Flood control

Coherent policy needed to address recurring floods

Come monsoon, and floods begin to wreak havoc in various parts of the country. Several areas in Assam, Odisha, and Himachal Pradesh are already under water. Similar reports from elsewhere are imminent as the monsoon season progresses. Going by the past record, the incidence of floods, as well as the extent of the damage caused by them, has been steadily climbing. This is partly because of the climate change-driven increase in the frequency of freakish rainfall events, but largely for want of effective flood-mitigation action. Unlike some other disasters, such as earthquakes, which can neither be predicted nor prevented, floods, in most cases, are foreseeable. They can also be restrained to minimise the losses. Vast stretches totalling over 40 million hectares of land, equivalent to around 12 per cent of the country’s geographical area, are known to be flood-prone. Luckily, around 32 million hectares of land, around 80 per cent, is amenable to a reasonable degree of protection against flooding. But not much has been done on this count.

The reasons for the steady worsening of the flood menace are numerous, and fairly apparent too. For one, reckless deforestation and the degradation of the vegetative cover of the catchments of rivers and their tributaries have increased siltation, thereby curtailing their water-holding capacity. The discharge of wastes into the rivers has added to this problem. Besides, the riverbeds and their floodplains, which are supposed to be buffer zones, have been encroached upon. Moreover, the much-needed regulation of water flows in river systems through coordinated opening and shutting of floodgates of dams has been lacking.

This aside, urban floods have become a formidable hazard. Major deluges were witnessed in cities like Mumbai (2005), Srinagar (2014), Chennai (2015), and Patna (2019) in the recent past. Apart from inadequate, outmoded and improperly maintained drainage systems, factors like flawed town planning, the shrinking or disappearance of natural water outlets due to illegal intrusions, and the indiscriminate disposal of garbage into the drains are largely responsible for these calamities.

Surprisingly, there is no single agency to oversee the flood-management task across the country. Nor is there any specific statutory provision for flood management in the Indian Constitution. While the India Meteorological Department makes rainfall predictions, the job of flood forecasting is entrusted to the Central Water Commission. Once flooding occurs, rescue and relief work is carried out by national- and state-level disaster-management agencies. The subsequent rehabilitation of the affected population and restoration of damaged infrastructure are handled by local civic bodies, which invariably require the state or Union government’s help to do so. Constitutional provisions in this respect are rather vague. Though water, irrigation, and their related aspects are mentioned among the state subjects, flood management does not figure in any of the Constitution’s three well-defined lists — the Union list, the State list, and the Concurrent list. These are critical issues that need to be addressed urgently, and in a holistic manner, to combat the scourge of recurring floods. It might also be advisable to consider setting up a high-level expert panel, of the type of the Rashtriya Barh Ayog (National Commission on Floods) of the 1970s, to go into the whole gamut of issues concerning floods and suggest a practical plan of action to deal with them.