THIS refers to the article ‘Remaking a river: land and profit along the Ravi’ (EOS June 13) which talked about the much-hyped Ravi Riverfront Urban Development Project. The plan to have a project of high-rise buildings along the Ravi is nothing but a sugar-coated land-grabbing scheme to enjoy, among other things, tax amnesty.
Almost 102,074 acres of green agriculture land, including 80,000 acres of rich farmland, is planned to be converted into a concrete jungle. While the developers tout it to be an ecologically friendly project, environmental scientists disagree. Since there is no water in the Ravi, the plan envisages building dams near Sialkot on prime rice fields to store rainwater to fill the dry river.