The United Nations has described the 2007 flood in India as 'the worst in living memory.' The time is ripe for change. Governments and donors in South Asia need to invest in reducing the risk of disasters as a long-term cure to chronic floods.
While floods are not new, erratic weather patterns wreak havoc. In 2007 the early arrival of the rains, their severity, and the continuous three-week spell have caused widespread misery. Bonna (large floods) in 1998 and 2004, which caused massive devastation in Bangladesh were also unwelcome disasters. Farmers, however often choose to live even in the flood-prone char and haor areas of Bangladesh because of the annual borsha (rain and inundation), which deposit rich silt on their farmlands and increase crop productivity to such an extent as to make them a lifeline. The most vulnerable, including the landless, often have few other options but to live on these fragile habitats where the line between nature’s bounty and fury is thin.
Implementation of flood control measures in themselves sometimes proves ineffective and exacerbates the problem. In Rupandehi and Nawalparasi districts of Nepal, wrongly designed culverts and embankments have been reported as a major cause of floods in recent weeks as they obstruct the flow of water. In the last fifty years in the Indian state of Bihar, the construction of 3,430 km of flood-control embankments has ironically increased the flood-prone area from 2.5 million hectares to 6.9 million hectares. While large funds are routinely allocated for maintenance of embankments, implementation is often lax. As a result, in the last month alone, it is estimated that 75 embankments have breached in Bangladesh and around 90 in Bihar alone.
