During Monsoon-22, crops of about 15 lakh hectares were affected in Maharashtra, according to chief minister Eknath Shinde, who has assured the affected farmers of a major relief involving hundreds of crore rupees. However, the chronic problem of flooding continues to haunt Maharashtra, which has been waiting for a permanent solution to excess rainwater disposal in rural and urban areas, alike.
According to some survey reports, crops on nearly 3.80 lakh hectares of land owned by over six lakh farmers were damaged in Marathwada region during the rainy season last year. Many parts of the state received excessive rains and faced floods, suffering the tragedy year on year. The report recorded the death of 46 people in the region that comprises Aurangabad, Beed, Hingoli, Jalna, Latur, Nanded, Osmanabad and Parbhani districts. The farmers in Marathwada had already incurred huge damages during July 2022 as well.
Water management has remained a tricky issue in India for centuries. Recently, Maharashtra and Karnataka fought over supplying water to certain water-deficient villages along the two-state border. These areas are starved of water for some months while they suffer excessive rainfall and flooding in the remaining months. The situation is more or less similar around the country for want of effective water management.
Successive expert committees have shown that several parts of the entire country are prone to floods. Every year, floods cause a huge loss to lives and damage property, infrastructure and public utility services. Yet, there seems to be no preventive or effective planning to control the annual menace. And even if temporary measures are recommended and necessary funds are sanctioned, the unfortunate part is that they are not followed up seriously enough subsequently. Evidence of this neglect is available in an audit report on “Schemes for Flood Control and Flood Forecasting.”
According to it, the total flood prone area in the country is 45.64 million hectares, which means about 14 per cent of the total geographical area of India. On an average, 7.55 million hectares or 16 per cent of the total flood prone area is affected by floods every year, causing average annual damage of billions of rupees.
The Report examined a sample of flood management programmes, flood forecasting stations, a few river management activities and works related to border area projects as well as 68 large dams in 17 states or Union Territories between 2007-08 and 2015-16. During this period, 517 projects costing about Rs 12243 crore were approved for 25 states or UTs.
The Performance Audit report states that there were inordinate delays in approval of detailed project reports, leading to technical designs becoming irrelevant at the time of actual funding. Flood management works were not taken up in an integrated manner to cover an entire river or its tributaries or a major segment of rivers and their tributaries.
A large number of the telemetry stations, installed during the Eleventh Plan period, have remained non-functional; as a result, the real time data for most of the period was not available. There were also long delays in completion of all the projects under the river management activities and works related to the border areas and emergency action plans were prepared for only a few large dams.
The key recommendations of the Rashtriya Badh (Flood) Ayog, such as scientific assessment of flood-prone areas and enactment of Flood Plain Zoning Act, have not materialised. Performance and concurrent evaluation were done as per scheme guidelines.
Citing some examples, the Report shows that in four projects in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, the actual quantity of work executed was below the approved scope. In the four projects, extra expenditure was incurred without approval of the competent authority. The Report states that there were delays in completion of projects, which would have been long-term solutions to the flood problems of Assam, North Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The audit Report has observed that no performance evaluation was conducted for the projects in Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Manipur and Sikkim. West Bengal did not take any action to meet the deficiencies pointed out during the performance evaluation of 26 completed projects under the Flood Management Programme. Concurrent evaluation under the FMP was not conducted in accordance with schemes guidelines in nine projects under the programme in Assam, Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal. Remote-sensing was not used in monitoring of projects under the FMP.
The report also found several discrepancies in project proposals. It says there was no integrated approach in identification of flood management works and selection of projects based on different rivers/basins, such as in Assam, where the Brahmaputra Board was also not involved during the formulation stage. The Water Resource Department stated that projects are shortlisted based on problem areas as identified by divisional and district level offices.
Moreover, the data of past damage was not available in the project proposals. The area likely to be eroded in 50 years was worked out on the basis of average annual erosion (calculated on actual erosion of four to 12 years). Thus, the data on probable damage was taken into consideration instead of actual figures of damage. There is a litany of such shortcomings recorded.
Flood forecasting and warning system in India commenced functioning in 1958. Since then, there are 175 such systems comprising 147 level flood forecasting and 28 inflow forecasting stations until 2006-07, and the number remained stagnant till 2014-15. Presently flood forecasting network covers 19 states, Union territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and NCT Delhi. The Central Water Commission has not established any system in 15 states or UTs. Among the North-east states, only Assam has the flood forecasting station.
While flooding is a recurring phenomenon every monsoon, many state governments wake up only when monsoon sets in and only when homes and agricultural lands and roads are inundated and life comes to a standstill. The state governments and civil society must continue preventive measures and mitigation all through the season, monsoon or no monsoon. Moreover, planning and policy need to be implemented in letter and spirit to save precious lives and livelihoods.
In Maharashtra, the state cabinet had announced that farmers whose crops are damaged due to heavy monsoon rains would receive double the compensation compared to the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF). A statement issued by the government said that farmers had suffered due to excess rains. “As per the current NDRF norms, a farmer receives Rs.6800 per hectare as compensation. We have decided to double this amount. Earlier, NDRF norms were applicable for holdings of two hectares. We have decided to increase it to three hectares,” said chief minister Shinde.
However, the fact remains that various expert committee reports have been dumped in the cold storage. For instance, the reports of the Madhav Gadgil committee on Western Ghats ecology and the Nandkumar Vadanere committee appointed after the 2019 floods to recommend measures to avoid floods have been awaiting their holistic implementation. To add to the woes, unbridled urbanisation has damaged the natural landscape. The use of materials such as cement, tar and paver blocks obstructs the percolation of the water, resulting in flooding in urban areas. Gadgil, an ecologist of international repute, felt frustrated when the recommendations of the committee under him remained only on paper.
The 10-member expert under former irrigation department secretary Vadanere, which was appointed in August 2019 immediately after the flooding in July-August that year. It was tasked to study the reasons and propose technical measures. It has submitted its report promptly. It has recommended immediate demarcation of restricted zones, removal and rehabilitation of encroachments, installing advanced weather forecasting systems and real time decision support (RTDS) systems, restoration of natural waterways and their desilting, strengthening of river meanders, construction of more flood dams and temporary flood storage tanks.
The committee has emphasised on strict implementation of the guidelines on the management of floods and urban flooding formulated by the National Disaster Management Authority in 2008 and 2010. Now that the monsoon is just four months away, it should be a top priority for the state government to initiate flood control measures so that many urban and rural areas are saved of this recurring annual ordeal.
