Speech by Shri. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP about the situation arising out of the heavy floods in various parts of the country on 30/8/07 in Rajya Sabha

Sir,

Thank you very much for allowing me to participate in this discussion and put forward my views.

Sir, as many of my senior colleagues in this house have said and I join them in reiterating – The problem of floods in our country occurs almost every year and disrupts millions of lives and causes havoc and untold misery to those millions. Almost every year almost as routine, we stand up and discuss the floods and the government responds with aid, grants and relief. Little aid reaches the people affected and in many cases despite the government aid or support, lives are irreparably damaged and destroyed

Sir, Let me break my discussion into two parts. Firstly, I would like to summarize the impact of the floods and rains this year on my state Karnataka and plead with the Central government for financial support

Sir, my state has recorded very high rainfall this year between June and August. The rainfall over the State between June and August is the highest since 1970. Districts of Koppal, Raichur, Bellary, Chitradurga, Belgaum, Bidar, Bagalkote, Bijapur, Hassan recorded significantly higher rainfall with some districts recording rain highest ever in the last 100 years.

This has resulted in large inflow and all the major reservoirs have reached full capacity. Huge releases from these reservoirs have led to flooding, inundation and extensive damage to life, property, infrastructure agriculture and crops. 43 lives have been lost and over 1,77,733 hectares of standing agriculture crops and 20,900 hectares of horticulture crops have been damaged - with total financial damages estimated to crops and infrastructure estimated to be Rs 1600 Crores.

Our state has already submitted a First flood memorandum of Rs 407 Crores to Govt of India and the Central study team has visited the state and submitted its report to GoI. Even today the Central government has not released any amount under NCCF. Central government has only released 23.70 Crores under CRF and I urge the GoI to release funds to my state expeditiously.

Sir, coming to second part of what I wish to say,

Sir, we visit and revisit Floods every year. Given our country’s geography and its many rivers and basins and the increasing impact of Global warming, Floods will occur. As a speaker before has said and I quote “river valleys were cradles of civilizations and today they have almost become graves”.

I also agree with many members and I reiterate that despite this almost annual event with them when he said earlier, we do not seem to have any long term plan to address the problem of floods.

I believe that it would be very appropriate that in this the 60th year of our independence that we develop a longer term and sustainable strategy to address this debilitating tragedy that visits our country every year. We owe it to our future generation that we leave behind some plan to address this problem.

Sir, There are many variables at play here that is creating this recurrent occurrence of floods – Excessive Rains, Excessive and indiscriminate Damig of rivers , Encroachment of River banks and Basins, Erosion of River Banks and increasingly evident phenomenon of Global warming and so there cannot be any simple or short term solution to this.

Sir, let me make some suggestions on what the Government can do in this long term Plan.

Firstly, The process of granting financial relief from the Center to the States should be complelely restructured with the objective of ensuring speedier and more transparent financial resources to the affected state and its people and Removing or at least reducing Corruption and Political Partisanship in the process of allocating funds. One suggestion could be that the Government structure its various calamity funds into one Central government Guaranteed line of Credit made available to states which can be drawn down during a calamity. Off course this should be accompanied by clear guidelines that prevent the misuse of this (including adjusting against Plan outlays etc) since rampant misuse of Calamity funds is the norm today.

Secondly, we must improve forecasting of floods - Better Forecasting can and should save lives, which today seem to be collateral damage of our lack of will to develop a new approach to Floods. Our Meteorological Department must be given more resources and their forecasting technologies and equipment must be upgraded. In addition either the Met Dept or an appropriate agency of the Government like IRSA should also look at using Technology to remote sense and survey all our rivers, the basins and especially flood prone regions - creating a modern and high technology database that can be the basis of planning and forecasting strategy. Technology can and should be used to at reduce the impact by some forecasting.

Thirdly, Interlinking of Rivers must be looked at. The Previous government had planned an ambitious interlinking of Rivers and Basins project – There are no signs of this project anymore. Its not clear if the current Government has shelved this project or modified it or is just ignoring it. Either way, it deserves a relook and some form of interlinking; even in a smaller more targeted way at certain geographies will serve to rebalance peaking water surges during flood season. As one of my previous speakers also said, there is no doubt that this is a significant project with other important issues that get tossed up like Environment impact and relocation of people as a consequence of interlinking etc, but the Government must attempt to create a political consensus around this or at least develop a scaled down plan that meets political consensus.

Fourthly, States must focus on the twin issues of River bank Encroachment and River Bank Erosion – both of which contribute floods. This is squarely in the territory of State responsibility. The GoI must develop a plan to work with States to encourage and incentivize State governments, Panchayats in this connection both in terms of funding and enforcement.

Finally – it is clear that our decades of abuse of environment and ongoing abuse is causing the Global warming effect- The government and specifically the Environment Ministry must get on top of this issue and give the nation a state of the Nation report at earliest that can be the basis for the country to start sensitising itself to the impact of this abuse on recurrent floods and natural phenomenon. Legislation should be introduced to reverse the impact of global warming in our country at the earliest. Sir, I would urge a separate debate and discussion on this issue.

To end, Sir I reiterate – While the government must ensure maximum efforts to speed up relief and aids to the millions of displaced and flood-effected people , The Govt must also immediately take the initiative to start the process of protecting its people from this annual occurrence of floods. I urge all the political parties and members who otherwise stand for the oppressed and downtrodden to persuade the government to launch this permanent long term strategy towards the whole issue of water and in particular flood prevention and protection of people from floods. I hope the Government will take necessary steps in this regard.

Thank you.