Dr Sania Chudhry in her article ‘Empower people to end loadshedding’ has made an excellent analysis of the problem and suggested an excellent remedy. This would be fine if the problem was only of power shortage and not also water shortage. Whereas thermal, solar, wind, and even nuclear sources of energy will take care of power shortage only, hydel energy will take care of both. I fully endorse the writers’ views on Kalabagh dam. We have no choice but to keep drumming for kalabagh dam, a mega dam which can be built in shortest time possible and which alone can give us the mega quantities of power and water that we badly require. Agriculture is the back bone of Pakistan's economy, providing livelihood directly to 70 percent of the rural population and earning 60 percent of the export revenues. Loadshedding is only half the problem, ‘food-shedding’ is the bigger problem. 12 of the 18 crore people are spending all their income on purchase of food. This has pushed 8 crore people below the poverty line compared to 5 crore in 2008. 11 crore people have been reduced to less than two meals per day. We will neglect agriculture only at our own peril.
ENGR KHURSHID ANWER,
Lahore, April 28.