The fury of the ongoing flash floods that have devastated vast stretches of northern India and neighbouring Pakistan, could have been minimised, if not wholly averted, had the water flows in the river systems and reservoirs been managed better. Most floods and flash floods in India owe their origin to human causes, ranging from deforestation, poor land conservation, miscalculated storage of water in reservoirs and its ill-timed release downstream. Unchecked silting of rivers and canals, and poor upkeep of their embankments have made matters worse. Floods in the Yamuna river in Haryana and Delhi, posing threat to even the Common Wealth Games Village, where the athletes and other participants in the Games are to stay, are the outcome largely of massive water discharges at irregular and mistimed intervals from the Hathnikund barrage in Haryana. Regular offloading of water in manageable quantum could have prevented this from happening. Similar is the case in some of the flooding events in Uttar Pradesh where the River Ganga and its offshoots could not cope with water outflows from the rivers and dams upstream in Uttarakhand. Last year’s massive floods in southern India were also a consequence of a lack of coordination between authorities manning a series of barrages on the River Krishna in different states. Surplus waters of Almati and Narayanpur dams in Karnataka went unchecked into Srisailam reservoir at a time when it was already full up. The resultant heavy discharges from Srisailam added to water stocks downstream in the Nagarjuna Sagar and Prakasam barrages. Waters released from here submerged large stretches in Andhra Pradesh before flowing into the sea.
In the north, rivers emanating from the Himalayas are prone to carry a heavy load of silt, which clog riverbeds and are not dredged out. This has contributed to a rise in the riverbeds, eroding their water-holding capacity and threatening adjacent land with flooding. The result is that even marginally abnormal inflows cause the water to spread to surrounding areas. This year’s unprecedented floods in the Indus river in Pakistan have largely been the result of such neglect of the river system. Indeed, the commonly followed approach of raising embankments, rather than de-silting the riverbeds, creates more problems as these bunds often cave in under pressure of gushing water. The catastrophic deluge in Bihar in 2008, which affected over 2.3 million people and took more than 500 lives, was the result of a breach in the Kosi river’s embankment and the consequential change in its course. All this is not insurmountable. What is needed is proper planning and better management of reservoirs. Improved coordination is needed in the management of waterworks in different river basins. That the rainfall in the month of September would be 15 per cent above normal due to the emergence of La Nina (cooling of Pacific Ocean waters) was predicted by the weather office in August-end itself. There was, therefore, little reason to allow an over-accumulation of water in the barrages only to be released in bulk, causing flooding. The politics of water management in seasons of plenty ought to be better managed than in seasons of scarcity.