Time to bridge this river divide - Rohan D'Souza

Dear Friends/Co-sailors,

In today's pick, I am sharing below link to Rohan D'Souza's article published in the Hindu that makes a wonderful case for the need of river conservation rather than damming them.  He takes the case of the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) signed in 1960 between India and Pakistan.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/time-to-bridge-this-river-divide/article5120925.ece

Would like to paste below the introductory paragraph that speaks for the article aptly.

Much of South Asia is now haunted by the spectre of hydro-electricity. At heart remains the sub-continent’s unsolved riddle of trying to ‘meaningfully share’ its many trans-boundary rivers. Existing river development models, as all governments have learnt, are indeed a zero sum game: in which a benefit extracted from one point of the river’s stem will inevitably involve a cost at another point in the flow. For all the careful wording that has gone into framing water treaties, sharing agreements or cooperation models, the overwhelming fact remains that every country in the region is energy starved, politically impatient and is compelled to tap rivers for hydropower.

Time we understood rivers as ecological entities and not commercial goods for benefit of us greedy humans.

I hope you will find this piece interesting.

Thanks and regards,

Ranjan