Water water everywhere..

Retreating monsoon or North-East monsoon winds bring last-try rains over the Deccan Plateau and the Ghats of India. This happens every year. South-West monsoon that starts in early June brings rain to most parts of the Deccan Plateau, in general. This year, with an anomaly of a cumulative rainfall deficit of about 40% by mid-August and 23% by mid-September, governments got ready to devour on the National Calamity Fund as drought measures almost kicked in. They didn't know what Mother Nature had in store for them.

The retreating monsoon dumped a record-level water in the Krishna and Godavari catchments, which, along with probable poor management of water resources by irrigation officials, led to massive record-floods in the recorded history of the Krishna river. Reservoirs that were full enough to barely cater to the hydroelectric power production during this summer overfilled by a large margin. Over 550 villages drowned, 350+ people lost their lives, Rs. 16,000 Cr+ economic loss, enormous live-stock loss and over 100 million people affected. Stories of individual families are heart-rending. What caused this catastrophe?

Poor water management? Last year, when such rainfall was expected and reservoirs "prepared" for the same by emptying some of their capacities to fill them with flood waters, water managers made a blunder of not closing the gates at the right time, hence losing precious water, to be of use to the Rabi crop, and gaining the wrath of both the people and their "superior" political ranks. This time, may be the same officials had been more careful of emptying the reservoirs, gaining the same of surplus water. If, this is reality, corrections to last year's mistakes should have been made where the problem was, i.e. in timely closure of reservoir gates. However, if space is denied for surplus water in the first place, the havoc is indescribable and so is the stupidity of the officials.

Pure Force Majeure? It is long expected that due to global warming, summers (and winters, of course) will get hotter and rainy periods will receive less rain, overall, but with more number of high-intensity events! High-intensity events create large flows of water into stream and river networks. Water infrastructure is not designed to handle such large flows. It is similar to asking a being to eat more than what it generally takes, in a particular sitting. This is exactly what has happened now.

As I am writing about this, more levees are breached by muddy waters. As the flooded regions drain, officials are facing mud and silt as thick as 25 ft. at some places! It takes months, if not years, for life to get back to normal in some cases. Many lives, however, are permanently changed. In those months or years, it is guaranteed that such events will take place again.

The question that needs to be asked now is `Can we reduce the impact of a similar event?' Of course, by creating larger infrastructure to hold and transmit these flows! With a large number of towns and cities along the large rivers such as the Krishna, it is impossible to increase the width of a channel. Increasing the depth of the channels for them to act as additional reservoirs is technically impossible too. This argument is only technical; I am not even getting into who pays for such an ambitious project (talking about increasing the width of channel, concreting it at weaker sections to prevent breaches and maintaining it for eternity for over 2,000 km. This is only for a single river. Add to that a possibility that this kind of an event can happen anywhere in India and in case of the Brahmaputra, even outside India!). Therefore, the infrastructure remains the same. Does this mean that one needs to vacate the now-occupied lands for the terror of Nature?

The above question, in this regard, changes to `Can we reduce the impact of a similar event, given the existing infrastructure?' There is currently only one suggestion made purely based on strong logic that people, at a large scale, are not following. Rain-water harvesting. It is a broader concept than what most people understand, if at all, about it. I will talk about its depth in a few days. Meanwhile, delve into my scare: what if even the rain-water harvesting doesn't work?

P.S.: I still remember about my will to talk about the roads, but, immediate things first. If you cannot wait, refer to this beautifully written article on roads.