Pashaura Singh Dhillon

Flooding in the Indus Valley

The devastating floods ravaging Pakistan have been written about in various publications, covering aspects such as the displacement of people, loss of homes, lives, illness, and the slow movement of aid. But the particular plight of the farmer is seldom mentioned. I was reading an article by Ashraf Khan in the Associated Press that discusses this matter, “Farmers bear brunt of Pakistans’ deadly floods.” In the article, he points out that in addition to all of the above mentioned problems victims of the floods are facing, farmers have the added pressure of losing their livelihood once they do return to their homes and if they are unable to plant wheat for the winter by September, food shortages in Punjab and Sindh as well as throughout Pakistan will be inevitable.

Floods in the Indus Valley

Indus River to this side of the Himalayas constitutes an integral part of the Indus Valley, “the Cradle of Civilization” and is what The Yellow River is to China and its ancient civilisation on the other side of the Himalayas. The Indus Valley was perhaps the richest in ancient Indian history where man first brought the land under plough.  Like The Yellow River, Indus is both the mother and misery to millions of people who, for their survival, have depended on it for thousands of years since they first inhabited its banks.

Map of Indus Valley

Under relentless rain, the Indus breached its banks almost along the entire route within Pakistan this time. Homes and people, farms and animals alongwith orchards and crops have been wiped out  as they are washed away without a trace in many instances right from Khyber Pakhtunwa province and southern Punjab down to Sindh and Balochistan.

People fight for bags of wheat

Also mentioned in “Farmers bear brunt of Pakistans’ deadly floods, one of the victims of this unprecedented disaster, Razaq, while raising a finger skyward, tells Ashraf Khan that “only a prophet could pass a test as stern as the one we are going through now. It is beyond our capacity. It is coming from Allah.”  When everyone and everything else turns its back, the human heart pins its hope on Almighty God. Since human beings are created in God’s image as all religions teach us, I guess it can be interpreted that the opposite is also  true in such situations. Human beings could become the last refuge for each other in times of dire need. That is what  has happened elsewhere in the recent past when the world governments / communities joined hands during disasters of this magnitude and that should happen here in Pakistan now.

Devinder Singh Saroya sent me a link for an Editorial in The Hindu – Mitigating Pakistan’s Miseries on FaceBook. The editorial goes like this:
“. . . the fury of the floods having subsided, Pakistan still needs help to deal with the aftermath.  A U.N. appeal for $459 million has evoked a disappointing response from the international community. The pledges made so far total only 47 per cent of the target, with the United States and United Kingdom making the most substantial commitments.”

Map of Gujarat Earthquake

As the region’s biggest economy, India should have been first off the blocks in offering help to its beleaguered neighbor. Its belated offer of $5 million in relief assistance is a pittance compared to what it has done for other neighbors. At the time of the 2004 tsunami, India went out of its way to provide Sri Lanka with an assistance package of nearly $200 million. Prime Minister Mamohan Singh took the right step by calling his Pakistan counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani on Thursday to express India’s readiness to do more for the relief effort. This rectifies New Delhi’s earlier position that it would give more only if Pakistan responded positively to the “initial offer,” which was as narrow-minded as Islamabad’s response that it was yet to decide whether or not to accept Indian assistance.

Despite strained political relations, there have been instances in the past of spontaneous solidarity such as when Pakistan sent relief materials after the Gujarat earthquake and India did the same after the Kashmir earthquake. It is unfortunate that the two countries are letting present animosities come in the way of addressing a humanitarian situation. If Pakistan can accept assistance from other countries, there should be no problem taking it from India. For its part, New Delhi must unreservedly raise the assistance amount, and provide it to Pakistan, if required, as part of the United Nations fund.”

Pakistani Flood Survivor

Floods caused by an unusually heavy monsoon since July have jolted Pakistan to the hilt . The initial death and destruction as reported may follow with even bigger disasters by the spread of diseases and famine, usually associated in the aftermath if help is delayed from the outside or does not reach all the needy inside the affected areas on time due to mismanagement, politics or whatever reason. Time is running out fast for those millions marooned in Pakistan. My heart goes out to the honorable, hard working farmers and their families who have lost all they had and are reduced to destitutes, begging for food and shelter overnight through no fault of their own.

When all is said and done, there has to be a silver linning to this dreadful dark cloud of awful human tragedy brought about by these out of control rain waters as opposed to the havoc caused by the salty seas during the tsunami. Fresh water is the most precious commodity; even more precious than the oil as the time goes by. The fresh water is disappearing fast beneath the surface in this part of the world; as fast as oil is in the Middle East . By overcoming this mamoth human tragedy and moving  past this nightmare caused by the excessive rainwater, if managed properly through imaginative river management policy / plan as a national priority, it almost guarantees the replenishing of its tired soils and recharging its exhausted aquifer for the future. That way, the Indus valley civilization can go on being supported as it has been for the past thousands of years.