Kerala invited flood woes, now for some wisdom

When the water recedes, the governments, present and past, will have to answer why the floods happened

January 17, 1991 I had just got home in the early hours after a long tiring day at work, which was almost like a war room dealing with Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. I switched on the television and chanced upon the breaking news exploding on the screen. “The war has begun,” CNN announced and went on the blink for a few minutes, signals jammed by the Americans and their allies as they unleashed their firepower on Iraq. I drove back to the office, stopped the Press, yanked out the headline that had been kept ready in anticipation of a conflict and produced a whole new edition with the screaming headline, “IT’S WAR”.

Down the road, an overdose of CNN and Peter Arnett, who had become a household name with his dramatic reporting from Baghdad, made me sick of television journalism. I hated the box, until a couple of days ago when someone shook me up with a WhatsApp message.

August 9, 2018

I had just woken up when friend Jerome messaged, “Hours of anxiety... Tension mounting...Occurring after 26 years...Minutes left to raise the shutter at Idukki dam.” Jerome’s genuine concern about the flash floods ravaging the Indian state of Kerala spurred me to rummage in the drawers for the TV remote. A smorgasbord of channels representing the tiny state of 35 million people were live reporting from various flash points. The TV channels showed live updates of the water levels of various dams, especially the Idukki dam which was reaching its full capacity. Digital bar charts of water levels danced like the graphic equaliser of an audio system.

The Idukki dam was opened for the first time in 26 years as the water levels rose to just four feet below its full capacity. People roared while TV channels beamed the white streak of water rushing down the floodgate after engineers raised one if its shutters. The milky flow down the concrete dam walls looked like an oil painting on a gray canvas. TV cameras stationed at various buildings beamed visuals of the river Periyar swelling by seconds with water released from the dam. The Cheruthoni town bridge, as expected, disappeared under the water as all the floodgates were opened, sending approximately 600,000 litres of water flooding down the Periyar every second. Television channels scrambled reporters stationed at various towns

down the stream to report the arrival of the dam water. They aired the number of hours the water would take to reach different stations and the slew of precautions people needed to take to avert any untoward incidents. Homes and trees were washed away in front of our eyes. Buildings and hillsides collapsed as we watched in distress. Every TV crew who reported in the sheeting rain sounded like a Peter Arnett.

Kerala was witnessing its worst floods since 1924. Two days of heavy rain, 40 per cent more than the seasonal stats, drove authorities to open the shutters of 27 reservoirs to drain out the excess water. This time, the crisis management seemed to withstand the calamity. A deluge of forecasts and warnings as well as prompt evacuation of people from the banks of rivers and landslip areas seemed to have worked meticulously. The media for a change shied away from negative reporting, taking on the mantle of informing the public rather than insulting

the political dispensation. When the incessant monsoon rained misery across the state, it also opened the floodgate of humanism, sweeping away all other ideals that divided Malayalis. We were suddenly humans. There were no Marxists or Leninists; Gandhians or Nehruvians; Hinduists or Islamists when catastrophe stared in the eye. For migrant worker Vishnu Kachhawa, a salesman from Madhya Pradesh, it was an opportunity to give back to the land which has helped him earn a livelihood. He donated all his blankets to people in a relief camp. The heart-wrenching scene of a rescue worker running across the Cheruthoni bridge with a child in his arm, seconds before the bridge got submerged, flooded the eyes of millions who were glued to the television. For once, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala rubbed shoulders as they brought succor to the victims housed in hundreds of camps.

But when the flood waters finally recede, there would be piles of political filth that the state has to address, starting with the primary question of why the floods. Flood is one of the natural calamities that India faces almost every year. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), out of the total geographical area of 329 million hectares, about 45.64 million hectares is flood prone. As per a 2006 report by the Working Group on Flood Control Management Programme, on an yearly average, 7.55 million hectares of land is affected, 1,560 lives are lost and damage worth 18 billion rupees are caused to crops, houses and public utilities.

According to the CAG report released in 2017, preparing inundation maps for various flood levels for a dam is a part of the central government’s Emergency Action Plan. But no dam-break analysis has been conducted in respect of any of the 61 dams in Kerala.

Flood forecasting in India commenced in 1958 with the establishment of a unit in New Delhi. The Central Water Commission today operates 175 Flood Forecasting Stations in the country but the tiny Kerala, with 44 rivers slithering around it, doesn’t figure on the list.

Sand is vital for the sustenance of rivers. “The removal of sand from the river bed increases the velocity of the flowing water, with the distorted flowregime eventually eroding the river banks,” says a study by the Central Ground Water Board. Indiscriminate mining of sand from almost all rivers in Kerala has led to the destruction of the river systems, causing flash floods.

Idukki and Wayanad, the two districts that bear the brunt of the flood fury, have the highest forest cover in the state. According to a report in the daily Mathrubhumi, between 2011 and 2016 Idukki lost 20.13 per cent of its green cover, while Wayanad reported a loss of 11 per cent. Rampant denudation by the quarrying industry and rapid urbanisation of hillside settlements are cited to be the reason for the mudslides that accounted for most rain deaths in the state this year.

Environmentalist Madhav Gadgil, whose recommendations to save the Western Ghats, were vehemently opposed by politicians and church leaders alike, says Kerala invited the disaster. He says implementation of his report would have mitigated the magnitude of the tragedy. So this monsoon, let’s pray for a drizzle of wisdom to damp the barren hearts of environmental antagonists.

Rampant denudation by the quarrying industry and rapid urbanisation of hillside settlements led to mudslides that accounted for most rain deaths in the state this year