"…., floods are not events but processes intrinsically linked to river regimes, geomorphological momentum and drainage networks. Tampering with this complex web can result in several negative complications, most of which may be irreversible."

--Rohan D'Souza

The worst ever flood of Pakistan's 63-year history has been wreaking havoc across all the provinces. According to UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report dated August 23, it has directly affected 17.2 million people; claimed 1,539 lives, damaged and destroyed 1.2 million houses; inundated standing crops on at least 3.2 million hectares; and fully or partially damaged 7,820 schools.

Besides, it has caused colossal damage to electricity, telecommunication, road, railway, bridges, irrigation and drainage infrastructure across the country. However, the devastation so far reported can be a proverbial tip of the iceberg given the fact that the flood is not yet over and unfolding threats like food insecurity, water-borne diseases and epidemics that can assume serious proportion.

Along with the surging mighty Indus River and its tributaries, arose a debate on detaining and containing of the rivers to effectively control the flood. Far away from the dangers of devouring tides, a certain section of press, news channels, political leaders, intellectuals and so-called experts have been mindlessly underlining the need of building new dams, particularly Kalabagh Dam, to avert floods.

Political insensitivity of proposing a controversial dam at this critical moment aside, the pro-dam lobby is equally blind about the role of dams, barrages and related structural measures across and along the Indus River in turning the drainage into a nightmare, intensifying the scale of flood and related devastation.

Had the Kalabagh Dam been built, could much of death and destruction have been averted, as they suggest? Or, on the flip side, the very solution could have over-complicated the problem? As both the questions are speculative, in order to reach any conclusion, we need to have a clear understanding of the structures built along the banks and across the channels of Indus River in last one hundred years and their impact on drainage and people's vulnerability to floods.

In subcontinent, the British Raj, equipped with scientific knowledge and subsequent technological advancements, introduced a new era of water management marked by increased control of human beings over river water through structural measures. Completed in 1930s, Sukkur Barrage is the first water-diversion structure on Indus to be followed by Jinnah Barrage, Taunsa Barrage, Tarbela Dam, Chashma Barrage, Guddu Barrage and Kotri Barrage.

These dams and barrages accompanied by an extensive network of water-controlling structures like river training works, flood protection embankments, dykes, spurs, irrigation canals, inter-river link canals and drains have considerably altered the Indus river regime.

These dams and barrages, which made power generation and perennial irrigation supplies possible, gradually contained the once mighty, multi-channel Indus into a single narrow stream. The containment of river brought drastic social and environmental changes in the low-lying floodplains of Indus, locally known as Kaccha -- stretching from Mianwali to Badin on its left bank and from Dera Ismail Khan to Thatta district on its right bank.

With a width varying from 25km to 40km and a length of around 1,100km, the Kaccha or low-lying floodplains was once known for its proverbial prosperity.

Before the advent of dams and barrages, Kaccha had a peculiar economy that depended much on the floods. The land use patterns and water management systems, which unlike the modern ones, were in harmony with the natural river regime and provided the local populace multiple livelihood choices. All the land, notwithstanding its fertility, was not used only for crop-production purposes. Instead much of it served as pastures, forests and lakes.

Similarly, all the water was not used for irrigation purposes, notwithstanding the canal system; Persian-wheel and other local irrigation technologies were developed in the floodplains of Indus. Rather much of it was meant for ecological purposes like enriching pastures and forests and replenishing underground water reserves, lakes and delta.

There existed community-based flood response mechanisms grounded in local knowledge. The houses and villages were built on elevated platforms to avert potential threat from inundation. Food and fodder were stored at safer places. The fisher-folk and ferrymen, who lived in close vicinity of the river, served as early warning authorities.

In case of an emergency, the local people knew when, how and where to move. They had boats available to them. They knew their neighbouring communities to stay with until the floodwater receded. The host communities, who also directly or indirectly depended on the river-based economy, would welcome them to reciprocate the generosity of their guests in normal times.

The river engineering developments have considerably reduced the frequency of benevolent, seasonal flooding in Kaccha while increased people's vulnerability to floods over the dacades. Accumulation of silt in the reservoirs and in the embanked riverbed has reduced the drainage capacity of the river. The hill-torrents from Suleman Range and Khirthar Range, which discharge into Indus, bring high loads of silt in their water.

The spate irrigation through hill-torrents on the right bank of Indus was once helpful in trapping much of silt on the Pakka (the highlands) and letting less quantities falling into the river. However, the replacement of spate irrigation with canal irrigation enhanced the silt quantity being discharged into the river through the untapped hill-torrents.

Undoubtedly, the population growth and ill-planned settlement patterns in last several decades have aggravated the flood. However, on the flip side, the very flood protection embankments have created a false sense of security and encouraged ill-settlement patterns in the Kaccha area. The forests, pastures and lakes have been turned into agricultural land. The traditional flood preparedness strategies have been abandoned, particularly in the new settlements, as they were no more needed in the presence of flood protection embankments.

So when the river swelled after extraordinary rains this monsoon, the government machinery decided to dam up the reservoirs. It increased pressure on the embankments, operation and maintenance of which was forgotten for years. Thus the already fragile embankments could not sustain the pressure and developed breaches. The irrigation authorities also created breaches in the embankments to protect the barrages from possible collapse.

