बेबाक · Editorial
A Republic That Floods Every Monsoon Must Stop Calling It a Surprise
From Assam to Odisha, this year's deluge is less a natural disaster than the annual audit of a state that plans for rescue, never enough for prevention.
The Season's Toll
The monsoon has again become a ledger of loss. In Assam, the State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) put the flood toll at 47, with six more deaths and over 6.53 lakh people affected across 11 districts; earlier, it had reported that ten people, including four children, died in the floods over the previous 24 hours. In Odisha, officials expect more than 9.5 lakh cusecs of floodwater to pass through Mundali as the Mahanadi swells and breaches are reported, with flood alerts and damage across districts including Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar. The India Meteorological Department has issued red alerts for Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and orange alerts for 18 states. This is not one calamity; it is a country flooding in chorus.
Rescue, Not Prevention
The official reflex is by now familiar and, in its way, sincere. A Chief Minister undertakes an aerial survey to assess damage; officials issue alerts; emergency measures follow. None of this should be belittled, for lives may be saved by it. Yet the aerial survey has become the emblem of a governing philosophy that arrives after the water does. The state has grown practised at counting the drowned and measuring the affected, and remains strikingly weak at ensuring the government school in Bandipora, the railway track under the Tinsukia division, and the Vaso gram panchayat office do not go under in the first place. Prevention wins no photographs, and so it is too often postponed.
The Harder Argument
In fairness, no administration can command a cloudburst. When Vaso records 242 mm of rain by 4 pm, or when overnight rainfall inundates roads and a government school in north Kashmir's Bandipora, the immediate cause is meteorological, not managerial. The strongest version of the state's case is that extreme rain can overwhelm even prepared systems, that the terrain is vast, and that timely alerts and damage assessments are necessary acts of governance. That case is not empty. But it explains the force of the water, not the repeated exposure of the same kinds of public assets. Recurrence is the tell. When railway tracks under the North East Frontier Railway's Tinsukia division are washed away and services are hit in a major way, the failure is no longer only in the sky; it is also on the drawing board.
What the Evidence Shows
The pack documents a pattern, not an accident. Floodwater reaches the very institutions meant to withstand it: a government school in Bandipora, homes and temples in Odisha, the Vaso panchayat office where records and other materials had to be carried to safety. Landslides in Nagaland's Mon district have affected schooling enough for the Eastern Naga Students' Federation to seek an immediate assessment and support for affected schools. In Assam's Cachar, four people died while cleaning a water tank, with four others treated at Silchar Medical College and Hospital — proof that the season kills through unsafe civic work as much as rising rivers. Meanwhile a global Centre of Excellence in Coimbatore is to work on sugarcane varieties with tolerance to drought, flood, salinity and heat stress. The science anticipates the crisis; civic planning must catch up.
The Verdict
The judgment here is not of any one government but of a governing habit shared across states and decades. India treats the monsoon as an emergency when it is, in truth, a certainty — and a certainty can be planned for. The measure of a disaster response should no longer be how many were rescued, but how many never needed rescuing: how many tracks held, how many schools stayed dry, how many embankments did not breach. By that standard, 47 dead in Assam and the expected passage of more than 9.5 lakh cusecs of floodwater through Mundali are not merely tragedies. They are warnings about foresight, repeated with the reliability of the rains themselves, and they fall hardest on citizens with the least protection.
A Way Forward
The path is unglamorous and therefore neglected: flood-proof the fixed assets we know are vulnerable. Elevate and reinforce exposed railway sections like those in the Tinsukia division before the season, not after. Map the schools, panchayat offices and health centres that flood and raise or relocate them on a fixed, audited timetable. Fund embankment and drainage maintenance on rivers such as the Mahanadi as a permanent budget line, not post-disaster largesse. Tie India Meteorological Department red alerts to pre-positioned, rehearsed evacuation through coordination among the Union government, States, local bodies and the railways. The aerial survey should become the exception, earned only after prevention has honestly been attempted and found wanting.
A country that can move flood records to a safer shelf, as Vaso's panchayat did, must learn to move its people and infrastructure out of harm's way first.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyThe State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment and safeguard forests and wildlife.
Directive PrincipleNo person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except by a fair, just and reasonable procedure established by law — read by the courts to include dignity, privacy, health, a clean environment and livelihood.
Fundamental RightThe right to move the Supreme Court directly to enforce fundamental rights — called by Dr Ambedkar "the heart and soul of the Constitution." The courts can issue writs such as habeas corpus and mandamus.
Fundamental RightThe State shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. Like must be treated alike; the law cannot be arbitrary.
Fundamental RightWhat this editorial rests on
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