By — Ananya Rana
Abstract
India’s recurring floods are often seen as an unavoidable natural disaster. Still, the scale of their consequences is also shaped by decisions about how cities grow, where the infrastructures are built and how environmental risks are assessed. This article examines flooding through a public policy lens. It focuses on the tension between spending after disasters or spending before them. It asks whether India’s flood-management approach remains merely reactive when many sources of vulnerability can be predicted, and sometimes created, by policy. The paper uses analyses of urban planning, environmental governance, disaster expenditure, and preventive planning to show why there should be a shift from paying for the effect of floods to avoiding them.
Introduction
There is a particular form of déjà vu that accompanies the coming of monsoon in India. It rains heavily, roads get flooded and cars find out how much they love water. Amid the first efforts at rescue operation and the first aid sent in by the government, the nation begins to calculate the losses incurred. These losses due to flooding run deep. These disruptions not only cost money because of the time the floods occupy, but also prove costly to people’s life, business, and public infrastructure. In addition, India is becoming increasingly urbanized, and according to estimates by the World Bank, the urban population of India might rise from 480 million in 2020 to 951 million in 2050.
None of this suggests that governments can or should prevent every flood. The rains are not like memos, which need the approval of the government. Floods are natural disasters; harsh weather cannot be legally abolished. The real question is: What happens before the rain. Is the wetland still going to serve as a wetland? Is the flood plain going to be developed? Is the infrastructure of the city up to date for the development? Have the environmental issues been fully considered in planning? These are policy matters.
India realizes the importance of the management of floods through the application of both structural and non-structural measures. Indeed, the Central Water Commission recognizes the contemporary approach to the management of floods to be the mixture of both. Yet, the policy process becomes evident only when the flood water comes relief activities take place, infrastructures are restored, and reconstruction begins. And finally, of course, the monsoon comes back again. The question, then, is not simply how much floods cost India, but how much it costs to keep managing risks that better planning could have reduced. If the money from taxpayers keeps rebuilding the roads and repairing the infrastructures and rescuing people exposed to these risks, one day, the problem will go beyond the floods. It will go beyond the policy. It will become a question of public trust.
The Price of reacting instead of preventing
India is certainly not short of systems to pay for emergencies. Indeed, a fairly well-developed financial system to respond to disasters has been established in India. The State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) is the main source of funds for immediate relief available to states, whereas the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) is used in addition to state budgets in case of a particularly severe disaster. Moreover, dedicated mitigation funds have been recently established to support preventive actions taken to reduce the impact of potential disasters. The figures make the extent of such financial system rather impressive. For the fiscal year 2025–26, the Union Government has reported allocating ₹20,735.20 crore to 28 states through the SDRF and ₹3,628.18 crore through the NDRF. The amount of ₹5,373.20 crore has also been allocated to states through State Disaster Mitigation Funds and ₹1,189.56 crore through the National Disaster Mitigation Fund during the same period. It seems that the issue is not about the absence of disaster prevention in budget allocations.
The more interesting question is whether prevention is actually occurring at the places and on the scale at which vulnerability is being generated. A government might give out money after a flood, pay compensation to the communities affected and reconstruct the damaged infrastructure without in fact changing the basic conditions. Furthermore, the financial system itself reflects this distinction in that the assistance provided by the SDRF and NDRF is mainly meant for immediate relief, while long-term reconstruction and development are carried out by separate mechanisms.
A well-known policy cycle is therefore established: damage occurs, money is then made available, the infrastructure is repaired, the emergency is ended, and the original exposure remains. The next flood occurs and the cycle begins all over again.
An economic problem is clearly at issue here; for every rupee that is spent on repairing the damage, that same rupee is no longer available to be used in reducing future exposure. Also, reconstructing the asset in precisely the same way as it was before the disaster would simply reestablish the kind of vulnerability that caused its original failure. The fact that a road has been repaired five times does not prove that it has become resilient. Therefore, the real criterion for judging public spending should include not only the efficiency of government responses when disasters occur but also the extent to which such spending reduces the chances and cost of the next disaster. It is there that prevention stops being no more than an environmental slogan and becomes a matter for fiscal policy.
When development creates vulnerability
Flood risk does not begin when the rain does. It can begin much earlier; in the way land is planned and developed. Lakes, wetlands and flood plains can be treated as wastelands rather than components of urban drainage.
Urban growth involves building over permeable surfaces, replacing them with impermeable surfaces, while also increasing construction in flood-prone zones. We remove natural systems that help manage water, then spend public money building substitutes for what we removed. This is how development policy turns into disaster policy. It’s not a matter of choosing between economic development and environmental preservation. What needs to be considered is if the development is happening in a way that doesn’t create future disaster costs. In other words, if the development creates value on the private side but increases risk on the public side, the cost does not just go away. It gets transferred to cities, taxpayers, businesses and communities. This is when environmental vulnerability becomes public liability.
The Policy Exists. The problem is the implementation
India does not begin at ground zero with legislation. Concepts such as the Precautionary Principle and Public Trust Doctrine already exist in the domain of environmental governance. These principles lay out the idea that environmental risk and resources should not just be ignored until it becomes too late to do anything about it. Other legislation includes the Disaster Management Act of 2005.
This, therefore, makes the problem not one of establishing yet another principle, but one of putting to practice the existing principles. The flood-proofing policies should not start after the flood has happened. In the environmental impact assessment and other development activities, there needs to be anticipation of the risk involved before the construction takes place and money is lost. Otherwise, policy will become an expensive exercise in cleaning up its own messes.
From Relief to Resilience
The answer is not spending less following the disaster. It is making sure that the spending before the disaster is enough to make sure that the spending after the disaster is less. It comes from risk-based planning of development, maintaining the wetlands and flood plains, maintaining drainage, flood maps and construction according to solving the vulnerabilities of the problem. India cannot stop the rains. What it can do, however, is decide what it is going to build, what it will protect and what it will spend money on repeatedly. When the same road gets flooded every year and taxpayer’s money is spent to build it back up again, this is not resiliency rather simple repetition.
Conclusion
Floods can never always be stopped, and there will always be a need for relief. But constantly rebuilding what will certainly be destroyed by risk is not resiliency; it is merely wasteful. And that is why the test of public policy lies not just in how quickly we respond when the water comes, but in whether we decide before then how to minimise the losses. For resiliency is not the ability to keep paying the same price. It is the ability to stop paying it altogether.
About the Author
Ananya Rana is a fourth-year B.B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School. She specialises in the Public Policy cluster. Her research interests include public policy, constitutional law, human rights, and law and society.
Source: Al Jazeera