Natural Disasters: A Corrupt System and Flawed Infrastructure –

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Hindi Writer – Omkar Tiwari✍️ Translate by AIGM/S.Z. Mallick

I wish to begin the opening line of this chapter with the words of Anupam Mishra, penned in his immortal work, *”Tairne Wala Samaj Doob Raha Hai”* (The Society That Knew How to Swim Is Drowning). He observed that the very society which once knew how to swim in the waters, build boats, and coexist with floods is now drowning—not because of the water, but due to its own forgotten wisdom. Floods occurred in the past too, yet back then, they were a celebration; today, they are a disaster. The water remains the same, and the river remains the same—it is *we* who have changed. Anupam-ji used to say, “A flood is not a guest. It arrives every year, at a fairly predictable time. We do not make special preparations for a guest, but we must learn to coexist with something that returns unfailingly at the same time each year.” He would also add, “We have torn our own pockets; resources worth crores pour down, yet we only look for ways to ‘dispose’ of them. It is not about disposal; we must learn to live alongside them.”

This chapter tells the story of that single shift in terminology—from *control* to *management*. Control is rooted in arrogance—the belief that we are greater than the river. Management is rooted in humility—the recognition that the river predates us, and that we must align our systems with its natural rhythm.

First, an account of the damage—what the flood takes away from us.

Look at the statistics, for policy understands the language of data. Analysis based on Central Water Commission data reveals that floods claimed approximately 115,000 lives in India between 1953 and 2021—an average of over 1,600 deaths annually. Out of the country’s total land area of ​​329 million hectares, more than 40 million hectares are flood-prone. During the decade spanning 2011 to 2021, the average annual economic loss due to floods and heavy rainfall was estimated at ₹25,805 crore—meaning losses exceeding ₹2.5 lakh crore occurred over the decade.

The state-wise picture is even more telling. Uttar Pradesh has recorded the highest number of flood-related deaths since 1953—approximately 18,900 lives lost—followed by Andhra Pradesh (nearly 17,000), Bihar (11,500), West Bengal (11,200), and Gujarat (over 10,000). According to the Central Water Commission, the Uttar Pradesh-Uttarakhand region accounts for about 33 percent of flood-related damage, while Bihar alone accounts for 27 percent. Bihar is the country’s most flood-prone state; the 2007 Kosi region floods alone claimed around 700 lives and resulted in the loss of public assets worth ₹1,700 crore. Madhubani, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, East Champaran, Sitamarhi, and Samastipur—these six districts alone bear half of the state’s flood-related damage. Assam records an average annual loss of ₹200 crore, with total damages since 2002 exceeding ₹16,000 crore; erosion by the Brahmaputra has swallowed 4.27 lakh hectares of the state’s land—representing seven percent of Assam’s total area—since 1950. West Bengal has suffered losses exceeding ₹64,700 crore since 2002.

Even in Gujarat and Rajasthan—states synonymous with drought—reports of urban flooding and flash floods now emerge every two or three years; cities like Vadodara, Jamnagar, Jodhpur, and Jaipur find themselves submerged, and the Luni, a desert river, overflows its banks. On top of this damage comes the bill for relief operations. Thousands of crores of rupees from SDRF and NDRF funds are spent annually on flood relief, compensation, and reconstruction; it has become commonplace for the Centre and states to release ₹6,000–7,000 crore for immediate relief during a single monsoon season. The irony is twofold: we spend money on embankments and dams to prevent floods, then spend again on relief when floods strike, while in the interim, that water—the most precious resource of our century—simply flows away into the sea. It is truly a case of a leaking pocket.

Now, the other side of the coin—Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Bengal, Gujarat, and Rajasthan grapple with drinking water tankers, depleting groundwater, and deteriorating groundwater quality as soon as summer arrives. The same water that drowns us, leaves us thirsty four months later. The problem isn’t water—it’s water management across time and space.

Ballia—A Testimony of My Own Soil

Now, let me take you to my home—Ballia, a district located at the bend of the Ganges where Bihar begins. My village, Indore—which became colloquially known as “Amdaur,” because there were so many mango trees in our village that mangoes became their very identity. Even today, when my elderly relatives recount the varieties of mangoes in the local dialect, my eyes light up—Chinawa mango, Kariyawa mango, Sindooriya mango—each variety has a connection, a story, a Chaupal attached to it. It wasn’t just a fruit; it was a celebration of the fertility of that soil.

