From start to finish
Irrigation expert (and former Sindh irrigation and power secretary) Idris Rajput spoke to Himal Southasian about the morphology of the recent flooding. The interview was conducted on 19 August, at a time when the flood waters had travelled only halfway through Sindh and had not yet reached Hyderabad district.
Please walk us through the chain of events thus far.
It all began in end-July with unexpected and unprecedented rains in the north in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, resulting in flash floods that caused immense damage in that province [see accompanying piece, 'Left high and wet']. Water from these floods was then discharged into the Kabul, Jhelum and Chenab rivers, through which it travelled downstream, where this extremely heavy flow caused a breach on the left marginal bund of the Tausa barrage on the Indus in Punjab, causing flooding in areas such as Kot Addu and Muzaffargarh.