The greater Indus valley was home to Neolithic cultures starting from 7000 BCE. They formed the antecedents of the urban Harappan civilization, whose rise and decline are dated to 2600 BCE and 1900 BCE respectively. At its peak, the Harappan civilization covered an area of more than a million square kilometres, making it the largest urbanized civilization of the Bronze Age.
The Sindh government has asked the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) to ensure more release of irrigation water from Punjab to avoid water shortage in the province, sources in Irrigation and Power Department told Business Recorder on Wednesday.
Udhampur: President of the PDP Mehbooba Mufti today warned to launch a mass movement if unfair water-sharing agreements were not scrapped and Dulhasti as well as Salal hydroelectric projects were not handed over to the state.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked the Government of India to workout a compensatory mechanism for the huge recurring losses being suffered by Jammu & Kashmir because of the discriminatory Indus Water Treaty (IWT) and arbitrary exploitation of the State's water resources by the National Hydro Power Corporation (NHPC) for power generation.
Dams and barrages upstream river Indus have put paid to much of Indus delta's biodiversity. Undivided Punjab's irrigation system was established in the 1890s. In 1932, the Sukkur barrage was built reducing freshwater to the Indus delta. In 1958, the Ghulam Mohammad barrage became operative and in the early 1960s, the world's largest earth dam, Tarbela dam, was built on the Indus.
The dispute between India and Pakistan over the use of the waters of the Indus and its tributaries and its resolution through a treaty in 1960 constitute a useful precedent to solve the present row.
