There are few in this country who are not stirred and shaken by the scale of devastation and human misery in Jammu and Kashmir. Nearly 225 people have died. Over 45,000 have been rescued, but lakhs remain stranded across in the worst floods in the living memory of the state. Television has brought the images of horror and heroism into our living rooms. The rescue and relief work carries on. There are tough days ahead for the state and the country as survivors pick up the pieces of their lives. But the toughest task will be to ensure that key lessons from the tragedy are learnt and action is taken.
The floods could not have been prevented. But environmentalists and scientists are once again stressing that deforestation, ill-planned construction of buildings and roads, especially in the floodplains of rivers, banks of lakes and unchecked dumping of garbage, have sharply worsened the situation.
Down to Earth magazine was among the first to point out how illegal structures had mushroomed on Jhelum’s banks and around lakes, clogging drainage channels. In their September 8 issue, the magazine noted, “Scientists say that since the drainage channels of the city have been blocked and the link between the lakes has been cut off due to unplanned urbanisation and encroachment, the lakes have lost their power to absorb water the way they used to a century ago and save the city from floods.”
There has been massive encroachment along the banks of the Jhelum as it flows through Srinagar. “Activists question why the river channel was narrowed and the administration allowed people to stay so close to the river? It seems states have hardly learnt lessons from the Uttarakhand disaster in 2013,” the article said.
The warnings are old, but they have not been acted upon. A 2008 paper by Humayun Rashid and Gowhar Naseem of the directorate of ecology, environment and remote sensing of the J&K government, said that just a century ago, Srinagar had a unique ecological setup with extensive areas under wetlands and lakes. However, “It has been observed during the last decade that residential areas which never had floods in the past are getting inundated during floods in river Jhelum.” This is because there are hardly any wetlands to hold the excess water and to act as sponges during floods.
In the wake of the devastating floods in Uttarkhand last year, the South Asia Network of Dams, Rivers and People pointed out, “While rainfall and cloudbursts are natural phenomena, the disaster potential of such events directly depends on what we have done on ground over the years. Uttarakhand, by allowing indiscriminate building of roads, buildings and hundreds of hydropower projects without doing basic assessments and participatory decision-making processes, has allowed the disaster potential of current high intensity rainfall in the state increase manifold.”
In a letter this week to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, minister for environment, forest and climate change Prakash Javadekar, minister for water resources, river development and Ganga Uma Bharti, the NGO Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan argued that a smart and a world class city must be in tune with its topography, its natural drainage and its local and regional climate: “Unfortunately the city of Srinagar as its Google image shows has not remained compliant with either.
Its planners and managers have hardly bothered to factor its lifeline river (Jhelum) into its reality and have hence allowed the river floodplains to be encroached and developed with impunity, so much so that the river after it has entered the city precariously been chicken-necked into a narrow channel. So should it now be any surprise or wonder that high flows in the river when they came could not be handled by the river, the embankments breached and the city resultantly went under, like never before?”
The lessons are clear — rivers need the space into which they can overflow and these floodplains should not be allowed to be encroached upon. And embankments are not a solution. They may prevent low level flooding and thus provide some sense of security, but these very embankments become the reason for massive urban flooding once they are breached, as has happened in Srinagar.
Efficient and functional drainage is an essential part of a smart city, and every urban manager must ensure that no untreated garbage gets into rivers and lakes. Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan has asked the Centre that the River Zone Regulation notification — pending since 2002 with the ministry of environment, forests and climate change — be finalised and promulgated. This will make it statutory to provide “river space”.
Though the Central government’s own reports have flagged the dangers, this notification has been consistently opposed by real estate developers in both public and private sectors. An October 2011 report of the Planning Commission Working Group on Flood Management and Region Specific Issues noted that zoning is a concept central to floodplain management. The floodplain of a river is essentially its domain and any intrusion into or developmental activity therein must recognise the river’s “right of way”. Planners have to demarcate zones likely to be affected by floods of different magnitudes or frequencies and probability levels, and specify the types of permissible development, so that whenever floods actually occur, the damage can be minimised, if not avoided. The working group defined 17 zones for the purpose.
Most agree in principle. Nobody practises it. The Central Water Commission has been continuously pleading with state governments to act. A model bill for floodplain zoning legislation was circulated by the Centre as far back as 1975. But state governments remain resistant. Manipur enacted the floodplain zoning legislation in 1978, but is yet to demarcate the zones. Rajasthan has also made the law, but has not enforced it.
The current tragedy in Kashmir was foreseen. Urban planners and environmentalists had repeatedly warned that if you constrict a river, choke up its bed with silt and dump garbage in the lakes, then heavy rainfall is bound to lead to flooding.
There is a lot of talk of the current floods being the worst in six decades or even a century. That’s because the climate is changing, and scientists have been warning that such bouts of heavy rainfall will become more frequent, more severe. Last year’s cloudburst and floods in Uttarakhand were called “unprecedented”. It has happened in Kashmir this year. There is a simple way to live with this new normal — implement laws and guidelines. If we don’t, we shall continue to suffer.
The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com
