TAHIR NAZIR
Once again, alongside the northern states of India, Jammu & Kashmir faces the familiar challenge of flash floods, rising watersparticularly in Jammu regions and across the Kashmir valley. The latest flood-like situation across Jammu and Kashmir evokes haunting memories of 2014, when Srinagar lay submerged under the Jhelum’s fury. Today, as rivers swell, fields drown, and livelihoods are shattered, we must ask, why does this tragedy keep repeating? And who must answer for it?
Nature Strikes, But Mismanagement Hurts More
The rising waters, flash floods in Jammu & Kashmir echo a larger pattern seen across the Himalayan belt. On August 5, Dharali village in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand was wiped out by a glacier lake outburst, destroying dozens of houses, hotels, and shops within moments with more than 70 casualties and the Kishtwar incident where more than 60 innocent lives were lost.
Both tragedies reveal the same underlying concernunchecked encroachment on fragile ecosystems, which collapses under pressure and becomes even more destructive when combined with the growing impact of climate change. In fact, if Dharali village had not faced rampant encroachment along its riverbanks, the result might have been different.
Climate change has undoubtedly intensified Kashmir’s vulnerability, with unreliable rainfall, sudden cloudbursts, and unusual weather patterns becoming disturbingly frequent. Yet, to reduce these floods to an act of nature alone would be dishonest; they are equally a story of human neglect and mismanagement. Srinagar, projected as a “Smart City,” sinks after just a few hours of rain. A functional drainage system remains a dream. Year after year, residents endure waterlogging, yet little changes. This is not climate change it is civic failure.
Choking the Jhelum, The Jhelum, once a lifeline, has been robbed of its space. Encroachments line its banks, squeezing its natural flow. Land that belonged to the river has been claimed by concrete. Worse dredging, essential for flood managementhas been ignored. Silt has choked the riverbed, reducing its carrying capacity. Each year governments promise action, but the Valley pays the price of broken promises.
The Farmers’ Silent Suffering
Amid the headlines of urban flooding, the rural tragedy often goes unnoticed. Farmers already battling uncertain markets and climate shifts, watch helplessly as their apple orchards are swept away, their paddy fields drowned. These are not just crops; they are lifetimes of investment, hope, and hard work. Floods have severely damaged fisheries in Mansar Lake of Jammu and in Kishtwar, disrupting livelihoods dependent on aquatic resources. In Kashmir, where agriculture is the backbone of rural life, every submerged field is a family pushed deeper into distress. While urban floods draw headlines, the slow economic devastation of farmers is often ignored.
Development That Destroyed Nature
We, too, must admit responsibility. In our pursuit of development, we have cut down trees, mountains, blasted tunnels, and built hydropower projects without regard for ecological limits. Wetlands that once absorbed floodwaters have been filled and converted into housing colonies. Urbanization has ignored the region’s ecological limits, making the Valley more vulnerable than ever.
Forests that once stabilized slopes have been stripped. What we celebrate as progress, nature punishes as imbalance.Ironically, the same infrastructure we built at nature’s cost like roads, bridges, buildings, is now washed away in a single flood. Crores of rupees vanish overnight. The financial losses are staggering, but the ecological losses are even greater, because they cannot be repaired with money alone.
The Unlearned Lessons
With better internet connectivity, we now receive real-time updates of cloudbursts and flash floods across the states. Dozens of lives are lost in an instant. Perhaps such extreme events happened in the past as well, but they went unrecorded. The difference today is the scale of destruction, because our fragile infrastructure lies directly in the path of nature’s fury.
A Call for Urgent Change
The J&K cannot afford another cycle of grief and neglect. Floods must be treated as preventable crises, not annual inevitabilities. That means there is need of Restoring wetlands and riverbanks to their natural state, Regular dredging of the Jhelum regularly, need of some alternate flood channel,ending encroachments with political will, building urban infrastructure that is climate-resilient, Placing farmers at the center of relief and recovery.
Jammu &Kashmir’s floods are not only about heavy rains; they are about heavy neglect. The people, Government, farmers, ecosystems, and economy are all paying for decades of short-sighted planning and reckless exploitation. Unless we learn to respect nature’s rules, the floods of 1957-59, 2014 will not remain a memory they will become a recurring pattern. The water has risen once again. The question is, shall we rise with it, or sink deeper into denial.
(Author is Assistant Professor at Model Institute of Engineering and Technology Jammu. Email: [email protected])
