Over 200 people have died at Wayanad in the South Indian state of Kerala after hillsides collapsed following heavy rains. Many settlements have been leveled and tea and cardamom fields turned into mud. This is a horrifying turn of events in one of India’s most popular tourist destinations and should thus be a lesson to us in Kashmir.
India is no stranger to the devastating impact of monsoon rains, which often lead to floods and landslides across the country. With climate change exacerbating weather patterns, extreme rainfall events are becoming more frequent and intense.
In Jammu and Kashmir also, we have already witnessed how a few days of heavy rain in 2014 triggered a Valleywide flood. An overflowing Jhelum sunk Srinagar and swathes of countryside causing a large-scale loss of life and property. Since then, the situation hasn’t improved at all. In fact, in several aspects it has become even worse. Srinagar and the larger Valley remains hopelessly vulnerable to another deluge.
This has created a deeply disturbing situation in the Valley. We are, time and again, reminded of our vulnerability to flooding whenever there are two or more days of uninterrupted rain in a warmer season. More so, in Srinagar whose new-found susceptibility to flood threatens to put a question mark on its viability as a summer capital. That is, unless we conceive and execute a course of action that drastically reduces this vulnerability.
If anything, it highlights how little has been done by way of infrastructure building to protect the Valley from flooding. What it means is that in the past decade, we have not been able to increase the capacity to brave one more day of rain. The legitimate question to ask is what were the previous governments doing in these years. Or what has the dredging of Jhelum and the repairing of its embankments done in terms of enhancing our capability to prevent the flood.
Now, what if Kashmir once again experiences the uninterrupted rainfall for a few days? Considering the Valley’s erratic weather, such a prospect isn’t unlikely. What is doubtful is the administration’s ability to face up to this. And largely because the previous governments have built little defense against an extended incessant rainfall. Could Jhelum now carry more water than it did a few years earlier? Not at all. Similarly, could the spill channel carry the excess discharge than it did in 2014? The answer is again no. This is a dangerous state of affairs to be in. One can only hope that the current administration understands the enormity of the challenge and sets about in right earnest building our defences against a repeat of the 2014 scenario, which could be sooner than we are prepared for.
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