Global warming means more extreme weather events and as Bihar shows, there is a need for greater river management
If young climate activist Greta Thunberg is giving a conscience call on what we are dumping on her generation, Mother Nature knows best. For she makes us feel the disastrous reality of climate change all around us, radically altering our lives as we knew it. Aberrations, like the wettest September after 102 years, are likely to become the “new normal.” The frequency of extreme weather events is likely to increase, be it as unexpected high and low temperature differentials of summer and winter or the frequent floods and droughts. The calamity that ravaged most parts of the eastern State of Bihar is only the latest in a string of freak nature outbursts that have destroyed lives, land and crops in Maharashtra, Kerala and Assam this monsoon. Bihar, for example, had a rain deficit of 20 per cent in the four-month monsoon period (between June and September), crucial for its food-growing regions. Suddenly, the sputtering rain turned into a great deluge, dramatically reducing the rain deficit to almost nil over the past three days. Distressing images of flooded streets, submerged railway tracks, boats ferrying people to safe places, though not new, pinched us under our skin simply because these are not photos you associate with an Indian autumn. Even pure statistics are indeed startling: The number of floods in India rose to 90 in the 10-year period between 2006 and 2015, up from 67 in the 10 years between 1996 and 2005, according to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. In the same vein, the death toll continued to rise — from 13,660 between 1996 and 2005 to 15,860 between 2006 and 2015.
One of the key reasons for floods wreaking havoc in rural as well as urban areas is the fact that overflow, consequent to a rise in water levels in rivers, does not find adequate diversionary channels. Clearly, the existing ones have either outlived their utility in unforeseen circumstances or been shoved under the debris of human material greed. Besides, fervid urbanisation has led to land reclamation in the most unscientific manner. In Bihar itself, while levels in the Ganga and Kosi surged, stormwater channels were found to be clogged with plastics. Existing wetlands and flood plains could have stemmed the angry surge but have been taken over by massive illegal construction on river banks and encroachments. The changing or constricted course of rivers and their tributaries have meant that vast tracts of rural countryside and its villagers live in unpredictable scenarios as riverine refugees shift to temporary camps, lose standing crops, stare at a battered land, give up their traditional livelihood and economic activities for whatever jobs are available. Some of them sink to deeper debts. The other alarming report is that all reservoirs across the country are full and are fast reaching their saturation limit. Gross mismanagement of dams is one area that needs to be addressed as a shared concern than a show of territorial rights. Many times, despite early warning systems, States fail to release water at the apt time and involve themselves in a brawl. When water is released, coinciding with excessive rainfall, the flooding just worsens. Over the years, States have seriously taken note of the issue and have also taken corrective steps but there has to be an integrated mechanism for the riverine ones. For there is only this much we can do in terms of disaster preparedness and management, which has improved greatly, the rescue after cyclone Fani-hit Odisha being a good example. More than a million people were evacuated into 9,000 shelters in just 24 hours. But Bihar just showed us that while we may have excelled in one area, we are not completely ready with preventive protocols. Reinforcing embankments is just a traditional and temporary way of handling flood pressure. Nothing substantial has been done to address silt accumulation. Understanding sediment dynamics is important as a channel that is sediment-heavy may lead to overtopping of the banks. Any solution to this problem must first lead to an understanding of the river pattern, which differs from State to State and from season to season. Besides, flood management strategies must be attuned to the specific parameters of the rivers and predictive models with the help of technology should be used to plan an alternative survival matrix. India’s vast plains are at great risk.
