Recently incessant rains in the past couple of weeks has caused massive flooding across Kerala.

Reasons for flooding in Kerala:-

More than average rainfall:-

India’s western coast has received above-average rainfall on account of sustained low-pressure conditions.

Land use:-
Injudicious use of land is responsible for making some regions of the state more prone to floods and landslides.
However, other factors such as a change in land use patterns and climate change could have contributed to the situation on the ground.
Incursions into catchment areas of rivers that have dried up and mountainous areas have rendered settlements in their vicinity vulnerable to the vagaries of nature.

Kerala is yet to implement recommendations of the Gadgil Committee on conservation of Western Ghats.

The state is an exception that it does not have a single batallion of SDRF task force which is mandatory as per rules to tackle natural calamities.
India’s Central Water Commission has also been under fire for failing to introduce a flood forecasting system to issue warnings.

Climate change and global warming:-
Recent research indicates that rising temperatures have led to huge fluctuations in the monsoon winds carrying the moisture from the Arabian Sea, resulting in heavy-to-extreme rains over the Western Ghats and central India, lasting for two to three days.

Deforestation :-
Unfettered development activity in the Western Ghats had increased the chances of landslides, a major cause of casualties during the floods.
Wetlands have been lostto development projects, construction of roads, and buildings at places too close to rivers.

Dam mismanagement:-

Kerala is home to 53 large dams with a collective capacity of nearly 7 trillion litres. As rain poured and rivers overflowed, these dams should have served as a bulwark.
But for dams to truly tame floods, experts say dam reservoirs need to be relatively empty before the onset of rain. This was not the case in Kerala.
When the downpours arrived in August, the near full-capacity Idukki was forced to release water into already flooded areas.
Also state did not gradually release water from about 30 dams in anticipation of rains.
Local officials have been blamed for exacerbating the situation by failing to gradually open the dams dotting the state’s complex river network, waiting instead until they were already full before unleashing the excess water.

Inter-state dam management:-
Like many dams in India, the Mullaperiyar is located in one state (Kerala), but operated by another (Tamil Nadu). Both state governments have been in constant conflict over the dam’s water level in the current crisis, the Supreme Court had to intervene.

CAG report:-
As per the 2017 CAG report, Kerala had not conducted a dam-break analysis or prepared an Emergency Action Plan. Neither has the state prepared the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) Manuals for any of its dams.
The audit also observed that prescribed quality checks were not conducted by monitoring agencies in all four projects in Kerala.

How to ensure such incidents don’t happen in future:-

• Reservoir operation and management need to be taken more seriously
• Implementation of committee recommendations:-
• Kerala should relook the Gadgil committee and the Kasturirangan committee reports. It has put forth objections to both reports and tried to reduce the area under ecologically sensitive zones (ESZs). It is time for it to re-evaluate its position regarding ESZs.
• The Gadgil panel report calls for government intervention to curb activities such as quarrying, mining, land clearance or construction in ecologically-sensitive zones such as those close to riverbanks and violation of Wetlands Protection Rules too need to be looked into.
• Kerala should set up a State Flood Commission to evolve a comprehensive approach to manage extreme rainfall in the state.
• This commission should examine the impact of major land use changes on the hydrology of the state.
• It should also look at the dam management systems.
• Besides this, district-level sub-commissions should be set up to identify the areas where roads, railways, hydropower, embankments and other infrastructure projects aggravated flood problems and suggest mitigation measures.
• As a country, India needs to improve environmental governance while working with other countries to halt global warming.
• Flood control can be effected through an Integrated Dam Management System, which is totally computerised and automated, the only exception being lifting and lowering of shutters which has to be done manually.
• This system which can be called IDMS, has to be evolved and developed independently.
• Integrated approach to managing floods requires a sound understanding of the patterns that rivers such as the Ganga and its tributaries display during the monsoon. Governmental understanding of the problem generally relies not so much on advanced techniques such as mapping based on satellite imagery and Geographic Information Systems, but on ground-level surveys and anecdotal reporting. This needs to change.