As floods continue to wreak more havoc each passing monsoon, it is time for India to lead the way in effective flood management
As the early hominids walked out of the rift valley of East Africa about 5 million years ago, they encountered new ecological spaces and conditions, new predators, and an increasingly erratic climate as Africa oscillated between wet and dry conditions. Their survival and subsequent expansion across the globe indicate that humans and their ancestors are probably the most adaptive of all species, constantly adjusting to the environmental dynamics by virtue of their highly social brains and culture, thereby, creating knowledge and passing it across generations and groups.
In regions like South Asia with a distinct monsoon season, floods have been occurring with clockwork regularity over centuries.
Thus, hydrological extremes were never an aberration that had to be dealt with—least of all floods, which are, by far, the most common and widespread of all weather-related natural hazards on the planet. In regions like South Asia with a distinct monsoon season, floods have been occurring with clockwork regularity over centuries. Yet, the historical advantage provided by our ancestors seems to be missing for more than a billion people living in the mighty Indus and Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin as they continue to experience a surge in the damage to lives and property over the last several decades. So, what is the reason behind this? Of course, climate change and increasing population density are key factors in making some flood years more destructive than others, but is there another dimension to the flood story in South Asia that remains largely untold?
A large part of South Asia comprises the Indo-Gangetic plain, which is located in the shadow of the mighty Himalayas. The Himalayas have been effectively blocking the South Asian Summer Monsoon, forcing it to move sideways for as long as they have existed. The Indo-Gangetic plain is well-watered by wide, sluggish and heavily sediment-laden Himalayan rivers that have accommodated much of this temporal influx of freshwater into the channel systems. Almost every year, these high flows have exceeded the bankful capacity and have inundated the floodplains. This led to the occurrence of floods as human-occupied spaces would get submerged underwater.
Quite in sync with our initial logic of humans learning from experience; historically, societies in South Asia had indeed been well-adapted to the over-bearing influence of the monsoons as settlements expanded into the nourishing floodplains of river systems. Such a response was not because people of the plains had the knowledge that floods were inevitable owing to the flat physiography of the land—something that we now know with the aid of technology. Instead of living in the fear of floods and treating flood waters as an enemy, communities welcomed it because of its nourishing powers and the regenerative quality that it imparted to the soil. Floods brought with them water to the floodplains that replenished the wetlands dotting this landscape until recently. A steady year-round supply of water, sediments, and fish along with a revitalised soil provided strong foundations to the predominantly agrarian economies and a clinching reason to adapt. Of course, we now know many of these services as ecosystem services of connected rivers. A few remnants of this ancient wisdom of coexistence with the periodic inundations still exists to this day despite the large-scale transformation that has occurred.
Instead of living in the fear of floods and treating flood waters as an enemy, communities welcomed it because of its nourishing powers and the regenerative quality that it imparted to the soil.
Pre-industrial South Asian societies primarily used two strategies to thrive in this peculiar condition. They reduced their exposure to high flows by moving to higher grounds and planning their agricultural cycles around the annual cycle of ‘inconvenience’. The other strategy was to devise ingenious ways that were adapted to high flows through locally-procured resources and flood-tolerant means while waiting for the waters to recede. Some of these strategies included cultivating a flood-tolerant variety of paddy, building houses on bamboo stilts, constructing water harvesting structures to accommodate and retain the floodwaters, etc.
The traditional, mutually beneficial arrangement between humans with their natural environment was disrupted with the arrivals of British in the Indian subcontinent. The industrial revolution they brought along provided the means to transform the landscape in ways that had immediate economic benefits of never-seen-before proportions. Coupled with the colonial imperative to maximise revenue from land and bring more of it under cultivation, embankments became the mainstay of the new strategy of flood control. The expansion of infrastructure such as canals, road and railway networks—often built on the embankment themselves—without reasonable provision for drainage, dramatically altered the riverscapes, severing connections between the rivers and their floodplains. The rivers were ‘trained’ to follow a particular path, their lateral spread contained using embankments and the floodplains modified to maximise economic benefits. Scholars have often used the term ‘colonial hydrology’ to encapsulate these varied hydraulic interventions under the British that deeply impacted South Asia’s social and fluvial worlds.
