Devastating floods in South Asia expose lack of planning
The most damaging floods to hit South Asia in a decade have killed more than 1,400 people and focused attention on the poor planning for annual monsoon rains, as authorities struggle to get aid to millions of those left destitute.
Floods in Texas have dominated the world’s media in recent days, but India, Nepal and Bangladesh have suffered flooding for two months, with hundreds of villages swept away and tens of thousands of people short of food in camps.
Entire districts will take months to limp back to life, with schools destroyed, roads washed away and crops ruined in some of the region’s poorest areas, officials said.
As the extent of damage became clearer, experts highlighted how poorly prepared governments were to deal with an annual problem.
Most government action in India, where the flooding hit hardest, has been focused on relief, with weak early warning systems and too little focus on prevention.
The head of a South Asian regional body launched this year to boost disaster co-ordination said the flooding underlined the poor planning.
“The floods this year have exposed the urgency for nations to work together to deal with natural disasters,” said P K Taneja of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation’s disaster management centre based in India.
Flooding upstream in Nepal, for example, was followed by flooding in India this year and then downstream in Bangladesh, he said, but there was no co-ordination. “We cannot work in silos to deal with floods.”
India’s federal auditor, in a report released in July, said that in most states there was no identification and no assessment of flood-prone areas to help preparations.
Tens of millions of dollars set aside for flood management remained unspent. And of the 4,862 large dams, only 349 were functioning, it said.
Flooding happens annually across South Asia, as rivers burst their banks during the June through September season of monsoon rains.
In the Indian state of Bihar, where 514 people died and 850,000 were displaced, campaigners said the government had built too many embankments and roads that trapped excess water and had given little thought to drainage.
But officials said that it was unfair to criticise. “If you get a whole year’s rain in one to two days, how will you handle it? No preparation and planning will work,” said Anirudh Kumar of Bihar’s disaster management department.