The ironical co-relation between the utility of dams and the annual recurrence of floods has cropped up again, claiming 16 lives in West Bengal. And following a tour of the state’s flood affected areas, Mamata Banerjee has this time called the disaster “man-made” by the Centre.

The latter, via the Damodar Valley Corporation happens to be the overarching authority of the dams in Maithon, Panchet and Tenughat.

A natural disaster lends no scope for a CentreState kerfuffle; it would be tragic if that happens. The scientific imperative ought to be realised both by Prime Minister and the Chief Minister who conversed over the telephone on Wednesday. Notably, the embankments, that collapse all too frequently, must of necessity be strengthened.

They are not, and the problem arises every year. More basically, it is a damned-if-you do, damned-if-you don’t situation. If the dams are barred from releasing the excess water that they store, the possibility of dam-burst and extensive flooding is dangerously real.

The state’s irrigation department has written to the DVC, requesting it to urgently stop releasing water. While this may be an option on the face of it, the flip side of doing so is cause for alarm both to the people of West Bengal, the DVC headquarters in Kolkata and the DVC authorities in places where the dams are situated.

The Chief Minister has of course hit the bull’s eye when she contended that due to lack of dredging, the dams have lost their capacity to hold the water. In the net, excessive water is now being released, thus aggravating the floods.

Maintenance, therefore, is at the core of the annual scourge. Very pertinently has the Chief Minister written to the PM, underlining the need to develop what she calls “holistic and long-term solutions” to increase the storage capacity of the DVC network and also ensure that the state is spared the regular devastation and suffering from man-made floods perpetrated by huge releases from the DVC dams.

No government, whether at the Centre or in the states, can afford to suffer what they call a “damburst”. Arguably, the phenomenon can be as ruinous as floods. The Chief Minister is also fairly accurate with the timeline ~ heavy release of water from the DVC dams led to man-made floods in West Bengal in 2015, 2017 and 2021.

Not wholly unrelated is the fact that Kolkata was rendered out of joint by Wednesday’s torrential rain. Almost the entire city, in addition to the peripheral districts of Howrah, Hooghly, Midnapore and Burdwan in South Bengal were waterlogged.

Evacuation of residents has begun in the affected areas and housing may turn out to be a grave problem should the seasonal rainfall intensify. In addition to the dredging of dams, as the Chief Minister has recommended to the Prime Minister, it is direly imperative to cleanse and revamp the undergound drainage system in Kolkata. The network is said to have been laid in the 19th century