The breaches thus developed or created loosened hell in the areas bottled up by the embankments. As if the devastation in the Kaccha was not enough, the water obstructed by the embankments found its way through the canals to inundate the areas, which have never been flooded by the Indus in past.

Following the breach in Abbas Spur at Taunsa Barrage on August 2, the floodwater found its way to Taunsa-Panjnad Link Canal and Muzaffargarh Canal. The canals allowed the Indus to make a new channel to fall into Chenab River after inundating hundreds of villages and towns in Muzaffargarh district.

Similarly the breach in Tori Band caused flooding in Jaccobabad (Sindh) and Jaffarabad (Balochistan) districts, where the inundation by Indus makes no sense. The receding floodwater from Balochistan found its way through MNV Drain and RBOD to hit Qambar-Shahdadkot district.

Besides, the drainage of hill-torrents obstructed by road and canal infrastructure complicated flooding in the Pakka area. Much of the havoc wreaked by flood in Dera Ismail Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur districts has been due to obstruction of hill-torrents -- Kaanh, Looni, Sanghar and Vahoa, to name a few -- by Chashma Right Bank Canal (CRBC), DG Canal, Kachi Canal and Indus Highway.

The flood 2010 can be termed the embankment flood, which in its nature, was sudden, unanticipated, far more aggressive and protracted. It exposed the effectiveness of dams and barrages in flood protection, asking for a paradigm shift in water management.

Instead of mindlessly parroting a quick-fix solution to flood, we need to develop an integrated flood management policy based on people's participation and focusing on the existing challenges pertaining to river regime, drainage and ill-settlement patterns.

It is precisely the Indus valley, the centre of one of the five old civilizations of the world, which is hit by the mother of disasters, the flood. In the middle of the disaster lies the middle Indus valley or the South Punjab.

Politics of mitigation is the general focus, but equally interesting is the fast changing collective state of mind of the people in this area. Rhetorical logic, even with sanest of its arguments, does not work when feelings of masses take the form of articulated consensus. The chronic self-perception of this agro-pastoral southern community of the province as deprived is supplemented recently with the consolidation of administrative and financial powers of the Punjab government through provincial autonomy as agreed to under the eighteenth amendment. Together this is transforming into a feeling of utter helplessness at present.

What will be the mood of the helpless millions trapped in long term turmoil of relocation and reconstruction, if not anger? The mantras over Kalabagh dam or the climate change do not seem to easing their sufferings.

It is in the hour of misery that people rise up for identity. The potential of Seraiki identity has already been tested in the clever use of the tool of language by the president and the prime minister. They made national level speeches in Seraiki which, many think, were aimed at neutralising the anti-Punjab sentiments and selling their strategy of reconciliation with the "Sharif opposition". It worked both ways.

The element of irreconcilability between Punjab and the South Punjab needs a careful scrutiny. What leaves deep scars in souls of the sufferer is his wrong "characterisation" by the powerful.

This writer had a chance of visiting some of the IDPs of the flood-hit areas in parts of the right bank of Indus between the Dariya Khan Bridge and the Taunsa Barrage. The popular view that loss of lives and livelihoods was caused by peoples' encroachment of the river seemed to be only a myth. The area in and around the vast river bed is divided into Kaccha (the fragile land, or the wetland), the Baet (the mound between two permanent branches of river) and the Pakka (the firm land). This division provided with a continuous reminder that the Kaccha and the Baet were the places not meant for carefree living. With life and livelihood, mainly livestock, at stake, the people living here stayed most alert. They smelt the air, watched the sky and regularly listened to radio. According to one of the narrators among the victims, what failed them this time were three factors: the sudden rise in water level, the extraordinary rain and the unusual diversions of flood which chased them in some of the locations they always used as tested safe spots.

Coming to the larger picture, many aspects of identity crisis are thrown open through informal media -- text messaging, internet and small scale publications. The content has two features: persistence on topics like deprivation, culture and language, and linking every problem to being a particular people. A fresh text message, for instance, reads as this, "Great segregation! Punjabi language is made optional subject from class 6th onwards, Seraiki is inundated".

Difficulties ahead may worsen not due to bad intention but due to bad knowledge. The common perception about South Punjab is mostly shaped on hearsay about its few cities. The majority in the country are unaware of the fact that deep into the plains, there are patches and patches of dwellings largely undeveloped, intact with their centuries-old naturalness. This is also true about the countless settlements in the vast Indus basin with makeshift dwellings. A portion of riverine communities live undocumented, deprived of the rights of citizenship. Many of them are nonexistent in revenue records, the voters' lists and the hard disks of NADRA computers -- a dilemma the aid distributers are soon to face. With the scanty infrastructure in rural areas of the flood-hit districts washed away, the vast territory will emerge almost like a planet without government.

