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Article: Water, water everywhere ...: the subcontinent. (flood control in India, Bangladesh and Nepal)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- August 21, 1993
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IT IS not easy to keep the water out. Holland, a rich country, has been building defences against flooding for 700 years, but still occasionally gets its feet wet. Bangladesh, India and Nepal, all poor countries, hardly know where to start. Anyway, just recently they have been too busy counting their dead to think of much else: at least 4,200 lives lost during the past weeks through drowning or diseases, among them cholera, spread through contaminated water. But when the water level falls, and, in a typically cruel thrust of nature, drought is threatened, the politicians, the bureaucrats and the engineers will again consider what can be done to tame the water, as their ...