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Better planning can minimise flood damage
This article is authored by Ankit Mishra, ICSSR Fellow and Sakshi Mishra, doctoral scholar, Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Prayagraj.
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In August, a large amount of glacier and rock detached itself from above the Trishuli valley in Nepal and moved downwards at highway speed. Within a few days, rescue workers in Uttar Pradesh were retrieving bodies from rivers located more than 200 kilometres downstream of the landslide. By early September the Ganga at Patna was breaking century-old records, four million people in Bihar had been impacted and Assam had already buried about a hundred of its own after several weeks submerged in water. The rivers changed but the response did not. Once again, the country turned to boats, tarpaulin and relief cheques.
The unpleasant truth is that these floods are more a reflection of our own decisions than simply the result of weather conditions. India has developed a sophisticated system for dealing with floods but has almost no means of preventing them, the difference being evident in the number of lives lost.
Consider what the science actually says about Assam. When World Weather Attribution studied this year's disaster, it found that the rainfall behind the floods was not extreme, with a return period of under two years. What turned an ordinary monsoon into catastrophe was not the sky but the ground: Unplanned construction, lost drainage and embankments that trap silt and block the water's escape. The flood was manufactured as much as it was rained down.
Bihar is also following the same trend. In 1954 the state had approximately 160 kilometres of embankments and about 2.5 million hectares designated as flood-prone. At present, there are almost 3,800 kilometres of embankments and the area classified as flood-prone has increased to 6.8 million hectares. The dykes intended to prevent rivers from flooding have raised the riverbeds by means of silt, have narrowed the channels, and have made each breach more severe. Between 1987 and 2018 the state experienced more than 400 breaches. For many decades we have spent large amounts of money in making floods a greater problem.
The tool which, in fact, has the potential to reduce the damage is, however, being ignored. In 1975 the Centre issued a Model Bill on Flood Plain Zoning, the purpose of which was to regulate the type of structures that could be built in the area along a river. Fifty-one years on, only three states have adopted the bill and even in those cases the enforcement is very weak. Bihar and Assam, the two states most in need of it, have informed the Centre that such zoning is not practical or feasible to implement. Of the roughly ₹1.6 lakh crore the 15th Finance Commission set aside for disaster management between 2021 and 2026, only about ₹45,000 crore was reserved for mitigation. The far larger share waits for the flood to arrive.
None of this is by chance, and that’s the real failure of our system. Relief efforts are easy to see and bring praise. A minister can be photographed giving out compensation, and a fleet of boats looks like action. Prevention is invisible, and its success means nothing seems to happen. Politicians do not win votes by refusing to approve housing on riverbanks or by saying no to popular embankments. The problem gets worse because the Centre provides funds, states do the building, and local governments, who should control land use, lack the money and power to stop bad decisions. In the end, no one is held responsible.
In order to address this, the system's incentives should be altered. The money available for prevention must be secured and not easily withdrawn, so that it is not the first item to be cut when budgets are reduced. Funding provided to states for relief should be based on actual floodplain regulations, thereby giving zoning the authority that it has not had since 1975. Local governments should have both the power and the funds needed to halt dangerous construction. The disaster in Nepal serves as a clear indication that rivers do not respect borders. If a river basin is shared with a neighbour, then we must share data and plan jointly, rather than merely concentrating on rescue operations after the event has occurred.
The water which killed people in Nepal in August and carried them into India was a warning that penetrated all the borders we possess. The next flood is already on its way. The real issue then is whether we will use the time before it occurs to decide where not to build, or whether we will once again count the dead and blame nature.
This article is authored by Ankit Mishra, ICSSR Fellow and Sakshi Mishra, doctoral scholar, Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Prayagraj.
