They are calling these the worst floods in a century. More than 76,000 people have been evacuated from parts of Jammu and Kashmir, with many more still stranded. Yet India’s Central Water Commission, the government agency with the task of forecasting floods in the country, had no advisories for any part of Jammu and Kashmir last week.


“It’s shocking,” said Himanshu Thakkar, the coordinator of the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People. “The CWC is a water resource technical body. Its mandate includes flood forecasting for all areas that are flood prone, and Kashmir is part of the Himalayan belt which is definitely flood prone. So why were there no flood forecasts?”

On September 6, the CWC’s website featured 18 level forecasts and eight inflow forecasts, both of which relate to potential water levels in rivers and in other locations, under its flood forecasting advisories. Not one of them included Jammu and Kashmir, where more than 200 people have died in the floods. The agency’s flood forecast section also includes hydrographs that show the water levels at various places across the country. Again, there are no hygrographs for Jammu and Kashmir.

History of devastation

The reason is simple. Though the state has a hydrological observatory which collects some data, it has no flood-forecast station. This is no small problem, considering its long history of devastation because of rain.

“Kashmir is a hilly area, it can receive rainfall of very high intensity and that sort of situation can occur. It’s definitely prone to floods,” said Dr NK Goel, a professor at IIT-Roorkee’s Institute of Hydrology. “Especially with high slopes, rainfall intensity and hilly streams, you have a lot of water being carried in the rainy season.”

The reason for the absence of a flood-control station in Kashmir has been unclear. One official claimed that the state had failed to match up to certain government-mandated prerequisites, without explaining what those were, and so there was no station there. Another insisted that even if there had been one, predicting floods is “not humanly possible”, despite a 2010 report from the state government that warned of a deluge that could “submerge the valley”.

“The chairman has been saying different things to different journalists," said Thakkar from the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People. "He told some that sites had been washed away, others that they will be putting some up next year and others still that it was not their mandate.”

Thakkar added that the situation was not very different a year ago, during the cloudburst in Uttarakhand that left more than 5,700 dead and hundreds of thousands stranded. That flood also went almost unnoticed by the CWC’s flood forecasting model, despite having a bigger presence in Uttarakhand.

Expertise available

While Goel said he did not know the details of the Kashmir situation, he cautioned against presuming that the CWC did not have the capability to predict floods if necessary. “They have enough expertise, if they want," he said. "We have been in touch with them since the last 30 years, and we are having enough expertise. That’s the premier organisation in the country and there is no point doubting their ability.”

But Thakkar complained that the agency remains far too opaque and unwilling to be accountable. “It’s very closed and defensive, always unwilling to deal with questions,” he said. “It’s shocking that if you go to the Nepal hydrology site, you can find waterflow information of most of their rivers on an hourly basis. The same for Bangladesh. But the CWC seems afraid to share information that they have gathered at public expense.”

He also called for the agency to be more open with its functioning, so that other organisations like his own could offer more inputs on what can be done. “We need to know why they did not have any flood forecasts last year in Uttarakhand or who has decided not to put a station in Kashmir,” he said. “There needs to be transparency, and a role for non-governmental and independent experts.”