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Evening was just about to fall when floods struck Machhiwal on August 26. The village in Punjab’s Amritsar district is 4 km from the Ravi river. At around 3.30 pm, government officials rushed to the village, warning of a flood. In half an hour, the swelling Ravi had engulfed Machhiwal with a speed and ferocity the village residents say they had never seen. “My neighbour Paramjit Singh was swept away in front of my eyes,” says Karm Singh, a farmer. Paramjit Singh’s body was found two days later a few kilometres from the spot. “How can we prepare for such a disaster in 30 minutes?” asks Karm Singh, standing in the backdrop of floodwater covering land as far as the eye could see.
Even 10 days after the flood, Machhiwal remains under water. Everyone in the village has been affected by the flood. The disaster has left Paramjit Singh’s neighbour Mahinder Singh homeless and taken away his source of livelihood. “We took a loan of Rs3 lakh to build the boundary wall of the house and to buy a dozen goats. Everything was swept away; just two goats are left,” he says. The all-pervasive grief has brought about a solidarity among the village residents. “Our neighbour Tarsem Singh has suffered more than us. That man’s entire house has been washed away,” says Karm Singh. Tarsem Singh’s family has taken shelter at Karm Singh’s home.
Villages like Machhiwal, which lie downstream of the Ranjit Sagar dam on the Ravi, do not face a major threat of flooding due to the security provided by the dam and their positional advantage of being a few kilometres away from the river course. But this time, the situation took a different turn. Water levels at the Ranjit Sagar dam reached close to its maximum capacity of 527 m by the third week of August due to heavy inflow caused by incessant rain in the catchment area. On August 26-27, the authorities released more than 0.2 million cusecs of water to prevent overflow and to keep the dam safe. On August 27, the floodwater reached the Madhopur barrage, where old infrastructure and lack of maintenance worsened the situation. Around mid-day, the barrage breached, submerging villages in Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Amritsar districts. The 2-km embankment named Dhusi Bundh, which protects the village from the river, breached at several places leading to flood in far away areas, even reaching the international border. The overflowing Ravi washed away nearly 30 km of iron fencing on the India-Pakistan border and the Border Security Force (BSF) had to abandon several checkposts. “In Gurdaspur, nearly 30 to 40 of our border outposts were submerged,” said AK Vidyarthi, Deputy Inspector General of BSF Punjab Frontier.
Elevated points in villages, like the top of a culvert or an embankment, have become the shelter places. Many residents have used tractor trolleys to store whatever valuables remain. In Sajada village, near Machhiwal, Suchha Singh who has been displaced by the flood, says, “Fifteen houses of poor people like us have been completely submerged. Our friends have given us these trolleys so that we can keep our belongings.”
Perhaps for the first time in living memory, all the rivers of Punjab flooded simultaneously. An analysis of satellite data by Down To Earth (DTE) shows that about 7,000 sq km of Punjab’s 50,362 sq km was flooded, with the inundation concentrated along the Beas, Ravi, Sutlej and Ghaggar rivers. “If you see the overall coverage or the extent of the impact, 2025 appears to be high,” says Akshar Tripathi, assistant professor, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Patna. He adds that the water seems to have covered a larger area compared to the worst floods in the state’s history—floods of September 1988 and July 1993. Here’s how the disaster unfolded.
On August 25, water levels at the Bhakra dam on the Sutlej river reached 508.6 m, which is only 3.4 m below the danger mark of 512 m. On August 26 the authorities had to open the dam’s gates. The water engulfed 77 villages in Fazilka district, 102 villages in Ferozepur district and 44 villages in Rupnagar district. The water level of Pong dam on the Beas river also reached 424.6 m on August 25-26, which was more than its capacity. Due to the water released from the dam, 123 villages in Kapurthala district, 125 villages in Hoshiarpur district, 64 villages in Jalandhar district and 70 villages in Tarn Taran district were affected by the floods. The flow of the Beas went far beyond its normal capacity of 80,000 cusecs, which submerged fields and settlements.
The Sutlej and the Beas meet near Harike town in Tarn Taran. Since both the rivers flooded at the same, water had to be released from the Harike barrage situated immediately downstream of the confluence, which led to flooding of thousands of hectares of crops in 30 villages in Tarn Taran and Ferozepur. At these places, water levels reached up to 3 m. For over 10 days, farmer Sukhwinder Singh from Fatehgarh village near Harike has used a boat to access his village. “Floods now strike every two years. Our village was submerged in 2019 and 2023. I lost my crops in the 2023 floods. I borrowed Rs 2 lakh to start afresh and paid off the debt last year. But this flood has again completely damaged my farm,” he says.