The people of Ballia used to proudly say, “We are the richest in the country in terms of water resources. We have the Ganga, which flows from Gangotri, the Saryu, which flows through Ayodhya, and the Ghaghra, which carries the nectar of the Kailash catchment. The confluence of three Himalayan rivers! For a thousand years—and I can say this with complete confidence—the settlements of Ballia, Banaras, Ayodhya, and Mathura have been located on the banks of these rivers, drinking their water. Arsenic has never been a problem in those thousand years.

And today? Today, at least half of Ballia is grappling with severe arsenic contamination in its groundwater. I learned this pain not from statistics, but from my friend Saurabh Singh, who has been doing field work on arsenic in Ballia for almost twenty years. Saurabh learned this art under the tutelage of the great scientist who brought the arsenic crisis in Bangladesh and Bengal to the world’s attention in the 1980s and 1990s—Dr. Dipankar Chakrabarty, School of Environmental Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Since 1988, Dr. Chakrabarty’s team has tested samples from millions of tube wells throughout the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra plains, reached every village in Ballia to identify arsenicosis patients, and repeatedly warned that this poison is slowly spreading throughout the central Ganga plain. In villages like Sughra Chhapra and Tiwari Tola in Ballia, people sit with black lesions on their hands and feet, multiple deaths in each family—this is the story of my own land.

It was fine for a thousand years, why did it deteriorate now?

This is the central question of this chapter. Arsenic didn’t come from a factory—it was always present in the ground. I recall Anupam’s line—”Nature has hidden the poison beneath.” Nature provided fresh water above—in rivers, ponds, in the surface of wells—and buried heavy metals deep in the sediment. As long as society looked to the scattered resources around and made do with them, the poison remained dormant below. We made two mistakes.

The first mistake—blindly imitating pumps and free electricity. Dazzled by the Green Revolution model of Punjab and Haryana, we assumed groundwater was the best water. Tubewells grew deeper, electricity became free, and we reached layers of the earth where nature had trapped arsenic, iron, and fluoride. We considered what was a luxury a necessity.

The second mistake—and this is the crux of this chapter—we cut off the river from its expanse. Plains rivers like the Ganga and Ghaghra are naturally meandering. During floods, they would expand to a width of 20-30 kilometers, and every two or three years, they would shift their course by a kilometer or two. This wasn’t chaos, but a cleansing system for the river. The small concentration of heavy metals naturally present in the river’s water would become negligible after spreading across such a vast area—like a drop of ink being dissolved in the ocean. Embankments and dams confined the river to a narrow strip. Now, the same sediments, the same metals, are accumulating year after year in this same limited strip—in increasing concentrations from ppb to ppm—and are gradually exceeding the limits of what the human body can tolerate. The river that used to sweep our courtyard every year, we tied its hands and told it to take all the garbage in its lap. And then, from that very lap, we are drawing tube well water and drinking it.

Consider the third loss—groundwater recharge. Floodwater would stagnate in the fields for weeks before percolating into the ground. My experience, and the memories of my elders, tells me that the water level in floodplains would easily rise by 2-4 meters every year. Unfortunately, serious and systematic research on this subject—the extent of natural recharge in floodplains—has been virtually nonexistent in our country. Thousands of studies have been conducted on embankment construction, but there’s no national account of how much recharge these embankments have taken away. This in itself is a testament to our priorities. And fourth—the fertile silt we once boasted about. Every year, floods would lay down fresh Himalayan soil, and we would proudly proclaim, “Grow anything, everything, in our soil.” I even believe that this very blessing of rivers—this carefree, fertile, protected ground—gave us the cultural richness on which this civilization rests. Kashi remained a city of knowledge and salvation for thousands of years. Buddha attained enlightenment in this Gangetic plain, and Guru Nanak Dev’s tradition of knowledge is linked to Patna Sahib. Pataliputra was the most prosperous and powerful city in South Asia in its era. Ayodhya gave us the eminent personality of Lord Rama—and just look at the meaning of the word ‘Ayodhya’: a place where war cannot be waged, which cannot be conquered. Imagine how secure the inhabitants of that kingdom must have been about their water and food that the city itself was named ‘Ayodhya’! Today’s popular teacher, Shri Awadh Ojha, says, “Ayodhya is today’s Switzerland; it has not fought in any war for years, it has no enemies, and that is why the world’s wealth rests there.” And Krishna—the fertile, milk-and-curd-filled land of Gokul and Mathura gave him that innocent playfulness, that Raas, that butter-play. Look carefully—when he left the banks of the Yamuna and migrated to Gujarat, the same Krishna became a great diplomat; He established religion and imparted the wisdom of the Gita—but the playfulness and banter of the Ganges-Yamuna plains were left behind. As soil changes, so too does human nature—I’m saying this not for debate, but to humble myself: only fertile and water-secure soil creates a carefree society, and only a carefree society can cultivate culture. The day water worries enter the home, philosophy flies out the window.

