The severity of flood in Kerala killed at least 370 people, displaced 780,000 and caused Rs 30000-50000 crore worth of damage. Was this disaster with significant consequences, simply nature’s fury or poor water governance in India?
Floods are responsible for about 40% of the damage that is wrought by natural disasters. Though natural calamities including flash floods due to incessant rainfall cannot be avoided but the severity of flood is strongly influenced by human activities such as climate change, landscape changes, deforestation, soil erosion in the upper reaches of dam, urban development, quarrying, shrinking of water space loosing floodwater storage. In addition poor dam management that caused remarkable decrease in the volume of dam by siltation due to deforestation and poor agricultural practice, is yet another factor.
In India, there have been claims that planned dams would have no negative impacts on the environment but environmental consequences of many constructed dams were ultimately found to be far worse than predicted as observed in Kerala. Incessant rainfall in August forced the authorities to release water from the near full-capacity dam particularly Idukki. This water entered the areas that were already submerged. Indeed, recurrence of flash flood is bound to increase on account of climate change and the pattern of land use. In other words, human intervention has led to man-made disaster.
Government strongly advocate the necessity of developmental activities such as construction of dam, infrastructure, urbanisation and many more in ecological sensitive zone for public interest without assessing the flood susceptibility. In an aftermath of a disaster, the poor people that are already struggling are pushed into destitution because they have fewer assets, less diversified income sources and lack adequate financial protection. Then what “public interest” and for whom!
In this context, the above question is quiet relevant because huge public money is being spent to maintain legal institutions like Central Water Commission(CWC) who failed to control and conserve water to prevent severity of flood, and India Meteorological Department(IMD) to forecast the degree of rainfall well in advance and warn the concerned state authorities to take mitigation measures to save the people and their assets particularly those living in floodplains and zones to landslides.
In this context, flood management should be a priority, particularly in emerging economies with high developing targets. The first step of the developed methodology is to create a flood inventory map by collecting information on historical flood events, processing aerial photos, along with human activities and intervention. Based on the technical input provided by the concerned agencies, the local authorities can maximise: a) the potential warning time, b) the response-warning time, and c) the mitigation time.
If there is another such disaster, legal authorities will have no excuse if they have not learned a lesson from this disaster.