“Climate change and excessive rains have caused this flood. Human-made causes have worsened it,” says Davinder Singh Sekhon, who works with the non-profit Misl Satluj based in Punjab. “Mismanagement of dams, delay in repairing embankments, neglect of rivers and inadequate drainage system blocked flow of water,” he adds. Tejveer Singh, spokesperson of Bharatiya Kisan Union (Shaheed Bhagat Singh), says that the waters of Bhakra and Ranjit Sagar dams should have been released earlier. Rajasthan was also demanding its share of water because its rivers and streams were dry and people had staged a demonstration, but they were not given water, he says. “The biggest thing is that Bhakra, Ranjit Sagar and Pong Dam used to recharge their reservoir only after September, but why were they recharged earlier this time?” asks Tejveer Singh. Water was released when the dams were filled, which coincided with heavy rains compounding the problem.
As of September 5, some 1,655 villages are under water; 40 people are dead; 0.35 million people affected and nearly 20,000 people rescued from floodwater. Over 175,216 hectares (ha) of standing crops—mostly paddy, cotton and sugarcane—have been damaged, as per a September 5 bulletin by the state government. The crop area impacted by this flood is more than the state’s average flood-prone area of 142,692 ha as per the “Flood Affected Area Atlas for India” published by the Indian Space Research Organisation in 2023. Estimates suggest the value of damaged crops to be around Rs 10,000 crore, and might impact the kharif crop production of the country.
Preliminary survey reports 120,000 houses have been damaged or collapsed. This is nearly double the average the state recorded in past floods, as per Punjab disaster management department’s data. Poultry farms in Jalandhar and Kapurthala have reported losses of more than a million birds. Dairy cooperatives have shut down, with hundreds of cattle feared dead. The disaster has caused a milk shortage in the region and the industrial areas have suffered huge losses. The Ludhiana hosiery belt has reported factory shutdowns while the food-processing hubs of Phagwara and Amritsar have grappled with waterlogging.
The deluge’s certainty was imminent in the chronology of the preceding events. “Punjab broke all records of the past 27 years in terms of excess rainfall,” says Surender Paul, director of India Meteorological Department’s (IMD’s) Chandigarh centre. For 24 days in August, the state reported heavy rainfall days, defined as “115 mm or above in 24 hours” by IMD. Overall, the state received 253.7 mm of rain in August—74 per cent in excess of the normal of 146.2 mm. This is for the first time in a decade that the monthly rainfall crossed the 160 mm mark for August.
In the last fortnight of August, Punjab averaged 400 per cent more rain than normal. “In this short span, northwest India saw 205 mm rain—nearly three times the expected 75 mm,” says Gagandeep Singh, assistant professor, National Institute of Disaster Management, Delhi.
As per data with the Disaster Management division of the Union Ministry of Home affairs, August 23-30 had continuous, significant rainfall in several districts. From August 27, rivers in Punjab started swelling, breaching banks and inundating vast swathes of the state. On August 30, twelve of the state’s 23 districts were declared flood-struck. Two days later, the government declared all the districts flood-affected. By September 5, a total of 167 relief camps housed nearly 6,000 displaced people; National Disaster Relief Force deployed 23 teams with 117 boats; and the Army and Air Force scrambled 35 helicopters to rescue the marooned.
The worst floods in Punjab have been exacerbated by heavy rain in Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir through which three of Punjab’s main rivers—the Ravi, Beas and the Sutlej—flow. These rivers, along with a dense network of canals, irrigate the fertile alluvial plains down-stream. Their flooding in the upstream Him-achal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, along with Punjab, likely led to the devastating floods.
Tripathi from IIT, Patna, explains factors other than rain that could have also played a role. “Most of the rivers that pass through Punjab are antecedent rivers [a river network’s initial pattern established before the area has been uplifted through the formation of the Himalayas] and they bring much of their water load from the Himalayan glaciers,” he explains. Flash flood or cloudbursts in the upper Himalayas can bring a heavy downpour, he notes, or the rivers can bring a heavy load of water to the Punjab plains. This plain topography makes Punjab vulnerable. “As the land goes flat, the load carrying capacity of the rivers from the Himalayas decreases. They are mostly silted. Another issue is that banks get breached,” Tripathi explains.
