In September 2000, floods in West Bengal in India killed five thousand people, displaced more than 20 million people and destroyed or damaged 2.2m houses. Could the scale of the damage have been anticipated? What does the flood teach us about appropriate and sustainable development in the flood-prone Bengal delta?

A study by Lancaster University’s Geography Department, undertaken with researchers in West Bengal, explores why the impact of the floods was so severe and what can be done to reduce the effect of such events in future. Suggesting that the pattern of destruction could have been predicted from historical records, it seeks to go beyond the blame-seeking, which has characterised the politics of West Bengal since the disaster, to draw out long-term recommendations.

The root cause of the floods was excessive rainfall from a tropical depression at the end of a good monsoon. In most communities the flood arrived without warning, giving people no time to save their possessions and flee. The suddenness of the onset of the flood at each location was due to the failure of road and rail embankments and the unpredictable collapse of flood embankments. Normally strong multi-story mud buildings collapsed. It will take years to restore destroyed implements, tools and livelihoods.

The district administration was left floundering and for weeks did not know where most survivors had gathered. Boats and helicopters provided by the army were of little use. Communities were left to their own devices. After a couple of weeks, governments and larger NGOs were able to deliver food and building materials. However, the main response to the flood occurred at the most basic level of civil society, as communities worked together to provide seeds, animals and equipment to restart agriculture.

Research into hydrological and meteorological data and an examination of historical records conveys a sense of circumstances repeating themselves:

• such large scale flooding is to be expected in the delta
• embankments have repeatedly failed in the same general areas
• damage done by embankments – in blocking lines of drainage and then in collapsing – has been commented on since the British started building roads and railways in this complex environment
• for over a century, engineers have imposed high external costs on poor rural people while saving money for road and rail authorities by providing too few bridges and culverts
• brick buildings provide secure places of refuge for those lucky enough to be able to afford to build them or to access them in emergencies.

What can be done to help ease the impact of the next flood? The paper recommends:

• plotting by GIS the exact co-ordinates of places where people gathered in the immediate aftermath: the last major flood is the best measure of the next big one and can help the Government to better target relief operations
• warning systems should not wait for messages from dam and river engineers but use meteorological data to model flood risks
• encouraging construction of more brick buildings in as many villages as possible: village panchayats could promote private-public partnerships in building brick buildings
• reopening the debate on the nature of appropriate development in the Bengal delta
• considering restoration of the methods of irrigation and water-borne transportation used in the past.

Source(s):
‘Society and Water: Bengal’s Millennium Flood’, Mimeo pp 42, Lancaster University, by Graham P. Chapman and Kalyan Rudra, (forthcoming)

Funded by: DFID (SSRU R8092), Independent Broadcasting Associates, USA, University of Lancaster

id21 Research Highlight: 3 February 2003

Further Information:
Graham Chapman
Department of Geography
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YB
UK

Tel: + 44 (0)1524 593737
Fax: +44 (0)1524 847099
Contact the contributor: g.chapman@lancaster.ac.uk

Deaprtment of Geography, University of Lancaster, UK

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