Water from nowhere
Dhanna Lal, a casual labourer with the Airport Authority of India's Pratapgarh (Rajasthan) office, believes that earthquakes are a cosmic curse. So when his dried village well, some 300 km away from Bhuj, was filled with water immediately after the earthquake, he was baffled. Similar stories abound in even parched villages of the Rann of Kachhch.
Satellite pictures taken five days after the earthquake in Gujarat show a large quantity of surface water in a zigzag channel leading to the Rann of Kachhch. Pictures taken earlier confirm that water did not exist in these areas. This has triggered off excitement among the scientific community and experts are trying to analyse whether the water could be sourced to a distributory of the ancient river like the Indus or the mythical Saraswati. Contrary to popular belief, the Saraswati is not a myth, say experts. The channels indicate that it was 1,500 km long, 3-15 km wide and flowed through present day Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan.
Related Content
- Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on performance audit of Total Sanitation Campaign /Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan
- Research insights on climate and water in the Hindu Kush Himalayas
- Waste from idols leaves Yamuna ghats in a mess
- 6,500cr and 19yrs later, Yamuna dirtier than ever
- Fuel of future
- 30 yrs on, Maha dam project cost up from 372cr to 7,777cr