After pouring one lakh cusecs of water for 13 consecutive days, the water of Sutlej has started coming down today. In this monsoon, water equal to the volume of the Tarbela dam has flowed into the Sutlej and we have had nothing but continuous devastation of populations, loss of crops and human misery. The government and bureaucrats are looking at the Sutlej floods as another rare opportunity to garner aid while the victims turn to them for pain relief.
According to an estimate, benefits worth a billion dollars can be taken from one million acre feet of water and at least three million acre feet of water has flowed in the Sutlej in the last one month alone. In addition to this upper ant cost of three billion dollars, there are separate losses of houses, populations, crops and animal deaths.
Unlike other natural disasters, flood is a disaster that can be detected before time and losses can be avoided by taking timely measures. As soon as the monsoon entered India, at least a month in advance, the Meteorological Department was predicting that the Sutlej would flood this time.
News of India’s dam filling was also coming every day, but inspite of complete identification and detailed information of the Sutlej flood-affected areas, the institutions remained completely calm and in a state of inaction. Failure to address river channel obstructions or prevent flooding There is a complete demarcation of the Sutlej flood belt and the information about which settlements will come under the flood of which level is available with the institutions.
If a flood canal was made from Islam barrage and a part of this flood water was also diverted to Cholistan, how much benefit would it have been. If this canal had carried only 5000 cusecs of water, then five lakh acre feet of water could have been spread across Cholistan in this monsoon and at the same time the intensity of floods could have been reduced a little. Similarly, finding uninhabited low-lying areas left and right of Sutlej, they could be filled with water by making small channels from the river (offline storages). But the Sutlej continued to flow and we watched. We waited for the water to recede and today we are playing weddings when the water recedes.
Estimate the size of this flood tragedy from here that 550 villages have been affected, more than 2 lakh people have been evacuated from the area and crops standing on 1 lakh acres of land have been destroyed. The right environment has been created to mobilize aid, but will we be ready for the next big flood in the Sutlej?