The rains have been caused by multiple weather systems active over the region. Along with the main monsoon trough bringing rain, there have been five western disturbances, five cyclonic circulations in the upper to lower troposphere and five low pressure troughs that have added to the convection and rainfall between August 20 and September 4. In addition, anomalous winds from the Arabian Sea have added to the moisture, apart from pushing some of the low pressure areas from the Bay of Bengal towards north India, which caused rainfall by inducing cyclonic circulations over the region.
During August 21-27, a total of 21 districts of Punjab received excess or large excess rainfall—which means more than 20 per cent excess rain. During the same period, all 12 districts of Himachal Pradesh also received excess or large excess rain. Nineteen of Jammu and Kashmir’s 20 districts also received excess or large excess rainfall. The situation was similar across all three states between August 28 and September 3, when 22, 12 and 18 districts of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir respectively recorded more than excess rainfall.
On August 20, when the heavy rainfall over northwest India had just begun, Punjab had an overall rainfall deficit of 6 per cent. Himachal Pradesh had received normal rainfall, with 18 per cent excess rainfall between June 1 and August 20. Since June there were seven weeks when two-thirds or more of the districts of Himachal Pradesh received excess or large excess rainfall. Five of these seven weeks of rain were before August 20, explaining the normal rainfall figure for the state. Jammu and Kashmir had received five per cent less rainfall than the normal by August 20.
But on August 21, Punjab recorded 200 per cent excess rainfall. There was not much rain in Himachal Pradesh or Jammu and Kashmir. The western end of the monsoon trough at this time was south of its normal position when rainfall occurs in central and southern India. A western disturbance was active over the Jammu division on August 20, which could have caused the rainfall. On August 22, IMD did not record much rainfall over the three states. By August 24, it started raining heavily over Himachal Pradesh and Jammu Kashmir, with excess rainfall of 132 per cent and 442 per cent respectively. Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh, from where the Ravi flows, received 177 per cent excess rain. Kullu and Mandi districts, from where the Beas flows, recorded 399 and 605 per cent excess rainfall respectively. Shimla and Solan districts, from where the Sutlej flows, recorded 306 and 543 per cent excess rainfall. Kathua and Udhampur districts of Jammu and Kashmir, from where the Ravi River flows, received 79 per cent and 363 per cent excess rainfall respectively.
In the week ending August 27, all the districts in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu Kashmir with rivers or their tributaries flowing into Punjab had recorded excess or large excess rainfall. In Himachal Pradesh, at least one of the three rivers or their tributaries flows through 11 of the state’s 12 districts. The Ravi flows through Chamba; the Beas flows through Kullu, Mandi, Hamirpur and Kangra; and the Sutlej flows through Shimla, Solan, Bilaspur, Kinnaur, Lahaul and Spiti and Una districts. Chamba recorded 396 per cent excess rainfall between August 21 and August 27. Kullu, Mandi, Hamirpur and Kangra recorded 334 per cent, 144 per cent, 158 per cent and 70 per cent more rains than normal respectively. Shimla, Solan, Bilaspur, Kinnaur, Lahaul and Spiti and Una districts recorded 124 per cent, 180 per cent, 258 per cent, 64 per cent, 240 per cent and 281 per cent excess rainfall respectively. The overall excess rainfall for Himachal Pradesh at the end of the week was 175 per cent. Similarly in Jammu and Kashmir, the Ravi river flows through Kathua and Udhampur districts, which recorded 265 per cent and 146 per cent excess rainfall.
Rainfall in Punjab also increased in this week: 21 districts recorded large excess rainfall and one district recorded excess rainfall. Most of the districts of the state have a river flowing through them or are fed by a canal that brings water from one of the major rivers. Some districts have multiple rivers flowing through them. For instance, the Beas and Ravi rivers flow through Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Tarn Taran. Gurdaspur recorded 738 per cent excess rain between August 21 and August 27, Pathankot received 415 per cent excess rainfall, and Tarn Taran recorded 822 per cent more rains than normal—the second highest in the state for that period. Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala, through which the Beas and Sutlej rivers flow, recorded 220 per cent and 285 per cent excess rainfall. Beas also flows close to Jalandhar that received 432 per cent excess rainfall. The Ravi flows through Amritsar which recorded 367 per cent excess rainfall.
