Countries getting better at preventing flood-related deaths but not India
Nearly 14% of India’s landmass is vulnerable to flooding and more than 15% of this area gets flooded every year. Since 1953, 1,600 lives have been lost every year on average due to floods. Yet, the central government has not released 61% of the funds promised for flood management between April 2007 and March 2016, and 43% of the 517 works approved have not been completed, a recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, the government’s auditor, has found.
The CAG studied a sample of 206 flood management programmes, 38 flood forecasting stations, 49 river management activities and works related to border area projects, and 68 large dams across 17 selected states and union territories (UTs) from 2007-08 to 2015-16. In eight of the 17 states and UTs, the flood management programme (FMP) was not undertaken in an “integrated manner� that would cover the entire river or tributary, and there were delays ranging from 10 months to 13 years in completion of FMP works, which rendered technical designs unusable by the time funding came through, the report said.