With the end of the colonial rule in the mid-20th century, the region fragmented into independent, sovereign nations and the status of many of its rivers now became transboundary. Even though the objective of flood-risk reduction at this crucial cusp of the region’s history had shifted from imperialist profit-maximisation to welfare-maximisation, the means to achieve the goal remained tied to the borrowed, reductionist paradigm of colonial engineering. The reliance on structural measures to control flooding severely undermined the local knowledge epistemologies of ‘living with floods’, overriding them with the possibilist bulwark of even more embankments, high dams, water-diversions, and multipurpose river valley projects. Only this time, the scale of such interventions became even greater since, for much of the 20th century, the State would see it as the only permanent solution to floods.
The expansion of infrastructure such as canals, road and railway networks—often built on the embankment themselves—without reasonable provision for drainage, dramatically altered the riverscapes, severing connections between the rivers and their floodplains.
Concomitantly, the illusion of protection provided by structural interventions allowed for even more unregulated activities in the floodplains, thereby, further increasing the exposure to floods as cities expanded and populations increased. Decades later, we find now that the flood-prone area has only increased while the severe loss of ecosystem services due to the structural interventions remain unaccounted for. Furthermore, occurrences like the River Kosi avulsion of 2008 and the critical failure of dams in averting flood disasters are only a mirror to reflect upon as we redraw the contours of flood governance in the region. Quite ironic to the intended desires of a welfare state, it is the poor who are disproportionately affected by floods since the most flood-vulnerable locations are also the most affordable ones to live.
As the recent floods in Europe would show, despite adequate forecasting, global warming patterns can supercharge rainstorms and still cause fatalities and damages. The same occurrence also revealed an extremely important and effective principal of flood-risk reduction as the Dutch—once pioneers of water engineering and now the foremost proponents of nature-based solutions—would say. In the Netherlands, decades of preparation around making ‘room for the river’ had helped to reduce the losses. South Asia too has centuries of experiential learning of effectively adapting to floods but it has chosen to look the other way. Perhaps, the time has arrived for the region to rediscover this lost potential as it reengages with the ever-so-relevant issue of flood governance. As the largest economy of the region with adequate financial means to fund research, India should lead the way to localised and region-specific adaptative response to floods.
The natural drainage channels, whether in cities or in rural areas, will have to be reinstated be removing encroachments and allowing the quick and efficient movement of stormwater.
Broadly, this could be done in two ways. In urban areas, this would entail reducing impervious surfaces and pave the way for ‘sponge cities’ that absorb rainwater. In coastal cities like Mumbai at the deltas or estuaries, the operative word and, therein, the policy response should shift from ‘drain’ to ‘soak’. In the rural hinterland, where reversal of land use is possible in the ‘active floodplain’, floodplain zoning should be carried out along with the phase-wise decommissioning of embankments. The natural drainage channels, whether in cities or in rural areas, will have to be reinstated be removing encroachments and allowing the quick and efficient movement of stormwater.
Needless to say, it would involve compensating and rehabilitating those who would be displaced. Additionally, it would also require a lot of effort to break free from the inertia of the existing governance paradigm which is inherently myopic and reductionist, riddled with nexuses between politicians, engineers, and contractors. It will also require plans to create and bolster institutional capacity to undertake such seemingly ‘radical’ initiatives. However, a sustainable and long-term solution to the problem of flooding needs new-thinking and response. In fact, there is even an economic and political case of India as becoming a global champion, a vishwaguru, of adaptive management to floods. Quite like what the Dutch have achieved through the promotion of state-of-the-art delta management strategies in the Bangladeshi and Vietnamese deltas. The biggest advantage for India, and largely South Asia, in this pursuit, would be a treasure-trove of experiential knowledge that it can utilise in its endeavour of coexisting with floods.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Sayanangshu Modak was a Junior Fellow at ORFs Kolkata centre. He works on the broad themes of transboundary water governance hydro-diplomacy and flood-risk management.
Read More +
PREV
