Dam floods · Floods · Hydropower · Indus · Ravi River

Ravi ka Kinara Kaisa hai? River Ravi through its people

Flowing under many names: Vedic Parushni, Puranic Iravati, Greek Hydraotes, River Ravi is arguably the most storied of the five rivers meeting the Indus.

Ravi’s flow from the glacial heights of Himalayas to the fertile plains of Punjab has been embellished in songs and stories for centuries. Heth Vage Ravi Dariya or “Below flows the River Ravi” is a ubiquitous phrase in songs and poems.[1] On the banks of Ranjit Sagar Dam on Ravi, Manbhavan Singh Kahlon, himself a poet-activist muses, “We Punjabis have always written poetry around our rivers. Perhaps even too much, I sometimes think. But most of Ravi’s poetry has been left back in Pakistan.” Pakistan, on the other hand, thinks most of Ravi’s water has been left back in India.

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Art, Literature, Culture · Indus · River Pollution

Jhelum and Pashmina: A River Woven into a Shawl

Quae loca fabulosus lambit Hydaspes
What places the magnificent Jhelum washes!

Ode 1.22, Horace, Circa 3rd BC[i]

With these lines begins M. Aurel Stein’s authoritative Ancient Geography of Kashmir, written in 1899.[ii] Stein was deeply smitten by Kashmir and its rivers and was the first to translate Kalhana’s epic Rajatarangini—literally River of the Kings—into English[iii].

Jhelum—or Behat, Vyeth, Vitasta, Hydaspes—has indeed washed some legendary places like Srinagar, Baramulla, Anantnag and Sopore. But it has also “washed” something very particular, something that is as much the fruit of the Jhelum as it is of Kashmir itself: the feather-light Pashmina shawl.

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Chenab · Climate Change · Himalayas · Hydropower

Of Landslides, Spirits and Stories

The Science and Myth surrounding a Himalayan Landslide

Here, in this central spot where three valleys come together
Is the triangle from which all phenomena originate,
An abode of the yoginis of the past,
A place for practitioners in the future.
~ A Tibetan prayer to the sacred Drilbu Ri Mountain where Rivers Chandra and Bhaga meet to form the Chenab

On a crisp September morning, we clank across an iron suspension bridge on the River Chandra to enter the valley of Bhaga. We are tracing the origins of Bhaga and will be reaching Barlacha La pass at an altitude of 15,900 feet in a few hours. Madly fluttering prayer flags swaddling the bridge and the roaring river below make it seem as if, like the prayers, we are adrift on the wind too. Below, on the toasty river sands, a few men doze like monitor lizards. 

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Chenab · Climate Change · Glaciers · Hydropower · Indus

Infrastructure Projects in Chenab Basin and Climate Change: Need to Exercise Caution

The current developments around Indus Waters Treaty are deeply troubling. Following the heinous attack on tourists in Pehelgam, India has announced that Indus Waters Treaty, the only water sharing mechanism between India and Pakistan put in place in 1960, has been put in abeyance.

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