Every time the Jhelum rises, Kashmir enters another cycle of anxiety. Government departments issue advisories, control rooms become active, officials inspect embankments, and public discussion suddenly returns to dredging, flood channels and vulnerable habitations.
Once the immediate threat passes, however, the larger conversation begins to fade.
This is precisely the approach Jammu & Kashmir can no longer afford.
Flood management cannot remain an emergency exercise activated by heavy rainfall. It must become a permanent component of governance, scientifically planned, professionally executed, locally informed, environmentally responsible and publicly accountable.
The catastrophic floods of September 2014 were devastating, but they were not Kashmir’s first warning. The Valley has lived with the Jhelum and its tributaries for centuries. Floods, sedimentation, changing river morphology, pressure on wetlands and interference with natural drainage corridors have concerned engineers, administrators and communities for generations.
What has repeatedly been missing is continuity of purpose.
A Concern Older Than Today’s Politics
For me, the issue also carries a personal historical connection.
Long before flood management became part of contemporary political debate, my grandfather, Late Ghulam Mohammad Mir Lasjan, raised concerns regarding flood protection and management of the Jhelum basin with the leadership of his time. Family correspondence records his engagement with Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and other authorities, as well as efforts to involve hydraulic expertise in finding long-term solutions.
During the early 1970s, including around 1973, these questions were discussed with hydraulic specialists, including experts such as Dr Uppal, to understand how the Jhelum, its spill channels and adjoining floodplains could be better managed.
I recall this history not to claim individual credit, but to underline an uncomfortable fact: Kashmir’s flood problem was recognised more than half a century ago.
Our predecessors did not have satellite imagery, digital elevation models, sophisticated hydrological software or modern remote sensing. Yet experience had taught them something fundamental: the river requires room, floodplains need protection, drainage channels require maintenance, and engineering must respect the natural behaviour of water.
Today we possess vastly greater technological capacity.
The question, therefore, is no longer whether we know enough.
The question is why we have still not acted enough.
Dredging Is Necessary, but It Is Not a Flood Policy
One persistent mistake in public discourse is to treat dredging as synonymous with flood mitigation.
Scientific dredging is necessary where sedimentation has reduced the carrying capacity of a river or channel. But its success cannot be measured merely by announcing how many cubic metres of material have been excavated.
Engineers must determine where sediment is accumulating, why it is accumulating, how it affects flow velocity and carrying capacity, what excavation will do upstream and downstream, and how rapidly sediment is likely to return.
Major dredging interventions should therefore be based upon cross-sectional surveys, sediment studies and hydraulic modelling, followed by independent technical evaluation.
Citizens deserve to know not simply how much material was removed, but how much additional flood-carrying capacity was created.
That is a far more meaningful measure of governance.
Strengthen Embankments and Give Floodwater a Safe Route
The Jhelum and other major waterways of Jammu & Kashmir also require scientifically designed and comprehensively strengthened embankments.
We cannot continue depending upon periodic patchwork when water levels begin to rise. Vulnerable reaches must be identified through hydraulic modelling, geotechnical investigation, historical breach patterns and continuous field monitoring. Embankments must then be strengthened against erosion, seepage, overtopping and structural failure.
The same scientific approach is required for the existing Flood Spill Channel.
Its actual carrying capacity, bottlenecks, encroachments, gradients, crossings, inlet and outlet conditions and embankment vulnerability must be technically reassessed. Wherever necessary, it must be re-sectioned, strengthened and upgraded so that it can safely carry the discharge expected from it.
At the same time, the long-discussed possibility of an additional or alternative flood spill channel deserves serious, time-bound technical evaluation rather than remaining indefinitely within files, studies and political announcements.
An alternative channel cannot simply mean digging another watercourse. Its alignment, carrying capacity, embankments, inlet and outlet structures, downstream receiving capacity, environmental consequences, land requirements and interaction with the existing Jhelum system must form part of one integrated hydraulic design.
Otherwise, we risk merely transferring flood danger from one location to another.
The engineering objective should be simple: contain the river where it must be contained, provide excess water a scientifically designed route where it must be diverted, and prevent vulnerable embankments from becoming the point at which settlements themselves turn into emergency flood channels.
Listen to Engineers but Also Listen to the River and Its People
Technical consultancy is essential. Hydraulic engineers, geologists, environmental scientists and disaster-management specialists must lead the scientific component of flood planning without interference for administrative convenience.
But technical consultancy cannot operate in isolation from local knowledge.
People who have lived for generations beside the Jhelum, Doodhganga, Vishaw, Rambiara, Lidder, Sindh, Pohru, Romshi and other waterways know where water historically spread, where old channels existed, which wetlands absorbed floodwater and where embankments repeatedly weakened.
Farmers know old drainage routes. Boatmen understand currents. Residents living beside bunds often know where seepage first appears during high discharge. Experienced local engineers and retired departmental personnel possess decades of institutional knowledge that cannot always be captured by a short consultancy assignment.
Every major flood-management intervention should therefore involve structured consultation with technical institutions, experienced engineers, affected communities, environmental experts and landowners.
Engineering without local knowledge can become disconnected from reality; local opinion without engineering can become subjective. Kashmir needs both.
A Floodplain Cannot Be Protected and Destroyed Simultaneously
There is another contradiction governments must confront.
