Two hundred fifty days after Kashmir was hit by one of the worst floods of its history, the government and the people do not seem to have learnt any lessons.What if September 2014 flood was not a one-in-100-years flood?
What if we have a similar such flood coming next year or later this year?
Last year’s devastating floods had left at least 300 people dead and property worth billions of rupees damaged.
Eight months after the floods, government is yet to devise any plan for facing a similar disaster.
“We didn’t fail in September last year, we failed much before,” Convener of the Kashmir Chapter of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), Saleem Beg said.
Speaking at the Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Program (IHCAP) in Srinagar, which was organized by Center for Environment Education (CEE) and The Third Pole, he said September 2014 Kashmir floods were mightier than any human system.
Kashmir has a history of floods and floods in past also used to lead to famine.
However, in 1960s and 1970s, a culture of disaster preparedness was ingrained in Jammu Kashmir.
“We used to have Flood Protection Committees, and the meetings of these committees were a regular exercise,” Beg said. “As a young journalist, I used to attend those meetings regularly.”
After September 2014 floods, State government sent a Rs 44,000 crore proposal to Government of India (GoI) for the rehabilitation of flood-affected people and traders.
However, the proposal is still pending with New Delhi.
The State government has also requested GoI to provide funds for the construction of an alternate flood spill channel.
But for Beg, construction of another flood spill channel is not a way to deal with the threat of looming floods.
“The approach of the government should be to save Kashmir not just save Srinagar,” he said.
The INTACH convener said instead of investing money on establishing a new flood spill channel, the State should restore the wetlands and water bodies that had been encroached upon over the years.
“These wetlands used to act as a sponge and would retain rain waters for a considerable time and thus delay the seepage of water into the main water bodies,” he said.
Beg called upon the government to tackle the flood by absorbing the flood waters instead of setting up another flood spill channel.
Previously, water bodies in Kashmir used to absorb the flood waters but now that these water bodies have shrunk their water absorption capacity has also come down considerably.
So pristine were the water bodies of Kashmir that when Maharaja Gulab Singh presented a shawl to Queen Victoria as a gift, it had a map of Kashmir’s water bodies carved in it.
Now most of these water bodies have either shrunk or have been polluted.
Wullar Lake, which is one of the absorption basins for River Jhelum, has shrunk from 217.8 sq km in 1911 to 86.71 sq km in 2011.
The INTACH convener is also concerned with the haphazard planning of urban Kashmir.
“In 1950s we started urban planning with Bal Garden and the drain water of the area would end up in areas like Bemina,” Beg said. “Now there is a reverse flow of drain water from Bemina to Bal Garden.”
He said the problem of inundation of the city was due to the drainage system and catchment areas.
“Where you build, how you build is important and the government needs to use these floods as an opportunity to build better,” the INTACH convener said.
Beg called upon studying the process of beautification of Jhelum banks and said the vulnerability of bunds needed to be tested.
He also said the government needed to involve the department of Forest and other departments to save Kashmir from floods.
However, he maintained that Srinagar cannot be flood free and people needed to live with it.
While Beg is concerned over building patterns and urban mess, Vice Chancellor of the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST), Kashmir, Tej Pratap is worried about the climate change.
“The rainfall pattern of Kashmir has changed,” Pratap said. “Winters will make a shift of two to three month in the Himalayas.”
He said that the snow falling in February would melt fast, creating problems.
“Early snow melt will create problems as snow melting is different from glacier melting,” the VC SKUAST-K said. “There will be an issue of climate refugees and we will have habitat problems in the Himalayas.”
Pratap said the changing climate had already impacted agriculture and horticulture and warned that the coming years would witness migration of villages from water-stressed areas.
“This year and next year there will be floods in the Himalayas similar to last year’s floods,” he said. “Where? We don’t know that.”
The VC SKUAST-K said the government and the people needed to manage disasters like floods.
“Only adaption won’t do,” Pratap said. “We need to change our behavior, adapt and mitigate.”
He called upon the government to invest in solar power, hydro power and environment-friendly technology.
The VC SKUAST-K said climate change would bring disasters but also opportunities in agriculture.