The Sutlej runs through seven of Punjab’s districts and all of them experienced excess or large excess rainfall during the week. Of these seven districts, Ferozepur and Ludhiana recorded 683 per cent and 436 per cent excess rainfall. Apart from these major rivers, seasonal rivers such as the Ghaggar also flow through Patiala and Sangrur districts and may lead to flooding when there is extreme rain. Patiala received 118 per cent excess rainfall and Sangrur recorded 608 per cent more rains than normal during the week.
In this week, multiple weather systems were active over the region which precipitated the downpours. Three cyclonic circulations were active: the first system was over north Madhya Pradesh and south Uttar Pradesh on August 23; the second system was over Punjab on August 23 and August 24; and the third system was over south Haryana and northeast Rajasthan on August 25 and August 26. The same system was active over south Punjab on August 27. There were also two low pressure troughs active, which could have influenced the rains. The first trough formed from south Haryana to northwest Bay of Bengal which would have advected moisture from that direction on August 25. The second formed from the cyclonic circulation over Punjab to central Madhya Pradesh on August 27. A western disturbance also became active on August 24 over north Pakistan and remained active till August 26. Another western disturbance started influencing the region on August 27.
In the next week, August 28-September 3, there were again multiple active weather systems that brought heavy to extremely heavy rain in the three states. All the districts of Himachal Pradesh recorded large excess rainfall. Same was the case with Punjab, with rainfall much higher than the preceding week. The two districts of Jammu and Kashmir from where flood water could have come into Punjab—Kathua and Udhampur—also recorded excess rain of 30 per cent and 520 per cent respectively.
The monsoon trough was mostly active and at its normal position on five of the seven days that week. On August 30-31, it was south of its normal position when the rainfall increased towards the Konkan region, central and southern India. One cyclonic circulation, a remnant of a low pressure area from the Bay of Bengal, became active over central Rajasthan on August 31 and remained active till September 1 over northwest Rajasthan. Another circulation became active over south Haryana on September 2 and 3. Three low pressure troughs were also active in this week. The first one formed from the cyclonic circulation over northwest Rajasthan to Jharkhand on September 1. The second one formed from Kashmir to northwest Madhya Pradesh on September 2. The third system formed in the upper troposphere over north Pakistan on September 3.
The western disturbance that had formed on August 27 remained active till August 31. Another west-ern disturbance that formed over North Pakistan started influencing the region on September 2 and remained active till the next day. On September 4, yet another western disturbance—18th of the monsoon season—formed close to Punjab.
Apart from weather systems, human-induced reasons made floods more devastating in Punjab. “There are anthropogenic contributors to the Punjab floods including the state’s far-from-adequate drainage system, breach of a number of embankments, encroachment on floodplains and waterbodies and indiscriminate sand mining, among others,” says Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), an informal network of people and organisations working in the water sector.
An important reason is obstruction of natural drainage systems. Due to the excessive accumulation of silt, sand and stones in the floodplains of rivers, and streams, their capacity to carry water decreases. According to a 2020 report by Punjab’s Mines and Geology department, abundance of silt, sand, and stones in rivers was a reason for the 2019 floods in Punjab. “Flood Preparedness Guidebook 2024” by Punjab’s water resources department, also lists obstructions in natural drainage routes, especially structures that obstruct the flow of drains, as a major reason for flooding.
NITI Aayog’s “Report of the Committee Constituted for Formulation of Strategy for Flood Management Works in Entire Country and River Management Activities and Works Related to Border Areas (2021-26)”, published in January 2021, states that obstruction of surface water drainage occurs when natural or artificial drainage systems are not able to drain the rainwater within a reasonable time. This causes water logging and damage. The report has found that this problem is particularly severe in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal.
A study “Temporal Analysis of Flood in Punjab, India (1990-2010)” published in International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews lists sudden release of water from the Bhakra dam, poor management of rivers and canals and weakening of embankments as the main reasons for floods. Due to lack of timely cleaning of rivers and canals, water drainage is hampered and small streams break the banks and submerge fields and villages. Non-repair of embankments often leads to breaches. In the 2005 floods, a large part of Kiratpur Sahib block of Rupnagar was submerged because the dam built on the Lotan rivulet had developed cracks. In 2007, part of a railway bridge built on the Ganga rivulet in Anandpur Sahib collapsed. Due to this, the embankment of the canal broke and 12 villages were submerged. In the 2010 floods, Rupnagar, Patiala, Sangrur, Moga and Ludhiana suffered heavy losses due to embankment breaches.
Authorities have also grossly neglected natural drainage while constructing national and state highways in Punjab. The Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Food Processing, headed by the former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, summoned officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on September 2, 2025, for this negligence and asked them to submit a report within two months on the bridges and roads that have obstructed the natural flow of water.
