At Nature's Mercy

Flood waters may have begun to recede in Kerala, but 11 states and 15 cities are in danger of Kerala-life floods. BW Businessworld takes stock of the national preparedness for such disasters.

- Prabodh Krishna

ON AUGUST 21 the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said floodwaters had begun to recede from most parts of inundated Kerala. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast respite from heavy rainfall in the ensuing days. By then 370 lives had been lost (not to speak of homes, roads and bridges) in the heavy floods that followed torrential rain. The flood waters had destroyed 45,000 hectares of farmland, including 2,000 hectares of paddy fields and plantations of spices like cardamom.

“I have been asking for flood avoidance and recovery mechanism since 1973,” laments agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan, fondly dubbed the ‘Father of the Green Revolution’. Globally damage from floods, he points out, had been more devastating than that of other natural calamities.

To be fair to the IMD, its rainfall deviation data did warn that the seasonal downpour was considerably higher than usual. “Rainfall over Kerala during southwest monsoon season 2018 (1 June to 19 August, 2018) has been exceptionally high,” an IMD Press release had warned. “Due to the above, rainfall scenario prevailed till end of July, 2018 over Kerala,” it said. It pointed out that since 10 August, storage at all the 35 odd major reservoirs of the dam, was close to the full reservoir level (FRL), which then had “no buffer storage to accommodate the heavy inflows”.