The state of Jammu & Kashmir has been hit by worst floods
of 109 years and once again the country is caught off guard to meet the disaster.
A massive cloud burst of Uttarakhand last year left over 6500 dead and flattened
several hundreds of villages failed to resuscitate our government to step up
weather forecasting services across the country. With the result, it has been
nearly 10 days since the floods wrecked havoc in Southern Jammu and still lakhs
of people are left stranded in flooded waters, several villages are still lying
submerged and even phone connectivity couldn’t be restored to hinterlands.
Reports suggest that state government’s machinery has been completely paralysed
and it may take a month’s time for offices to even start functioning. All these
incidents clearly depict the extent of deluge the state is reeling under.
Of late India has been experiencing extreme weather events at
regular intervals. The massive floods of Mumbai 2005, cloud burst in Leh 2010,
tragedy in Uttarakhand in 2013, landslides in Pune 2014 and now the floods in
Kashmir have led to loss of lives of several thousands and entailed a severe
damage of property of tens of thousands of crores. Though the torrential rains
and nature’s fury might have been the reason for this calamity, it was more
exacerbated by unscrupulous deforestation which aggravated the magnitude of
disaster. Under the dissimulation of enhancing the economic activities in the
green valley, trees have been ruthlessly cut down. Deforestation led to rapid
erosion of the fertile top soil and its subsequent accumulation in the river
beds, drastically reduced the water carrying capacity of rivers. In certain
regions, massive construction activities have changed the course of major rivers.
Deforestation has also reduced the water-holding capacity of lands in Kashmir.
Since rivers beds have been hot seats of human habitation, rivers like Jhelum
have soon turned into dumping beds of sewage.
According to Sunita Narain, head of the Centre for Science
and Environment (CSE),- intensification of the rainfall due to the climate
change and the mammoth development activities undermining the drainage system
have been the root cause for the catastrophe that stuck Kashmir. Srinagar’s
interlinked lakes, Dal- Wular and Nagin were designed to act as natural sponge
to absorb the massive inflow and prevent flooding. Indiscriminate human
activities crippled this exquisite network of lakes with the result, the region
is reeling under the worst ever inundation. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change of United Nations (IPCC) in its report warned India to view a natural disaster
not as a standalone event of nature’s fury but to discern the role played by
the complacent development policies that magnify the devastation in the event
of such calamities. It predicted that India would be affected by intense
weather events, a consequence of accelerated climate changes. Disaster
management officials lamented that unscientific design of roads and bridges,
commercial activities on river banks and absence of embankments had aggravated
the fury of the rivers Jhelum, Chenab and Tawi. Making matters worse, the state
doesn’t even have a flood forecasting system.
India has been ignoring the repeated warnings of spiking of
the extreme weather events like intense droughts, floods of cyclones from an
average just 2.5 events in 1900-09 to 350 in 2000-2010. It is welcome relief that
government finally bid farewell to its long phase of apathy and inaction and
has resolved to study the reason behind the unusually heavy rainfall and its
links to climate change in South Asian region under the Ministry of earth
sciences. The intended study would focus on the interaction of western
disturbance and the South West Monsoon which led to the catastrophe in Leh,
Uttarakhand and Kashmir. Efforts are on to install a Doppler radar in Srinagar
that can forecast extreme weather conditions like extremely high rainfall and
issue warnings of thunder storms in advance. Early warnings can reduce the
scale of destruction as disaster management machinery can be revved up.
The effects of climate change are imminent and India can no
longer afford to have an Ostrich like approach to climate change. Scientific
data of Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology indicates that events with
high rainfall (more than 100mm per day) and very heavy rainfall (more than 150
mm) have been on a rise while moderate events (5-100mm) have reduced. Even the
IPCC Assessment Report (AR5) predicted that India will get more rainfall in less
number of days and that extreme precipitation during monsoon would also
increase. All these tragedies indicate that India is no longer impenetrable to
climate changes. If issues of climate change are resolved on with war
footing strategies, more disasters might loom our land.
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