Add to this the unending contest between the stakeholders of this human tragedy. The CM advises the flood sufferers to pray for forgiveness of their sins, innocently blaming the victims as if they were more sinful then the people in safe parts of the country. The live media portrays the otherwise brave sons and daughters of Indus valley as the wailing, begging and wretched beings doomed forever in a failed state with most corrupt and inefficient government. The extremists, the worst violators and the best beneficiaries of human rights and civil liberties, reach the poor with food for repentance. Everybody is doing his Karma.

Karma is a unique theme of rightness of human action. Above the binary division of deeds into virtue and sin (the Punnye and paap, or the Amr-o-nahiy), it offers a non-exclusionary view of human engagements. "The one who is acting is right, the one who is resisting him is also right in his place and the one who is opposing both of them is right too in his position," the philosophy of Karma says.

One can remind the government, the sole authority to form a policy and get it implemented, to come up with a quickly legislated parliamentary decision to an arrangement of 'local self control' in South Punjab. This is perhaps the only way to govern the vast, desolate and ungovernable area.

The begging bowl of the Pakistani elite is pit-less. The moment they come across the slightest of an emergency at home, they start begging for money doing the rounds of world. Is Pakistan indeed so poor and devoid of resources that it cannot cope with the crisis situation on its own? Let us have a look at some indicators of our economy and social order.

Above all, we have a feudal social order in which 75 percent of the population (nearly 120 million people) is forced to live in abject poverty. That is why the poor are forced to build their mud houses in low-lying areas where the land is cheap or free. This makes them vulnerable to flooding from an overflowing river or heavy rains. In contrast, the country has a substantial size of middle class -- the estimate ranges from 30 to 40 million people out of a total of 180 million. If we take the average family size of five members, as it is generally believed, there are 6 to 8 million families with solid financial position.

One indicator of the existence of a prosperous class is an increasing number of sprawling smart neighbourhoods in big cities and rocketing prices of real estate and houses. A look at the newspaper advertisements gives a clue to our society's obsession with the real estate. Besides, our streets are getting crowded with cars. Despite higher prices, and premium, the demand for cars is up and up. According to official statistics, the car sales went up by 49.6 percent in July-June 2009-10 as compared to the last fiscal year. Interestingly, during this period, the sales of expensive big cars (1,300cc and above) surpassed the sale of small cars (800-1000cc). Obviously, no person from the low-income group can afford to buy or maintain an expensive car.

Religious rituals also provide a glimpse of the spare money a class of our people have. Newspapers are replete with the advertisements of Umras (prayers at Khana-e-Kaaba) and Haj. Now VIP Umras and Hajs are organised with facilities of five-star and seven-star hotels for the performers in the close vicinity of Khana-e-Kaaba. One can easily find rich businessmen who boast of having offered 50 or 100 Umras at a young age. During the fasting month, expensive hotels and restaurants in the big cities get packed at the time of Iftar dinners. According to estimates taken from the skin merchants, on the occasion of the last Eid-ul-Azha, people sacrificed animals worth at least 100 billion rupees. Nearly the same amount of money is spent on the Muharram rituals every year.

Besides, there are more than 90 million mobile phone subscribers, 8 million users of cable TV network and 400,000 users of broadband Internet connections. All this spending indicates the presence of a large number of families with extra money and savings. Then why do we need to go begging across the world all the time?

We do have a large section of the affluent people that can take care of the flood rehabilitation. Why can't at least 30 million moneyed people in the country look after the needs of the 20 million calamity-hit people for one year? It is true that many people are already doing the job but perhaps not at a required scale. It is also a fact that the major brunt of the displaced people during the peak of the floods was taken by the close relatives of the affected families. A large majority of the displaced people spent weeks with their close relatives and friends at safer places and did not seek any help from the outside. Only the very poor people whose relatives could not bear their burden sought help from the charities. In the same spirit, our moneyed people can extend their courtesy in the rehabilitation process, and at one level, they are doing so.

We also need some specific kind of help from the outside world for those things that are not available at home such as big helicopters in order to reach out to the far-flung areas, which are inaccessible owing to broken roads and bridges. There is no shortage of funds with the government to carry out the rehabilitation of the flood victims and reconstruction of the affected areas. Only it needs to set its priorities right. This fiscal year, an amount of nearly 70 billion rupees was allocated ostensibly for the poor under the Benazir Income Support Programme. This amount now can be diverted to the flood-hit people because a huge portion of this allocation is being misused to extend political patronage. Through privatisation, the government can save more than 200 billion rupees, being used this year to meet the deficit of white elephants of public corporations like Pakistan Steel, PIA etc. The government can also stop building luxury projects of new airport terminals and motorways and divert the resources for the reconstruction in the flood affected regions.

The issue is not that the Pakistan government does not have money or that our moneyed people cannot help out the calamity-stricken people, but that our ruling elite -- politicians and civil-military bureaucracy -- is greedy and dishonest. One example is that the 2010 floods caused so colossal destruction because, among other reasons, the embankments along our rivers breached at several points drowning hundreds of villages and small cities. It happened because they were in poor shape and not properly looked after despite spending billions of rupees on their upkeep every year. The ruling elite did not stop its corrupt practices even during the flooding. Some politicians in power reportedly manoeuvered the direction of floodwater to save their big farms and orchards. In Sindh, cuts made in the Tori Embankment have become a major issue.