Perennial Risk
| Date :21-Jul-2019 |
By ANSHUMAN BHARGAVA:
“Growing population and its regular migration in search of job and livelihood and lack of housing for them will go on forcing illegal settlements in floodplains that will pose a perennial risk to a large population.”
“Rains are getting more intense and in short bursts with the gap between rainy days in monsoons ever rising. This erratic pattern is detrimental for crops and appropriate for flooding. Unfortunately, due to lack of proper implementation and execution of disaster mitigation plans, we continue to lose life and property to floods.”
WHILE the burning summers leave India reeling under severe water crisis, as the rains come, the flood threat looms large. Almost every year, many people die of heat waves and droughts as in floods that any amount of excess rain causes in India. India’s growing population and environment degradation portend greater risks to humanity due to more frequent and intense flooding.
A recent study published in ‘Science Advances,’ a peer-reviewed journal, it has been said that India could see a six-fold increase in the population exposed to the risk of severe floods by 2040–to 25 million people from the 3.7 million facing this risk between 1971 and 2004. While States such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh will see the highest jumps in populations exposed to severe floods, States that had not experienced similar risks during the study’s historical reference period–such as Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand–will also face the risk of severe flooding. Between 1996 and 2005, India suffered flood losses worth Rs 47.45 billion (Rs 4,745 crore or $713 million) annually.
These losses are already mounting with single cities, such as Srinagar in 2014 and Chennai in 2015, suffering higher losses– Rs 50 billion (Rs 5,000 crore) and Rs 150 billion (Rs 15,000 crore), respectively–in a span of a few days. And these were just the immediate losses. Epidemics that break out after floods necessitate higher public and private spending on health that is mostly undocumented. Extreme rainfall shocks will reduce farmer incomes in the Kharif and Rabi seasons by 13.7% and 5.5%, the Economic Survey, 2017-18 estimated. Globally, countries have halved the casualties per flood to an average of 34 per flood event during the 10 years to 2015, down from an average of 68 during the previous 10 years. In contrast, flood mortality in India has been rising. India has an ambitious State Action Plan on Climate Change as well as District Disaster Management Plans. However, there are missing bits and the focus needs to change from responding to disasters to averting disasters through better preparedness, the study says. Not all the threat of flooding that India faces and will face in the coming years is due to climate change. Some of this risk is anthropogenic–arising from the human settlement in flood-prone areas. Either way, we are at sea. We have a poor disaster response and mitigation paraphernalia in place. Second, there is no stopping settlement in the floodplains.
Growing population and its regular migration in search of job and livelihood and lack of housing for them will go on forcing illegal settlements in floodplains that will pose a perennial risk to a large population. Rains are getting more intense and in short bursts with the gap between rainy days in monsoons ever rising. This erratic pattern is detrimental for crops and appropriate for flooding. Unfortunately, due to lack of proper implementation and execution of disaster mitigation plans, we continue to lose life and property to floods. Even warnings are not heeded by State administrations and safe practices beforehand to remove settlements from flood-prone regions to higher grounds is not followed. The disaster management plan is today more a national-level plan in India and this makes it more a macro-level management module when the need is better micromanagement infrastructure and logistics.
States and local administrations need to have specific contingency plans to handle local need specific exigencies. Disaster management and mitigation in India don’t get Government and policy priority as it should get. It has to be more mainstreamed by better focusing and more efficient functioning. We are always found wanting at the time of catastrophes.
There is a lack of coordination and communication and different departments end up working at cross-purposes, each not knowing what it is doing. There is often overlapping of functional jurisdictions and funds get messed up. All our vital coordinates go haywire and the lack of clarity and drills shows. Meanwhile, people perish in large numbers from very preventable reasons. This not only bleeds the nation’s finances but also reflects poorly on governance and lowers our human development index. Our urban planning is faulty, to say the least. Most cities have been allowed to grow haphazardly, in violation of civic and environment norms. Encroachments have chocked drains and obliterated natural water channels and drainage systems. Such a practice, in turn, makes it a suitable ground for easy flooding and inundation, posing serious civic problems in case of a sudden surge in water levels in coastal belts and cities along river banks. City planners have poorly envisioned drainage and water absorption systems that most modern cities globally take good care of.
This makes our cities and settlements vulnerable and fragile to the most natural vagaries of nature. We have faced multiple deluges and debacles in the last few years irrespective of demographic and topographic patterns yet we are still no better in our preparations than we were five years back, because the malady is so intricate and so deeply enmeshed in our character that it is almost impossible to change the system and restructure everything anew. We haven’t learnt a bit from our mistakes and have done nothing for course correction so that we have minimal casualties and loss to property in case of a flooding or any such natural calamity in future. We need to mandatorily safeguard the interests of settlers across floodplains of rivers by raising their awareness and rehabilitating them away from areas prone to be washed away. Our urban spaces need to have a sustainable habitat for such migrant settlers or else, our cities are going to be deluged.
City planners and lawmakers need to muck in and brainstorm to find out ways to flush out the water in case of a flood and mitigate the implications of such flooding on civic infrastructure and logistics by having effective pre-emptive plans in place. We need to be on our guard and prepared in advance to ward off the dangers of weather extremes. The era of weather extremes has only started and going to be more destructive in the decades to come the way the climate is changing and people’s movement patterns are shaping up. We will have more and more people open to the dangers of being marooned and greater and more alacritous measures thus need to be in place to minimise the dangers arising out of such situations. There should be more funding, more research and innovation and more technological intervention to scientifically tackle exigencies arising due to weather tantrums. By the way, our living pattern, cropping, food and transportation patterns need to align with the suitability and need of ecological changes around us so that we are better able to manage ourselves in inclement situations. Education, awareness and mock drills need to be part of our daily living because where and when weather trouble is going to occur, and to what extent it is going to be damaging, no one can rightly predict.