Our batchmate, Shri Davinder Kumar Garg (aka Garcha), who retired from Assam-Meghalya cadre in the year 2015, and is now settled in Chandigarh, sent me the following comment: I am reproducing it with his consent:
"A comprehensive article on floods in Punjab and adjoining area. The river Ghaggar is the big culprit as it flows in the interior of Malwa belt. The river Satluj does not damage that much as it flows some Northern parts of Punjab and gets merged in the Punjab plains of Pakistan and the meets them river Indus somewhere down to finally fall in Arab Sagar.
My Assam experience is witness that flood protection works do not withstand in front of fury of nature of this magnitude. These works are only display of political gimmicks. The river bed of like Ghaggar river is a victim of unplanned urbanization. The river plains are under unauthorised occupation and having huge colonization.Resultantly the river bed has become shallow. Being hilly river, the flood water from the catchment area moves very fast like gushing on the shallow bed and the river bed being shallow have limited capacity to absorb the flood waters. The torrential water gets overflowed with speed and does huge devastation.
To my mind the viable solution is digging or dredging the river bed and renovating and reconstructing the huge water bodies in the erstwhile river plains. Ghaggar being small river, it is financially possible to take digging/ dredging the river bed as protection measure. Brahmaputra in Assam valley is huge and economically not possible to taking dredging of the river bed. Alternatively we go for embankments days which is just wastage of public funds."
Thanks, sir, for these insights--the only key difference between Sutlej and Ghaggar is that the former is tames with the aid of Bhakra Dam...... there's no such dam in Ghaggar. As pointed out earlier, the Kaushalya Dam, near Pinjore in Haryana, is essentially for drinking water purposes and has no significant storage capacity.
Our batchmate, Shri Davinder Kumar Garg (aka Garcha), who retired from Assam-Meghalya cadre in the year 2015, and is now settled in Chandigarh, sent me the following comment: I am reproducing it with his consent:
"A comprehensive article on floods in Punjab and adjoining area. The river Ghaggar is the big culprit as it flows in the interior of Malwa belt. The river Satluj does not damage that much as it flows some Northern parts of Punjab and gets merged in the Punjab plains of Pakistan and the meets them river Indus somewhere down to finally fall in Arab Sagar.
My Assam experience is witness that flood protection works do not withstand in front of fury of nature of this magnitude. These works are only display of political gimmicks. The river bed of like Ghaggar river is a victim of unplanned urbanization. The river plains are under unauthorised occupation and having huge colonization.Resultantly the river bed has become shallow. Being hilly river, the flood water from the catchment area moves very fast like gushing on the shallow bed and the river bed being shallow have limited capacity to absorb the flood waters. The torrential water gets overflowed with speed and does huge devastation.
To my mind the viable solution is digging or dredging the river bed and renovating and reconstructing the huge water bodies in the erstwhile river plains. Ghaggar being small river, it is financially possible to take digging/ dredging the river bed as protection measure. Brahmaputra in Assam valley is huge and economically not possible to taking dredging of the river bed. Alternatively we go for embankments days which is just wastage of public funds."
Davinder Kumar, IAS (retd.) (1984 batch- Assam-Meghalya cadre)
Thanks, sir, for these insights--the only key difference between Sutlej and Ghaggar is that the former is tames with the aid of Bhakra Dam...... there's no such dam in Ghaggar. As pointed out earlier, the Kaushalya Dam, near Pinjore in Haryana, is essentially for drinking water purposes and has no significant storage capacity.