Rains, death and displacement

ORISSA'S CONTINUING AGONY, alternating between floods and drought, flies in the face of India's claims to advances made in science and technology. It is also a tragic testimony to the failure of the state to utilise the available scientific and technical resources to put in place a nation-wide system to effectively intervene and reduce devastations that accompany natural calamities. That despite the availability of advance information on the course of the monsoon, administrators in several parts of India were unprepared reflects a systemic failure to provide appropriate control and relief measures. The outcome of this failure has been the loss of more than a hundred lives and the displacement of lakhs of people in Orissa and Kerala. The human failure is broadly on two counts. In the immediate sense, it is the lack of a mechanism to reduce the damage caused by the monsoon. Steps for evacuation of the affected should have started at the earliest by identifying flood-prone areas and charting appropriate alternatives in advance. At yet another level, the human failure goes back to decades of neglect of basic postulates of town planning and environmental conservation.

The calamities that have visited Orissa and Kerala in the wake of the recent monsoon are no doubt a result of nature's fury. While there is no discounting the fact that delta areas and places along river embankments are flood-prone, it is also the case that control mechanisms can drastically reduce the damage caused by such disasters. For instance, inundation in several parts of Kerala would have been averted if low-lying areas were not converted, over the decades, into housing settlements thereby interrupting the natural drainage systems. As for landslips, which have also been a phenomenon accompanying monsoons, the blame lies on consistent deforestation. For human intervention with natural phenomena to be successful, planners and decision makers should bear in mind the long-term consequences. While unscientific intervention can be harmful, the absence of effective measures could be equally disastrous. Orissa's floods are proof of the failure to put in place effective intervention systems to reduce the effects of flooding. With indications of increased inflows in the days ahead, the immediate priority of the State's administrators should be to continue with the evacuation and rehabilitation efforts on a war footing. That the fury of the Mahanadi river continues to take a toll of human lives even after the construction of the Hirakud dam is a pointer to the unfinished task in effectively moderating the floods in the Mahanadi delta. It will be in the long-term interest of Orissa if it seriously charts out a course for a comprehensive system to relieve the pressure on the Hirakud. Such a decision would also have to provide for flood-control measures while taking into account the consequences on the local communities in terms of submergence of terrain and displacement of people. It is also time to seriously pursue the oft-repeated call for linking of rivers to bring in a long-term solution to the paradoxical co- existence of floods and droughts across the country.

Taking full advantage of the advance warning systems in place and utilising them effectively are essential ingredients to effective administrative intervention. Simultaneously, steps are required to upgrade existing technical capabilities. The efforts should lead to the establishment of a comprehensive flood prediction mechanism, comprising an accessible and relevant information system that includes terrain and hydrological information. The scientific and technological talent available in the country as well as the valuable knowledge base in the form of project proposals should be translated into meaningful long-term solutions. India's advances in science and technology will not mean much to the victims of natural disasters unless the present ad hoc approaches are effectively replaced by permanent answers to nature's furies.

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