We lack an understanding of the risks disasters bring
Our multihazard early warning systems have improved, but we are yet to develop a modern EWS for the floods
The devastating flood in Kerala has claimed more than 400 lives, besides damaging 8,000-plus houses and a vast network of infrastructure. The direct economic loss, according to the state government, is estimated to be around Rs 19,512 crore, but the indirect environmental costs could be much more. While the state may take months, if not years, to recover, the country must be concerned about a disturbing trend in flooding seen in recent years.
First, floods are the most common and recurrent natural disaster in India, but their frequency and intensity have increased lately. Second, earlier floods were mostly riverine in nature, confined to the Brahmaputrabarak Valley, the Indo-gangetic plains and the deltaic regions of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. Now incidences of flooding are being reported from smaller river valleys, hills, plateaus, even deserts. Third, urban areas are getting flooded much more frequently, and these are not limited only to cities on rivers or coasts. Now even cities such as Bangalore and Jaipur get flooded.
A number of factors are responsible. First, the rainfall pattern is changing. While the average seasonal rainfall has not changed much, its distribution in space and time is changing: this is leading to an increase in the number of dry days, decrease in the number of rainy days, intense downpours in fewer days, and heavier rains in areas that had scanty atmospheric moisture.
This has put pressure on the resilience of dams, drains and flood protection network, which were designed on parameters based on past rainfall/flooding pattern. Their resilience has also been compromised because of poor maintenance. Some of the colonial-era infrastructures are in dire need of an overhaul, retrofitting, even reconstruction. Much of the new infrastructure, houses and industries may not fulfil the global standards of resilience. In our strategic approach to development, we hardly factor eco-system services in the cost-benefit analysis and calculation of internal rate of return of projects.
Our water bodies and flood plains, which provide natural cushions to absorb and drain excess water and recharge groundwater, have been encroached upon by unplanned expansion of cities and other human settlements. Our forests and bio-diversity, which help to protect slopes, prevent landslides and protect the environment, have been damaged by unregulated mining, quarrying and other development projects.
We are committed by our policies and legislations to reduce risks and build resilience, but overtly and covertly, we are creating new risks of disasters that are compounding the already existing layers of hazard, vulnerabilities and risks. The Disaster Management Act 2005 and the National Policy on Disaster Management 2009 prescribed integrating disaster risk reduction in the process of development across all sectors, but such integration and mainstreaming has remained largely elusive.
Our understanding of the dynamics of risks of disasters is far from being comprehensive. Our multi-hazard early warning systems (EWS) have improved, but we are yet to develop a modern EWS for floods. We are able to forecast rain with a degree of accuracy, but we are not yet ready with a flood warning system that would facilitate evacuation of people the way it’s done during cyclones. Despite the much talked about paradigm shift, our focus of disaster management is still largely on managing events of disaster (response, relief and rehabilitation) rather than on managing risks of disasters (risk assessment, risk prevention and mitigation and disaster preparedness). We spend more than 90% of our budgets on disaster management (annually, around Rs 20000 crore by my calculation), but we are yet to set up national, state and district mitigation funds that were mandated by law. The tragedy of Kerala signals that the much-hyped shift in disaster management is yet to be achieved.