Monsoon Fury Tests Lahore and Treaties

Integrated basin management could restore the Ravi’s flow, reclaim floodplains as green barriers, and weave climate resilience into every plan.

• It would require courage—dismantling the grip of real estate kings, fostering cross-border trust, and listening to the rivers’ ancient whispers.
• Rivers remember their paths, and if we forget, they will remind us again, with a force that no treaty or tower can withstand.

By Mohammad Ehsan Leghari

In the shadow of Lahore’s ancient minarets, where the call to prayer once mingled with the gentle murmur of the Ravi River, chaos reigned on that August morning in 2025. The sky, filled with the unparalleled intensity of the monsoon, unleashed a deluge of rain that transformed the Ravi, Chenab, and Sutlej into furious monsters. Streets turned into rivers, within little time. In poor neighborhoods, residents watched in terror as the water rose like an unwelcome guest, swallowing their modest possessions and leaving them with nothing—their entire lives’ meager accumulations erased in hours of agony. Nearby in Park View City, a society  that is just not reserved for the ultra-rich but also built by middle-class families through years of hard work and savings, homes—symbols of hard-earned progress—were submerged up to their knees in mud, their interiors ruined as lifelong investments plunged into water overnight. Thousands fled, clutching what they could save, while the water swallowed roads, schools, and dreams. This was no ordinary floods; it was perhaps predetermined design, a story imprinted in the mud of forgotten floodplains.

Long before this ordeal, the tale began in the diplomatic corridors, back in 1960. Try to visualize the setting: negotiators from India and Pakistan, along with World Bank mediators, hunched over maps, perhaps in air-conditioned rooms, far from the rivers they sought to control. The Indus Water Treaty emerged as a fragile peace, hailed as a wall against war between two countries that have since fought four wars—the last one earlier this year in a brief but intense May conflict—and both became nuclear powers. It divided the great Indus Basin like a pie—Eastern Rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India, Western Rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan. A triumph of human ingenuity, they called it, turning wild waters into predictable pipelines originally for irrigation and later for power. But rivers are not mere pipes; they are the living veins of the earth, pulsing with seasons, silt, and secrets. The treaty ignored this, imposing borders on an ecosystem that knows no flags, beginning a slow unraveling.

Read: ‘The water left nothing’: Pakistan’s Punjab province reels from deadly floods

Decades passed, and the Ravi, once a bountiful artery nourishing Punjab’s heart, part of great culture, music and poetry of Punjab and Lahore, shrank into a poisonous shadow of itself. In 1970s, the director and producer of Punjabi film “Jithay Wagdi ay Ravi- Where Ravi flows”, perhaps did not know that water rights of Ravi were fully given to India by Pakistan in 1960. Upstream diversions and dams choked its flow, while downstream, untreated sewage from growing cities turned its waters toxic. Fishermen who had plied its banks for generations hung up their nets; farmers watched their fields turn barren. The river’s floodplains—those vast, spongy areas meant to cradle excess rains—lay exposed and vulnerable. In the eyes of developers and politicians, they were not sacred barriers; they were blank canvases for profit. The era of unchecked urbanization arrived, where Lahore sprawled like an insatiable monster. Gated communities sprang up overnight, concrete jungles swallowing the permeable earth that once absorbed monsoons like a forgiving embrace.

At the heart of this transformation stood the Ravi Urban Development Authority (RUDA), a grand dream born of ambition and hubris. Launched with fanfare, it promised a “new Dubai” along the Ravi’s banks—gleaming high-rises, beautiful parks, and elite palaces, an attempt to mirror Dubai. However, the much-praised Dubai itself has proven to be an environmental disaster, as the devastating floods from heavy rains in April 2024 showed a glimpse of that. But RUDA’s blueprint carved luxury onto nature’s blueprint for survival.

Floodplains, designed over millennia to swell and recede, were paved over, their natural rhythm silenced. When the 2025 monsoon struck with unprecedented force—fueled by a warming planet to which Pakistan contributed minimally—the waters had nowhere to go. They surged into the very developments meant to challenge them. In Park View City, middle-class residents who had poured years of effort and savings into what they believed were safe homes found themselves stranded on rooftops, their financial security washed away in the flood’s merciless tide. The Punjab Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) declared it the worst in history: three rivers cresting simultaneously, a once-in-a-lifetime convergence that submerged millions of acres and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Yet, this tragedy was not woven from rain alone. Climate change emerged as the hidden antagonist, amplifying Pakistan’s woes despite its minimal carbon footprint. Himalayan glaciers were melting faster, feeding erratic floods in summer and droughts in winter. Monsoons became more intense and unpredictable, like a writer twisting the plot. Governance failures added layers to the drama: the National Disaster Management Plan gathered dust on shelves, its strategies lost in bureaucratic silos. Agencies quarreled over territories, warnings went ignored. And then, the story deepened—India’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Treaty shattered the data-sharing lifeline of the Permanent Indus Commission. Early alerts on upstream flows informed through diplomatic channel by India rather than Indus commission was highly irresponsible on the part of India, leaving downstream communities half blind to the approaching storm.

As the waters receded in Lahore, leaving behind mud-filled ruins and shattered lives, the stories of the poor—who had lost everything they owned in the deluge—and the middle class—who saw their hard-earned savings evaporate—converged with countless others in temporary camps. They spoke of loss, but also of anger—at a system that prioritized elite profits over people’s safety, that partitioned rivers without respecting their wholeness. The floods were no exception; they were the climax of a foretold story, where policy blindness met ecological revenge.

But stories can change. Imagine a new chapter: one where Pakistan reshapes its waters not as spoils to divide, but as lifelines to nurture. Integrated basin management could restore the Ravi’s flow, reclaim floodplains as green barriers, and weave climate resilience into every plan. It would require courage—dismantling the grip of real estate kings, fostering cross-border trust, and listening to the rivers’ ancient whispers. For in the end, rivers remember their paths, and if we forget, they will remind us again, with a force that no treaty or tower can withstand.

Read: Pakistan floods spark looming food crisis

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Mohammad Ehsan Leghari is Member of Indus River System Authority (IRSA) representing Sindh, and former Managing Director, Sindh Irrigation & Development Authority (SIDA)