Eight-hundred million lives, 35 million seriously affected people, bout $7 million losses and 39 out of the 64 districts flooded, Bangladesh was an overwhelmed country last month. The devastation stumped experts and politicians and the timing and magnitude caught them completely off guard.

Similar to the 1988 catastrophe, water also filled the capital, Dhaka, forcing through the embankments and flood walls constructed to protect its 12 million people. Inside the eastern part of the greater Dhaka Flood Protection Embankment (Part I), 1500 million litres of municipal waste water mixed with the rain and the flood seepage, and overflowed into the streets, lanes and by-lanes. Sewage from underground drains also came up under back pressure of water, contributing to the spread of diarrhoea, dysentery, skin diseases and in some cases asthma. The initial determination to handle the losses also gave away as the government turned to international support for post- flood rehabilitation.

More than seven million families bore the brunt, losing not only crops and household articles, but also an estimated four million houses, one million of these completely. On August 12, Jorgen Lissner, resident commissioner, UN, launched an appeal for $210 million assistance against estimated losses of $6.6 billion according to UN agencies and $7 billion according to the government. The World Food Programme issued a warning that Bangladesh "could face a major humanitarian crisis".

Loss figures also became a controversy as Centre for Policy Dialogue, a private sector think tank said that the losses could only be $1.9 billion. However later they conceded that they had not accounted for rehabilitation and that their estimates were based on a rapid appraisal of damage data collated at the ministry of food, disaster management and relief. Finance minister Saifur Rahman then announced a new joint assessment by the government and UN agencies.

The floods were caused mainly by the onrush of water from the upper catchments of the rivers Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the river Meghna from India. Torrential rains played their part, too. The government was not expecting such inundation. As Selim Bhuiyan, director of Bangladesh's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre says: normally, the Meghna floods between April to June, the Brahmaputra in July and August; and floods from the Ganga occur in August and September. But this time all three basins roiled over simultaneously, in July.

Experts say rampant construction on wetlands, which are traditionally a buffer for flood waters and risen riverbeds due to siltation were another cause. Also conventional wisdom ascribed floods of such severity to a 10 year cycle, having occurred in 1988 and then in 1998. But this one occurred only six years after.

What exacerbated the situation, according to Akram Hossain, director, Bangladesh Meteorological Department, was that a swollen Bay of Bengal obstructed water flow into the sea. This also increased the duration of the flooding in central districts including Dhaka.

With the national road and highway network remaining largely unaffected, the government and opposition failed to grasp the gravity of the situation. It is clear that after 1988, while these structures were fool proofed, the rest of the flood plain, where the majority of people live, remained unprotected.

By the past experience the government began distributing VGF (vulnerable group feeding) cards to seriously affected families. Banks were told not to crack the loan recovery whip, and instead disburse fresh loans to help resume farming.

The task ahead is even more onerous: reconstructing 14, 104 kilometres fully damaged roads, 44,528 km partially damaged roads and 3,100 km flood protection embankments. The government has to reconstruct 1235 educational institutions and repair another 23,310. 5,401 damaged bridges and culverts also need urgent attention. However, it would be difficult to replace 20,000 lost livestock and rehabilitate thousands of fish culture ponds, now empty.

Owners of thousands of handlooms and powerlooms that were flooded in Narsingdi and Sirajganj districts need support to resume production. Garments export fetches nearly 80 per cent of Bangladesh's annual foreign exchange earnings. Transactions in most banks halved in July and early August. Half of nearly 3,000 factories were affected. Exporters complained of "negative news"; foreign buyers had begun expressing reservations about the ability of Bangladeshi suppliers to maintain supply deadlines.

Floods in 1950s led to the 1964 master plan, under which about 60 flood protection drainage and irrigation projects were implemented and nearly, 9,000 km of embankments constructed, also along the coast. The 1988 deluge resulted in the Flood Action Plan (FAP). It focused on safe conveyance of floodwater by building embankments.

Over the years the FAP has evolved into a flood and water management strategy. An important outcome of studies conducted under that initiative was the 1997 National Water Management Plan (NWMP), recently approved by the government. The new emphasis is on a long term solution.

It is unlikely that policy makers and decision makers will revert back to the structural solutions, for their ill effects on the ecology are well known. A mix of structural and non structural measures based on the NWMP is expected. Experts emphasise flood protection of urban centres and important places of economic activity, and shoring up flood forecasting and preparedness.

This is where the neighbours, India and Nepal, can pitch in. Flood forecasting has improved over the past two decades, but still remains restricted to warning messages relayed only 48-72 hours in advance. That is mainly because hydrological data and information related to the upper catchments of major rivers in India are not available. Hence experts cannot make predictions, say, seven days in advance.

Bangladesh gets flood flow data only from some points not very far form the borders. That too only when the water crosses the danger mark. There is also no elaborate arrangement to transmit the warning to people of flood prone areas in time or in a language ordinary people understand. The Disaster Management Bureau created in 1993 remains inactive due to inefficiencies.

So what must be done? Mozaddad Faruque, director general of the Water Resources Planning Organisation underlines the need for more upstream hydrological data (from India and Nepal) to make forecasts effective and send out flood warning messages in time. Maniruzzaman Miah, former vice chancellor of Dhaka University, and Quamrul Islam Siddique, chairperson, Global Water Partnership, South Asia, concur with Faruque. They emphasise cooperation between India, Bangladesh and Nepal on a basin wide approach to managing water.-Courtesy: CSE/Down to Earth Feature Service