On one hand, enormous expenditure is proposed for flood mitigation. On the other, wetlands, marshes, natural drainage corridors and floodplains continue to face pressure from urbanisation, construction and land-use change.
These approaches cannot coexist indefinitely.
A floodplain is not vacant land waiting for development. It is part of the river system. Wetlands are not wastelands; they are natural storage reservoirs.
Every major building permission, road alignment, embankment, railway crossing, mining operation and land conversion within a vulnerable basin should therefore be assessed not merely administratively, but hydrologically.
J&K needs enforceable floodplain zoning based upon scientifically determined risk. Natural drainage corridors must be mapped and preserved. Wetlands must be recognised as flood protection infrastructure, and construction within vulnerable areas must follow appropriate floor-level, drainage and emergency access standards.
Riverbed Mining Cannot Be Separated From Flood Management
Riverbed extraction also demands much greater scientific scrutiny.
Mining cannot be viewed merely through royalty collection or the availability of construction aggregates. Removing material changes river geometry. Excessive or indiscriminate extraction can destabilise banks, alter velocities, expose foundations and disturb adjoining ecosystems.
At the same time, a blanket prohibition on scientifically required sediment removal is not necessarily the answer. Sediment accumulates in certain reaches, and controlled removal may sometimes be required.
The solution is therefore scientific riverbed management, not uncontrolled extraction and not arbitrary prohibition.
Permissible extraction zones and quantities should be determined through periodic surveys involving hydraulic engineers, geologists and environmental specialists. Extraction locations, approved quantities, environmental permissions and monitoring data should be publicly accessible.
The Jhelum Must Be Governed as One Basin
Perhaps one of our greatest administrative weaknesses is fragmentation.
One department handles irrigation and flood control. Another deals with mining. Another regulates urban development. Another manages wetlands. Roads, forests, municipal drainage and disaster management operate through still other institutions.
The river recognises none of these departmental boundaries.
Water originating in the upper catchment eventually enters the same basin. Sediment generated in one tributary can create consequences kilometres downstream. Urbanisation in one district can alter runoff elsewhere. Mining upstream can affect embankments and infrastructure downstream.
Jammu & Kashmir therefore needs an empowered Jhelum Basin Management mechanism, capable of integrating hydrology, flood control, land use, wetlands, mining, forestry, infrastructure, urban drainage and disaster preparedness.
Without basin-level governance, one department may continue solving a problem while another unknowingly recreates it.
Twelve Years After 2014, Where Is the Flood-Protection Audit?
The 2014 catastrophe generated enormous expectations. Financial packages were announced, projects conceptualised, external institutions became involved, studies undertaken and DPRs prepared. Since then, J&K has passed through different political and administrative arrangements.
This should not become an exercise in selective accusation. It should become an exercise in institutional accountability across governments.
Let every administration explain: What was sanctioned? What funding was released? What was actually constructed? What remains incomplete? Why is it incomplete? And, most importantly, what measurable reduction in flood vulnerability has resulted?
Accountability is not hostility towards government. It is the foundation of good government.
The Government of India and Government of Jammu & Kashmir should therefore undertake a comprehensive public flood-protection audit covering the period since 2014.
It should establish the present carrying capacity of critical Jhelum reaches; the structural condition of embankments; the capacity and status of the existing Flood Spill Channel; the technical status of any proposed alternative spill channel; dredging undertaken and additional capacity actually created; sedimentation in tributaries; condition of wetlands and drainage corridors; vulnerable settlements; riverbed mining impacts; and progress on long term diversion, storage and flood management proposals.
But this must not become another report destined for government shelves.
A public flood management dashboard should track projects against measurable milestones: which embankment is being strengthened, which river reach is being re-sectioned or dredged, what capacity existed before intervention and what exists afterwards, which floodplain areas are protected, which mining zones are scientifically approved, what projects await funding, which department is responsible and the deadline for completion.
That is how flood management moves from rhetoric to governance.
Water Follows Gravity, Not Political Narratives
Climate variability, changing rainfall patterns, rapid urbanisation and increasing pressure upon natural drainage systems mean that J&K’s flood risk will not disappear by itself.
The next major flood will not ask which party governed in 2014, 2018, 2019 or 2026.
Water follows gravity, not political narratives.
That is precisely why this issue must rise above partisan competition.
The Prime Minister and Government of India, the Lieutenant Governor’s administration, the elected Government of J&K, Parliamentarians, legislators, technical institutions and local bodies should treat comprehensive flood protection as a nationally and strategically important infrastructure, economic, security and human security mission.
My family’s association with this concern, stretching back to my grandfather’s generation, reminds me of one uncomfortable reality: we have been debating many of the same fundamentals for more than half a century.
Our generation should not leave another bundle of letters, reports, DPRs and proposals for the next generation to rediscover.
We have the engineering knowledge. We have technological capability. We have institutions. And after 2014, nobody can claim that we do not know the consequences of failure.
What Jammu & Kashmir now requires is priority governance where prevention receives the same political attention that announcements receive after disaster.
Because the true measure of flood management is not how efficiently a government responds after homes and livelihoods are inundated. It is how successfully government prevents them from being inundated in the first place.
(The Author is President, District Congress Committee Srinagar)
