to endure. The monsoons and their after-effects are too much for us. Taming the angry waters when they rise and sweep all before them is beyond our capacities.
We know that the waters will come. There’s no way to avoid them. We know the rivers will be angry. But we trust to the heavens to preserve us in safety. In our taqdeer (fate) there is no tadbeer (planning and method). Not for nothing is this the land of holy men and mazaars.
Or we don’t care because the havoc wrought by the waters is borne by those who don’t matter in this great republic founded in the name of Islam and dedicated to its everlasting glory. Who the hell loses any sleep over Rajanpur or Muzaffargarh, or Chitral for that matter? The fates of these regions, or of the people living in them, do not figure in our higher thinking. Talk to us of strategic depth, talk to us of nuclear deterrence and the regional balance of power. Talk to us of signal-free corridors. What is this whining about floods? They come every year and they go. So what’s the big deal?
Spurs and bunds to stop the raging waters of the Indus…it may make for good photography but it is a boring subject. Drowning cattle, mud-houses swept away, the awam clamouring for relief – damn these TV cameras, have they nothing else to show? A signal-free corridor from Liberty Chowk to Mozang in Lahore, another signal-free avenue from Zero Point to Rewat in Islamabad…now you are talking sense. This, my friends, is excitement. This is the true meaning of development.
In Egypt the River Nile used to overflow its banks every year, fertilising the soil it is true, but also leaving devastation in its wake. So when King Farouk was deposed and Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power, the Egyptians decided that they must tame the waters of the Nile. They began looking for external assistance. The Americans promised help but finding the new regime too independent for their taste they were evasive. Nasser turned to the Soviet Union which helped build the majestic Aswan Dam.
The Abu Simbel statues along the Nile were at a low level and would have been submerged in Aswan Lake. With international help they were raised to a height above the waters.
The Yangtze-Kiang used to cause flooding in China every year. The Three Gorges Dam – which has faced criticism for other reasons – is part of the efforts to control the river’s waters.
What is Pakistan’s foremost problem, above and beyond everything else? It is the scarcity of water in lean periods of the year, and excess water after the summer rains. Our best minds, our best energies, should be focused on this problem: how to make optimum use of nature’s best gift to us…our mountains and glaciers, our splendid rivers.
The Indus Basin Treaty – a triumph of good sense and even statesmanship let us not forget – gave us the exclusive use of our western rivers: the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. Have we made the best use of them? India has stolen a march over us in exploiting the Jhelum and the Chenab in their upper reaches. The treaty gave us the first right over their use but we were negligent. What will it take us to realise that building the Neelum-Jhelum dam is more important for us than equipping five armoured divisions or testing half a dozen ballistic missiles?
More than pseudo-strategists, authors of strategic depth, Pakistan needs water experts, engineers, dam specialists. Once upon a time, under foreign tutelage, we built impressive dams: Warsak, Mangla, Tarbela. Why have we lost the use of that art? This doesn’t mean that dams are an answer to everything. They have their benefits and their disadvantages, like the displacement of people and the loss of habitat. But where necessary they are indispensable. At the altar of thermal power – a scandal this country could have done without – we sacrificed the building of dams…and are now paying the price of our neglect and folly.
Nuclear power is not what Pakistan needs. Why can’t we get this into our addled minds? Coal-fired plants are the worst option for us. China is moving away from them. Why are we such suckers for discarded technology?
The task is no less than to rewrite our destiny. Floods should not be the annual visitation of tragedy they have become. It should not be our fate to suffer their ravages. But then making the taming of our rivers our foremost priority requires the application of mind and sense. It means rethinking national priorities. It means leadership and vision, not the fixation with leaking metros or flights of utter fancy regarding trains to Muzaffarabad over the hills when trains to easier destinations we can’t run.
More than even a nuclear umbrella, Pakistan needs forest cover. Blessed will be the day when we can get over our mania for cutting trees. More than excess rain it is clogged, filth-filled water channels which cause city flooding. Regarding the greatest polluter of all, the plastic shopping bag, we just can’t make up our minds. Not in a hundred years can RAW cause the damage this menace does.
There’s something wrong with our imagination. Trust us to get worked up over trifles. A loony film made somewhere in California rouses the great Pakistani awam to fury. Mention floods and everyone yawns…or political worthies put on their hats and try to look revolutionary.
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com