Floods, landslides and the need to prioritise governance
Since floods are an annual occurrence in many parts of the country, a degree of administrative professionalism may not be a bad thing to wish for. Urban, peri-urban and rural Kerala and Karnataka have been witnessing large-scale, devastating floods for the last three years in particular. Not the kind of deluge that Assam and Bihar witness, where the cause may not entirely lie within the Indian territorial bounds.
That too can be addressed: the recurrence of debilitating floods can be averted, as former prime minister Deve Gowda pointed out in an interview to this newspaper, citing a blueprint he had drawn up some three decades ago. Controlling the annual flooding in the two southern states, Kerala and Karnataka, would require lesser planning. Interstate coordination between Karnataka and Maharashtra too can certainly help, just as unbridled, unplanned mushrooming of tourism enterprises can be controlled.
Entire districts of these two states, including pristine parts of the Western Ghats, are being mercilessly deforested to put up ‘weekend resorts’. Such is the scale of exploitation that, in the 2019 floods, entire plantations and hills were swept away. In Kerala, the urbanised outskirts of a quaint little small town like Thrissur were under water. Natural drainage systems had been harmed.
This time, massive landslides in both states have claimed human lives. Those who face the brunt of man-made disasters are never the authors and perpetrators of unplanned development and greed. Not to speak of riots and other forms of violence, which Bengaluru witnessed recently.
Repeated reminders that the need to be humane is rather urgent seem to be going unheeded. More than ever before, governments need to prioritise governance—there was a time when you thought this would have been a self-evident fact. If a democracy brings about regimes that claim to be representatives of the people, the least they could do is check back on what their primary responsibilities are supposed to be.