An aerial view of Srinagar affected by floods An aerial view of Srinagar affected by floods

On the afternoon of September 4, two days before Jammu and Kashmir was ravaged by its worst floods in more than 50 years, three hydrological stations on the Jhelum river, which runs through the valley, had detected that serious danger was lurking. Less than 50 km upstream of Srinagar, the Sangam station, operated by the Central Water Commission (CWC), indicated that water levels had risen from 5.7 m on September 3 to 10.13 m on September 4. That's more than the height of a storey in a regular house.

The knock-on effect was swift and the alarming rise in water levels was soon detected by two other CWC stations.

Nearer the capital, the Ram Munshi Bagh hydrological station registered a jump of more than 3 m in the water level between the afternoons of September 3 and 4. Further downstream, the Safapora hydrological station also recorded readings of a similar jump in the same period (see chart).

The information provided by these three stations should have set alarm bells ringing within the state administration which should have then prepared itself for a major flood hitting the area. It could have provided a 24-hour window to evacuate people from lowlying areas, deploy special response teams and to arrange for rationing supplies. Except that none of this happened.

The explanation for this inaction is staggering-these CWC stations are not flood forecasting stations. They are merely supposed to monitor the flow of water from India to Pakistan under the Indus Water Treaty of 1960. When they detected the rise in water levels, the information was quickly passed on to the local administration but they simply looked past it, thinking it had nothing to do with flood management. No one bothered to join the dots.

Such an episode perfectly encapsulates the malaise that is still affecting India's disaster management systems.

More than a year has passed since the Uttarakhand floods that claimed close to 6,000 lives but lessons have still not been learnt. What emerges, in the Kashmir case, is a familiar story of agencies failing to communicate, a lack of planning and awareness and the inability to clear projects and funds meant for the crucial work of saving lives.

The first mistake this time was a critical lack of foresight. Despite the fact that Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is an unstable region highly prone to earthquakes, it appears that no one thought the state could be affected by floods. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) maps for floodprone regions inexplicably does not include J&K despite the National Institute of Disaster Management noting that the state is prone to flash floods.

The region was, in fact, ravaged by floods in 1992 and a more serious calamity occurred in 1959.

The confusion regarding the role of the CWC starts here. According to CWC Chairman Ashwin B. Pandya, the commission only sets up flood forecasting centres at the request of state governments. It currently does flood forecasting from 175 locations of the 873 hydrological stations across the country. "We have not received any such request from J&K, so our stations there are mostly for hydrological data collection," Pandya told INDIA TODAY.

There were other warnings besides the critical information that could have been gleaned from the CWC stations. According to the India Meteorological Department, J&K typically receives about 100 mm of rain in September. Yet, in the first four days of the month, the figure recorded was already 400 mm. Again, there was ample evidence that danger was afoot but this time there was no one to interpret this data and issue a warning.

Soldiers carry a rescued flood victim at the air force station in Srinagar Soldiers carry a rescued flood victim at the air force station in Srinagar

That role is supposed to be performed by the NDMA, headquartered in a plush building in New Delhi's Safdarjung Enclave. Since the NDA Government took office in May this year, it has secured the resignations of five of its members including its vicechairman, thereby rendering the body headless. While there are still technical experts housed in the building, an NDMA official explains that a lack of leadership means that no work has happened there for months now. "Normally the NDMA receives forecasts from the Met department and the CWC, and a team then analyses the data. While natural disasters cannot be predicted, an early warning is possible for floods," the official told INDIA TODAY.

The NDMA, however, is not directly involved with disaster management in each state. Its mandate is to frame policy and put structures in place. Disaster management in the states is supposed to be carried out by the state disaster management authority and district disaster management authorities, all of whom are supposed to have incident response teams in place to deal with such situations. Here again, both the NDMA and state government failed. In February 2012, the state government had approved a three-tier disaster management policy but it was never able to create a separate department which would only deal with disasters. The task was assigned to the respective divisional commissioners or deputy commissioners of the area who presumably had several other things to deal with.

As recently as May 2013, when earthquakes hit the Chenab Valley in Kashmir, no steps were taken to firm up these plans, a fact noted by the then-NDMA vice-chairman Shashidhar Reddy.

"Many states have not come up with the plan yet and Jammu and Kashmir is sailing in the same boat," he said. In the same month, the state's chief secretary Muhammad Iqbal Khanday countered this, saying that the state had adequate infrastructure in place to deal with any kind of disaster. NDMA officials argue that they can only go so far in pushing states to effectively deal with disaster management since it is a state subject. But they insist that state authorities have repeatedly been told about the procedure to follow. "Low-lying areas are to be evacuated and all food supplies are to be shifted to the rooftops. People should be given rations," an official explains.

Besides, there were also long-term measures suggested, such as establishing a dedicated disaster communication network using satellite phones. Such a system would have been crucial in Kashmir after all regular communication channels broke down. Last year, the NDMA, along with National Disaster Response Force and the National Informatics Centre, was supposed to procure such a system. That project has been, however, repeatedly stalled after disagreements between the three agencies.

In 2011, the Central government had proposed that Rs 250 crore be kept as a response reserve to be given to state governments in case of any emergency. However, the Finance Commission has repeatedly turned down requests for allocation of these funds.

More importantly, a unified command system was to be set up under NDMA which would have taken crucial decisions in time of emergency. The ministries of agriculture, defence and home were supposed to be a part of this command and the officials of these ministries even visited Russia to study its incident response mechanism. Still, no system is yet in place. While bureaucratic inefficiency continually undermines the possibility of India having an efficient disaster management system, consider the costs of running the various agencies involved. The CWC has a budget of Rs 173 crore and has about 800 Group-A engineers as part of its 5,000-member strong staff spread across the country. Yet, it only does flood broadcasting for some states by special request.

The Central government pays Rs 40 crore every year towards the salaries and perks of the NDMA members and its staff. In the seven years of its existence, the NDMA has spent more than Rs 1,300 crore but is still unable to map flood-prone areas effectively and has only limited power in dealing with state governments. Recent reports indicate that the Government plans to reconstitute the NDMA based on a report authored by P.K. Misra, currently the additional principal secretary to the PM, that plans to make it more efficient. That step would be welcome, but unless there is a more holistic recasting of the roles played by various agencies, the same tangles are likely to continue.

with Jayant Sriram and Rahul Tripathi

Followthe writer on Twitter @ravishkt

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