Floods with drought: Changing nature of monsoons DOWN TO EARTH

Floods in the time of drought are India’s new normal. Let us get this clear. Each year, without fail, a vicious cycle of crippling drought and then devastating floods plays out before us. Sometimes this cycle becomes so bad that the reports on these even hit the headlines. But the fact is that this cycle is getting a new normal. First, floods and drought come together. Today, even as 40 per cent of the districts in India face the prospects of drought, close to 25 per cent of the districts have had heavy rain of more than 100 mm in just a matter of hours. Secondly, the rain is not only variable but also extreme.

Chandigarh, a city of open parks, was recently submerged in water. It had deficient rain till August 21, and then it got 115 mm of rain in just 12 hours. In other words, it got roughly 15 per cent of its annual monsoon rain in just a few hours. Bengaluru hardly had any rain and then it poured. It got 150 mm of rain in just about a day, which is close to 30 per cent of its annual monsoon rain. It is no wonder that the city drowned. Mount Abu got more than half its annual monsoon rain in two days.

This is the double whammy I have discussed on many occasions in my articles. The fact is that, on the one hand, we are getting our water management wrong. We are building on floodplains, destroying our waterbodies, and filling up our water channels. On the other hand, climate change is beginning to show its impact on the monsoon. It is leading to more rain in fewer rainy days, as scientists have predicted. We now see more rain and more extreme rain events.

This year, up to the middle of August, the data show that India has had 16 “extremely heavy rain events”, defined as rain of more than 244 mm in a day, and 100 “heavy rain events”, defined as rain of 124-244 mm in a day. This means that the rain will become a flood. Worse, in the Met records, the rain will be shown as normal, not recognising that it did not rain when it was needed most for sowing or that all the rain came in just one downpour. It came and went. It brought no benefits but only grief.

It is time we understood this. This means learning to cope with the twin scenarios, all at once. This means being obsessive about how to mitigate floods and how to live with scarcity of water. But the good news is that doing one can help the other. But we need to stop debating, dithering, or dawdling. We know what to do. And we have no time to lose. Climate change will only accelerate because weather and rain will only get more variable, more extreme, and more catastrophic.

Take the floods. The media has reported that the government is considering — and this can only be called a hare-brained scheme — desilting the massive Brahmaputra to control floods in Assam. This is not just unfeasible but an unnecessary distraction because it means we will lose more time. In Bihar, the government wants to do more of the same by building embankments along its rivers. This is when its own Kosi is perhaps the only Indian river that is called both “mother” and “witch”. It comes down from the Himalayas, is known to bring in vast quantities of silt, and changes its course regularly. We know that efforts to tame the river by building embankments have not worked; the silt fills the river and the bed rises, and the water overflows the banks and floods the region. This year’s floods in Bihar have killed 250 people (the figures are conservative) and devastated the lives of more than 10 million. The numbers are not small. And remember, with every flood and every drought the poor get poorer. All the development dividend is lost; homes, toilets, and schools are washed away; and livelihoods are destroyed.

The answer to floods is what has been discussed for long. In fact, it was practised in these floodprone regions many decades ago. It requires planning systems that can divert and channel water so that it does not flood the land and destroy life. It means linking rivers to ponds, lakes, and ditches so that the water is free to flow. This will distribute the water across the region and bring other benefits. It will recharge groundwater so that in the subsequent months of low rain, there is water for drinking and irrigation. It will also ensure that there is food during floods, as wetlands are highly productive in terms of fish and plant food.

Mitigating floods and drought has only one answer: Obsessive attention to building millions and millions of connected and living water structures that will capture the rain, and be a sponge for floods and storehouse for drought. The only question is: When shall we read the writing on the wall? Get with it. Get it right.