“We now will have to change crops every 10 years,” Pratap said. “Snow is important for mountain people, glaciers for others.”
The climate change is also coming as a challenge for the meteorologists.
Director of the State’s Metrological department, Sonam Lotus said, “As a meteorologist, I cannot predict floods but can only predict rains.”
He said it was not his job but of the government to predict floods.
Lotus, who was born in Shera village in Leh area of the cold desert region of Ladakh, is one of the most famous people in Kashmir these days as everyone is interested in weather reports since the devastating floods.
He said he gets hundreds of calls from people asking him whether there was any possibility of floods, whether they should use fertilizers for their agriculture and horticulture crop, and fix dates for their marriage.
Lotus said he mostly gets calls from the tourists intending to visit Kashmir on whether they should make a trip to Kashmir during a particular period.
He said so visible was the impact of climate change that apples and tomatoes now grow in his village in Ladakh.
Lotus said the State’s meteorological department benefits a lot from Pakistan.
“We listen to Radio Pakistan and visit the website of the Pakistan Meteorological Department and it helps us,” he said. “This is because we are closer to them and our topography is same as theirs.”
The threat of floods and the effect of climate change also impacts the securities of the people.
Noted Indian journalist Joydeep Gupta, who has been writing on environment since covering the Bhopal disaster in 1984, said insurance companies were now refusing to insure residential and commercial properties as well as crops.
Gupta, who for his contributions to environmental journalism, won the 2012 Green Globe Award at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, said climate change was affecting the demographic growth and settlement pattern and resulting in large scale environmental degradation.
One of the reasons of environmental degradation is that Kashmir’s regulatory monitoring is skewed.
Chief Town Planner, Srinagar Development Authority, Iftikar Ahmad Hakim called for planning interventions.
He said D G Harris had constructed the flood spill channel of Kashmir in 1904 and Tschunt Khul, Sunri Khul and other sub-channels were part of it as well.
Harris had also constructed the drainage system the same year when the population of the city was only a few thousand.
Hakim said Kashmir was hit by such floods also due to waterway constrictions and wetland shrinking.
“Traditional flood absorption basins have fallen victim to urbanization and absence of a flood management plan,” the chief town planner said. “The government needs to take pre-flood measures and delay the peak of tributaries through environmental measures.”
Hakim is for imposing moratorium on constructions in areas like Kandizal and against urbanization in low-lying areas of Srinagar.
“There is focus toward south Srinagar and the government needs to plan urbanization toward north of Srinagar,” he said. “We have a 1971-1991 Master Plan and are facing the issue of limited land resources in Srinagar.”
Kashmir valley has huge water bodies but limited land.
The chief town planner said Ompora and Sharifabad side of the city was occupied by the Army while some wetlands like Rakh-e-Aarth were easy to develop.
“We have made mistakes and authorities are rethinking,” Hakim said.
He also called upon stopping constructing bridges everywhere.
“There are three bridges at Zaina Kadal within 200 meters, which makes the area vulnerable to floods,” the chief town planner said. “Nobody has worked on hydraulic planning of the bridges.”
Hakim said September 7, 2014 was the right time to decide on the Master Plan so was April 1, 2015 when there was again a threat of floods.
He said Srinagar should go for high-density development not multi-storey buildings.
“People who are promoting the idea of multi-storey buildings want to invest their black money in the real estate,” the chief town planner said.
Hakim called for redesigning the entire drainage system.
“It cannot be redesigned in piece meals,” he said.
Contrary to this, the government seems to go with its piece meal approach.
Chief Engineer Irrigation and Flood Control department, Javed Jaffar said the government had already submitted a draft plan of Rs 2200 crore to Government of India in 2009 for constructing an alternate flood-spill channel.
He said the proposal was returned as the State government had proposed its vision for dealing with floods doe the next 32 years instead of the recommended 60 years.
“Besides, GoI has asked the State government to submit a proposal for dealing with 1.50 lakh cusecs of flood water instead of 1.20 lakh cusecs of water,” the Irrigation and Flood Control chief engineer said.
