Flawed development models worsen flood misery
THE monsoon is the cruellest season in India. One of the most terrifying experiences is to witness a river breach an embankment and instantly eat up swathes of land. I have reported on floods for decades; the fury of a cloudburst or a landslip or rising water level is almost incomparable. To see huge chunks of solid earth being devoured by a hungry tide is numbing.
After a scorching summer, a wave of floods is sweeping India from the north to the east and the west. About 49 million hectares (of 3,290 lakh hectares) of land are prone to floods in India. According to the National Disaster Management Authority, on an average every year, “75 lakh hectares of land is affected, 1,600 lives are lost and the damage caused to crops, houses and public utilities is Rs 1,805 crore due to floods.” This year, at least 85 lives have been lost so far. Over 30.83 lakh people are affected, with 3,154 villages submerged and 49,014 hectares of crop area damaged. But the impact of floods is not a mere statistic.
Flood studies and reportage almost invariably miss out on the inequality and the cumulative loss. Typically, a flood story is about loss of home, cropland, livestock, relief camps, fleeing or dead wildlife, aerial survey by ministers and vox pops of survivors demanding more attention. As the water recedes, the attention shifts till the next monsoon, when the same low-lying areas will go under water. If you are lucky, the house is still standing but will need repairs. To get through another season without crops, one must borrow money. To feed too many mouths gets difficult, encouraging traffickers to take away children who drop out of school that turn into temporary shelters. The following year, the story repeats itself, and over a decade, each family is caught in an inescapable cycle of debt. In many cases, entire houses go under water and rehabilitation is rare as well as circuitous. It often strips families of every piece of possession without any help whatsoever.
We are not even halfway through the monsoon and 27 districts of Assam are flooded; 18 lakh people are affected. Beyond Dibrugarh in upper Assam, amid challenging logistics, the media coverage reduces. Cachar, one of the worst-affected, has not even received relief. A large section of flooded India remains invisible. Parts of Arunachal Pradesh are cut off, hampering relief efforts. The Army and the air force are routinely called in to help — such is the scale of devastation year after year. Roads are blocked and damaged. By the time the government can repair them, another wave hits the hills. This year, Manipur has been hit by floods, with the Imphal and Iril rivers breaching embankments. Flood warnings have been sounded in Bihar and a flood-like situation is being reported from north Bengal.
While rivers in the east are known to flood their plains, the misery that follows is largely created by flawed development models and corruption. Embankments are not adequately reinforced, leading to breaches. An alleged nexus between contractors and government agencies (earlier, armed groups were involved in many states) ends up doing a poor job. The bigger problem is persistent erosion that robs landmass. Since 1950, Assam has lost 7.4 per cent of its land.
I grew up in the hills, where the monsoon meant incessant rains, but it didn’t trigger floods. Today, Indian hills and plains are both vulnerable. Mumbai city can’t bear the monsoon downpour and New Delhi is thrown off gear with just one good shower. The hills of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh are chipping away. The reasons are simple: hill-cutting, making tunnels across mountains, rampant illegal construction and unplanned city development with poor or no drainage system and no master plans for cities.
Mumbai city was built by the reclamation of seven major islands connected by the Mithi river that served for drainage. The river swells during the monsoon, flooding the city that reclaims more and more land for expansion. In the past 40 years, the city reclaimed double the land compared to the previous 300 years, reducing the width of the river dumped with waste, filled with slums and killing mangroves along the way while reinforcing the retaining wall. The sum result is a history of disastrous flooding, the worst recorded in 2005 that killed more than a thousand people. This monsoon, the city is again reporting floods drowning parts of it within hours of rain.
While the 2005 Mumbai floods called attention to India’s vulnerabilities in disaster management, no lessons seems to have been learnt. In 2023, the Yamuna reached a record high of 208.66 metres, much above the level recorded during the last great flood in Delhi in 1978. It is well known how the Capital choked the great river by discharging polluted water, leading to siltation and a rise in the level of the riverbed. The normal flow of water is impeded, causing flooding of the city, which is always underprepared to deal with any amount of rainfall.
Bengaluru urban and rural are the most flood-prone in all of South India, save a few places in Kerala. From 1969 to 2021, IMD (India Meteorological Department) data shows Bengaluru recorded more than 70 flood events almost entirely due to urbanisation. Today, the city has 250 flood hotspots and planners are still figuring out how to drain rainwater.
Chennai is also emerging as a city that can no longer manage rains, but it is telling how such disasters are embedded within inequality and settlements in low-lying areas.
But the most dangerous destruction of the ecosystem leading to catastrophic floods is the unstable Himalayan belt of Uttarakhand and Himachal. Images of houses, roads and people being washed away is becoming a regular phenomenon. At least six districts of Uttar Pradesh are under threat from the water released in Uttarakhand. Sharda, Rapti and Gandak are flowing above the danger mark, affecting more than 20 villages.
The big picture is grim, and any long-term study or coverage on loss of human and animal lives is episodic. While weather conditions are beyond our control, early warning systems, community involvement and better planning of development projects and flood management are obvious ways to mitigate this annual disaster. Despite state governments’ demand, floods are not yet a national calamity. Is it because they affect the most vulnerable of our population?
