Breaking the cycle of drought and flood Edit: Flood fury
Co-ordination by Centre needed to mitigate its impact
With the monsoon having picked up after a belated onset and a somewhat sluggish onward journey, floods have already begun to cause destruction in various parts of the country. Along with overflowing rivers and lightning strikes, the floods have claimed as many as 85 lives in the last few days in Assam, Bihar and Odisha. Worse, they have displaced an estimated 6.8 million people, rendering them homeless. Even cities like Bengaluru and Gurgaon have not been spared by the rains, causing dislocation of normal services. The damage to property and infrastructure is yet to be assessed. In Assam, even wildlife has not escaped the fury of floods as the Brahmaputra and its tributaries have submerged large parts of the Pobitora wildlife sanctuary in Morigaon district, damaging the world’s most critical habitat of the one-horned rhinoceros. And this, notably, is just the beginning; worse is yet to follow in the flood plains of the country’s major river systems.
The irony is that such gushing water-induced devastation recurs unfailingly during every monsoon season and not enough is being done to prevent it. Unlike a natural disaster like earthquake, which can neither be foreseen nor forestalled, floods, in most cases, are both predictable and preventable to a large extent. The areas perpetually at risk – totalling over 40 million hectares – are well-known and well-demarcated. Core flood plain zones of the rivers – where the surplus waters generally tend to spill over – have also been delineated. These shouldn’t normally be encroached upon. But this is hardly the case. If suitable measures to hold water and prevent its further spread are deployed in these areas, the adverse fall-out of floods can be contained and managed considerably.
The important point to note is that many of the measures needed to contain floods are more or less similar to those for mitigating droughts, though the action in this case has to take place in the catchment areas of water channels. These include developing and conserving forests as well as grass cover and constructing check dams or diversion channels to prevent water flows and generation of silts. Strengthening of embankments and raising their heights wherever needed can also help avert overflowing of water. Though much of this is supposed to be done routinely as part of the watershed development and embankment maintenance programmes, the ground reality does not reflect it. In fact, on the contrary, the vegetative cover in catchment areas continues to deteriorate, resulting in heavy silting of river beds, curtailing their water holding capacity. Part of the trouble is that flood management is the responsibility of states, which seem to be focused more on postdeluge rescue and relief work, rather than on controlling the risk factors. A model Bill to regulate flood plain zones was drafted by the Centre and circulated to states way back in 1975. Regrettably, little action has ensued on this front.
Moreover, the much-needed flood forecasting system, though technically in place, has hardly proved its utility. The devastating floods in the Kashmir valley in 2013 revealed that the state was not covered under this network. Such glaring gaps have, thankfully, been plugged. However, warnings issued by this system are still made available only to civic administrations, which are often slow to react, and not to the people, who are likely to be affected. It is perhaps time the Centre played a bigger role in flood management. This is imperative also because most rivers run across several states and mismanagement of their waters in one state can have perilous consequences for others. Such issues need to be addressed without delay.