North India Floods 2025: Climate Change, Mismanagement, and the Rising Cost of Disasters

Recent unrelenting rains have inflicted widespread, devastating damage in large parts of north India. Himachal, J&K and Uttarakhand have suffered immense damage to infrastructure and private property. Punjab is battling its worst floods since 1988. With the Ravi, Beas, Sutlej and Ghaggar rivers, and other rivulets in spate, 1,500 villages, entire rural tracts and urban areas stand submerged. In Delhi, the Yamuna is re-claiming its floodplain. Gurugram, the so-called ‘Millenium City’, is suffering an aggravated version of its annual waterlogging and traffic snarls.It’s a repeat of past few years: unrelenting rains and consecutive cloudbursts dump immense amounts of water, at times, equivalent of an entire season’s rainfall, in just few days.The catchment areas channelise that water into nallahs and rivers, which, in some cases, flow into dam reservoirs; water is then released from these brimming reservoirs into the same rivers, which overflow or burst their banks – even as rain continues in affected areas.Floods are the most de-humanising hazards among natural disasters. An earthquake, though starkly devastating and fatal in itself, still leaves a few spaces for survivors to shelter from inclement weather and to attend to bodily functions with some level of dignity. It also allows recovery of some personal effects. Floods rob communities of their entire belongings and dry up resources for years to come. Flood waters run deep and invariably mix with sewage, contaminating every corner of affected households and businesses, and render buildings structurally weak and unlivable.India ranks third, behind the US and China, in recording the highest number of natural disasters. It’s the second-worst-affected country by floods (after Bangladesh). As per the Ministry of Jal Shakti, out of the total geographical area of 328.7 million hectares, approximately 49.15 MHa is flood-prone. According to ‘Swiss Re’, just the floods and two cyclones of 2023 inflicted a loss of Rs 1 lakh crore in India. Clearly, such disasters impose a severe economic, human and social cost; they inflict casualties, damage infrastructure, affect economic activity, aggravate poverty, and importantly, impinge on the ability of the governments at various levels to sustain developmental agendas.In absence of insurance, lakhs are rendered destitute, with livelihoods destroyed for decades. After a few years, just as some of them start to recover a bit, the next flood hits them. Politicians come, abuse and accuse the incumbent government, offer lip-service, use the catastrophe to garner publicity, and move on.Till about two decades ago, specific areas suffered perennial floods on account of their hydrological geomorphology. But of late, flood vulnerability, and the quantum of destruction, have increased on account of five main reasons.Numerous studies by the World Bank, UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ministry of Earth Sciences, McKinsey Global Institute, etc, had fore-informed that:(i) India will be one of the most severely hit countries from climate change;(ii) there will be a decrease in seasonal mean rainfall, but mean and extreme precipitation during monsoon will increase, leading to severe flooding even in some new areas;(iii) overall, climate change will likely lower the living standards of nearly half of India’s population by 2050. The IPCC’s AR6 additionally added that climate-change-related floods, landslides, etc, will erode food security, spell economic disaster for already-distressed farmers and create new poverty traps. But has any serious thought been given in terms of planning, decision-making and plan-implementation for building climate-change/extreme weather-resilient infrastructure, sustainable cities and living spaces along with ‘lifeline networks’? The latter play a key role in addressing many of the Sustainable Development Goals.Has any thought been given to retrofitting existing infrastructure? Or on how to "build-back-better" after every disaster?As per Global Forest Watch, India lost 18,200 hectares of primary forest in 2024 (compared to 17,700 hectares in 2023). According to the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation, India had the second-highest rate of deforestation globally between 2015 and 2020. The Government of India refutes these figures. However, pictures of the huge amounts of timber flowing down with floodwaters in Himachal tell their own story. This loss manifests through poor soil stability, increased propensity to erosion, landslides, etc, while also impinging on microclimatic conditions, hydrological cycle, and biodiversity.Gurugram Floods: No Drainage, Thanks To A Neta-Builder Nexus Says Urban PlannerFrom an urban population of 377 million (31.16 percent of India’s population - Census-2011), 480 million in 2020 (34.9 percent), and 523 million (~36-37 percent population) in 2023 (NITI Aayog data), India is projected to have around 40 percent of its population by 2030, and between 53 percent-60 percent by 2050 in urban zones. This is the highest demographic shift globally. Creation of a new city (conception to establishment) takes about 5-8 years. When and how do we plan to incrementally design new cities, especially those which will sustain/endure into the future?Gurugram provides a context: the capital of Haryana is in Chandigarh. Why does Gurugram flood with each monsoon while Chandigarh doesn't? The