So what is to be done—controlled floods, planned boons?

Now listen to my humble solution—easier said than done, I admit it upfront. But this is the direction.

Today, we have a complete network of barrages, dams, and flood gates on rivers—from Farakka to the head regulators of every canal system. We have satellite images that can map the elevation, depth, soil, and drainage of every village and every farm. This means that we are now technically capable of determining which area should be flooded, in which month, for how many days, and with how much water.

What happens now? Floods enter where we don’t want them to—in villages, on roads, in hospitals—because we are fighting them. When the embankment breaks, the water explodes, and that very water becomes a disaster. I propose that we stop fighting and instead host:

Before the monsoon, using satellite images and community consent, ‘flood-reception zones’ should be marked for each river stretch—vacant fields based on crop cycles, old floodplains, village ponds, lakes, and marshes. A network of gates should allow floodwater to spread in these areas in a controlled manner.

This will accomplish four things simultaneously. One, the spilled water will seep into the ground over weeks and recharge the old groundwater, reducing the need for summer tankers. Two, the massive recharge of fresh, clean water will dilute the concentrations of arsenic, iron, and fluoride accumulating underground—this will act as a medicine for areas like Ballia, as there is no cure for arsenic; prevention is the only cure. Three, the fields will regain the fertile Himalayan silt, which is not sold in sacks. Four, the water that spreads in the planned areas will not enter settlements; The flood’s peak will be cut, saving thousands of crores for relief and rehabilitation. This is management—making that same water appear to be a guest room instead of an enemy.

But the condition remains the same as in the previous chapter—the river should contain only river water. Anupam ji used to say that nature washes its rivers clean every year; we just need to stop dumping our sewage, waste, and industrial toxins into them, only then will the flood’s blessings be worthy of receiving. Controlled floods are a blessing only when the spreading water brings life, not poison.

Our ancestors have demonstrated this, and this is no mere paper fantasy—our society has lived it. The ancient communities of Assam, Bihar, and Bengal used to wait for floods; their rice varieties were designed to grow with the water, and with the receding water, they had a complete system of planting and harvesting with minimal effort. Houses were built on high platforms, boats in every courtyard, and the month of the flood was almost recorded in the calendar. The example of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan is truly miraculous—where the annual rainfall quota is only 70 millimeters, the gypsum layer just beneath the surface causes even 20-30 millimeters of rain to spread and cause a flood. Society didn’t consider this a disaster—it created a khadin. By building earthen embankments on the slopes, they retained that sheet of water in the fields, sowed wheat in moist, fresh soil—and grew wheat in the desert, the taste of which is still sung today. Without canals, without tube wells, without electricity—only by studying floods.

Integrating the knowledge that has been tested for hundreds of years in the sands of Jaisalmer and the Kosi floodplains with modern technology—satellites, sensors, and gates—this, in my view, is flood management for the twenty-first century. We must avoid imitating American and European models that are built on conquering nature—and whose economies ultimately depend on war funding and the struggle for oil. That path is one of ego, and ego eats from within. Our path is the one shown by our ancestors—to prosper by living in harmony with nature. Only then will life be a celebration, and only then will society be one that is truly grounded in the self—that is, healthy.

A society that swims can swim again. The river never stops teaching—it’s just that the student left the class and climbed onto the embankment. Now it’s time to descend.

Let us all play our part…

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