Residents of a town in Andhra Pradesh moving to a safer place after severe floods
The record rainfall and unprecedented floods in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have taken more than 300 human lives, killed many times more animals, and destroyed millions of acres of cropland and thousands of residential units.
While experts were trying to find out possible causes behind these sudden floods, government officials and media merely repeated the statement of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in which it categorically stated that the heavy rainfall in such a short period of time was linked to the global warming and climate change. As a result of heavy rainfall, the drought hit regions were converted into flood affected regions in a span of three days! Naturally, the government was more than happy to have found a culprit in global warming for the disastrous floods.
| However, the blame game that started between the two state governments tell the other story. The down stream Andhra Pradesh has accused the upstream Karnataka government that it started releasing the dam waters form Almatti without giving adequate notice. This resulted in an unprecedented inflow of 22 lakh cusecs of water to Srisailam dam, whereas the dam was built to handle only 10 lakh cusecs. The situation was grim as the water level was 890 feet, whereas the capacity was only 885 feet! Obviously, the waters were flowing five feet above the flood gates. |
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The interesting phenomenon is, in most of the cases the dams that were built to control floods have been the major cause for floods in the downstream. |
Why did the dam authorities wait for such an eventuality, which could have led to unimaginable destruction? Well, to find answer to the question we need to understand the water politics in the Krishna Basin involving the upstream states of Maharashtra, Karntaka and the down stream state of Andhra Pradesh. In their greed to conquer River Krishna, all three states have built five major dams in the same River basin.
They were built with an objective to exploit the water resources both for irrigation and hydro power generation. Srisailam Dam is one of the biggest hydro electric projects in south India with the installed capacity of 1760 MW. The dam authorities have to meet the dual objectives of generating power and to meet the demands of irrigation. In order to maximize the output, they store the water till the last minute, instead of releasing the water and reducing the load to drain out the water.
Villagers near an overflowing dam |
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| Accepting the fact that the irrigation authorities mismanaged the flood waters, the question remains as to why the River basins were not able to drain out the water and reduce the impact of flood fury? Prof Jayanta Bandopadhyaya of IIM Calcutta says, "We have mucked up the drainage system of our rivers. We have cut the life line of rivers, the water flow has ceased due to construction of dams and the riverbed has risen due to silting". |
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| Andhra Pradesh is accusing the upstream Karnataka government that it started releasing the waters form Almatti dam without giving adequate notice. This resulted in an unprecedented inflow of 22 lakh cusecs of water to Srisailam dam, whereas the dam was built to handle only 10 lakh cusecs. |
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Is silting a major problem that is causing floods in south India? The catchment area of Krishna is in the hills of Western Ghats from where it originates. The extensive deforestation in these hills and the soil erosion has resulted in silting of the major dams mentioned above.
Dr Dinesh Kumar Mishra, an expert on floods says, "The official documents have acknowledged that the siltation rates of the major dams in the country are higher than what is estimated. The real problem is silt and not water. Silt eats up the storage capacity of the reservoirs. Hence their capacity to absorb flood flow is reduced".
This gets confirmed in Kurnool town in Andhra Pradesh. The flood water has receded; but authorities are struggling to remove 25 feet of silt that has been deposited in the floods.
The interesting phenomenon is, in most of the cases the dams that were built to control floods have been the major cause for floods in the downstream.
We have built major dams, but we have not built mechanisms to co-ordinate release of surplus water from these dams. Obviously, this is a human and technical failure. The Central Water Commission has all the technical inputs and remote sensing data to predict the water flow in the river basins. The dam managers and the political leaders could have used this to reduce the destructive impact of the flood fury in downstream.
The irony is that thousands of crores of public money is spent on construction of these dams and now we are seeking more amount of money to mend the damage caused by these structures. While the ordinary people suffer to recover from the calamities, both politicians and bureaucrats love a disaster and subsequent relief package!