answer is in structural city planning. Urban flooding is significantly different from rural flooding, as urbanisation leads to enclosed catchments areas, lack of open soil for sink-drainage, and limited capacity sewage and drainage systems. Thus, intense rain can increase flood volumes by up to six times and can lead to catastrophic flooding very, very quickly. Despite the prevalance of urban climate catastrophies, there seems to be sparse awareness about how increasing urbanisation leads to higher levels of disaster vulnerability. Given India’s hazard vulnerability, all our urban spaces must be climate-adapted, sustainable and future-ready.Besides, a city may be “smart”, ie, the officials precisely know what is happening where in near-real-time. But it eventually boils down to how the administration is addressing the problems competently in real time. A city is only as “smart” as people working to design and run it. Yet, all we have is the same old, pedantic, perennially tired workforce with arcane mindsets that refuse to acknowledge the magnitude and immediacy of the climate crisis we are now experiencing.The IPCC reports underscore that a fair amount of India’s infrastructural interventions are maladaptive, and are, indeed, aggravating disaster vulnerabilities instead of assisting development. Given the increasing challenges from rapid urbanisation and climate change, there is, thus, a dire need to design and build new infrastructure differently. But have we developed climate-change adaption codes, and/or started to pro-actively use emergent technologies for disaster risk reduction?Are we designing ‘lifeline networks’ related to energy, transport, water, waste, telecommunication systems and housing, which support our living spaces, society and economy? Infrastructure that deteriorates or even collapses at the first sign of hazard speaks loudly of these failures.While complete immunity from floods is not possible, we can surely diminish the impact of heavier rains and increased glacier-melt through structural and non-structural measures in both rural and urban spaces. Structural measures aim to use physical methods to thwart waters from inundating specified areas. Non-structural measures are concerned with three broad aspects: preparation of Human Settlement Layers, flood vulnerability maps and specific-area models; use of Information-Communications-Technology particularly in State and District Emergency Operations Centres to effectively utilise the alerts from India’s early warning agencies (For example th IMD, CWC, NDEM/NRSC, etc) for issuing advance warnings, facilitating preparedness, pre-positioning resources, conducting timely evacuations, improving response and limiting damage; and ensuring availability of suitable relief camps/shelters to accommodate evacuees. Regrettably, few States have ICT-rich SEOCs/DEOCs, and which can act as command centres for disaster management activities.The events in Punjab exemplify the prevalent situation:The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had issued forecasts of heavier-than-usual rainfall in this monsoon. Given the floods of 1988, 1993, 2019 and 2023, were sincere efforts made to substantially strengthen the dhussi-bandhs, river embankments, weak spots in the protective earthworks? The Revenue Department’s protocol is well-codified on paper; post-monsoon, a committee inspects flood‑protection works, map breaches and weak spots, and puts up estimates for repair by the Irrigation Department; pre‑monsoon, the same committee verifies that those works and rehearsals are actually completed. In practice, however, this ritual is often in breach; files move late, tenders are split, funds are “not available,” and politics intrude as each constituency seeks to “save” its patch. The failure of the gates at an important node, Madhopur, during the recent floods, is emblematic.Apparently, the lessons about dam-reservoir management from Kerala floods are yet to be fully internalised. Using agile forecasting, some water could have been released earlier in anticipation of the expected excessive rainfall. Instead, reservoirs were allowed to top and water then released suddenly.Most water-channels, especially the Ghaggar and the Shivalik tributaries (Tangri, Markanda, Kaushalya, Patiala Badi Nadi, Patiala ki Rao, Sirhind Choe), are heavily silted/clogged, have not been dredged properly for decades, and thereby have reduced water-carrying/retention capacity. Just 50 cms reclamation of depth in a 10m wide canal increases its capacity by 5,000 litres in every metre of canal length – and Punjab reportedly has a 14,500 km long network of canals. Most nallahs are clogged with garbage.No clear, precise, prior alerts seem to have been issued. Nor were prophylactic evacuations carried out. There are questions over proper relief camps.So, quelle surprise? No. Expect this when we prefer and prioritise geriatric, medieval-minded, gobbledygook-spouting people over technocrats and ask them to run our country.(Kuldip Singh is a retired Brigadier from the Indian Army. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)From J&K to Himachal, Flash Floods in the Himalayas Echo a Growing Global Crisis

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A Crisis Foretold: Could the Flood Damage in North India Have Been Avoided?

Infrastructure that deteriorates or collapses at the first sign of hazard is a man-made disaster waiting to happen.

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