The committee has sought details of the planning report of highways and drainage arrangements from NHAI officials. It has found that the elevated highway has obstructed the natural drainage of the fields, due to which the fields have been submerged and the rivers are flooding much more areas.
Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) from Gurdaspur, says, “A major reason for the increased severity of floods in Gurdaspur, including the Kartarpur Corridor, a religious place for the Sikhs, is that NHAI did not build culverts for drainage on the highway.” He demanded Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari take actions against officials responsible for this faulty planning.
During the floods in 2023, residents in the Gidderpindi area of Jalandhar had blocked the Lohian-Makhu highway under the banner of Flood Roku Committee. They alleged that water from the Sutlej entered their village due to the closure of the gates of the bridge on the highway. Earlier this year, a committee of the Public Works Department had carried out a survey and identified 346 such spots on national highways, state highways and Mandi Board Roads in Punjab where the drainage flow was obstructed.
Gangveer Singh Rathore, founder of Alami Punjabi Sangat, a group of social activists based in Punjab, points out that most of the national highways in Punjab run from northeast to southwest. Being elevated, these highways act like a water wall, which hinders the drainage of water. Sucha Singh, an assistant professor of geography at the Panjab University, in his study “Punjab Floods: Some Lessons Learned for Future Flood Management”, published in the International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews in 2018, mentions that during the heavy rainfall of August 2013, a total of 236 villages were submerged and 0.07 million ha of crop area was destroyed due to blockage of canal drains in Muktsar district.
Giving the example of the flood in 2023, the state government’s “Flood Preparedness Guidebook 2024” says that the railway bridge became a big problem for a village near the Sutlej. A waterway was built under the bridge for drainage, but its width was very high. As a result, when the water in the river was low for eight-nine months, silt started accumulating. Due to this, the river flow decreased and the waterway became narrow. When rains occurred in 2023, the silt blocked the water flow and the flood situation in the area became severe.
The guidebook raises many questions on the new elevated highways. It says that before the construction of expressways or elevated highways, the natural surface flow of water was not properly studied and the necessary “causeway” (drainage route) for the drainage of rainwater during the rainy season was not constructed.
A 2018 Flood Vulnerability Index by the National Institute of Disaster Management ranked Punjab as the most vulnerable to floods based on flood prone areas (areas actually flooded during 1950 to 2016), flood vulnerable areas (areas vulnerable to flood) and flood prone cities (metropolitan and large cities in flood prone areas). “Flooding has become a regular feature over the last five-six years. They recur over a two-three-year interval,” says Tripathi. He finds the increasing frequency of floods worrying.
Researchers point to major gaps in understanding flooding in the state and say that only a few studies have looked at flooding in Punjab. This is due to a lack of stream flow data, which is data on the discharge from rivers, gathered by the Central Water Commission. This data is not freely available. “We have a better grasp of flooding in peninsular India,” says Shailza Sharma, scientist at Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Hyderabad.
Researchers use IMD rainfall data to study urban flooding, helping them compute return periods, which is the average period between two occurrences,” she adds. Gagandeep Singh calls for more research, especially to use hydrological models to simulate rainfall runoff and river discharge scenarios for identifying areas that are likely to be impacted. Real time monitoring of soil moisture using in-situ observations and satellite measurements of surface soil moisture can be used to assess the flooding potential of a region, says Nanditha J S, assistant professor, Kotak School of Sustainability, IIT, Kanpur.
On September 8, Punjab announced that Rs 20,000 per acre (1 acre equals 0.4 ha) will be given to farmers whose crops have been affected, while families that have lost members will get a financial assistance of Rs 4 lakh. It also declared that till November 15, farmers living along riverbanks will not need any permission to extract and sell sand that has accumulated on their field. But the government’s response has been slow, say experts. K J S Dhillon, a former Army officer who has been researching the terrain of Punjab and the Ravi river basin, says, “Despite the presence of the army and local administration, 90 per cent of relief work is being carried out by volunteers and ordinary citizens.” Harbas Singh Virk, a 53-year-old farmer of Chamaru Kheda village in Patiala, says he lost his ration and fodder for the livestock to the flood and most residents in the village face a similar situation. But instead of the government, a gurudwara has come to their rescue and started a langar (community kitchen). “We get our food and fodder from the gurudwara,” says Virk. For the cattle, separate fodder langars are also being run. For instance, people come to the gurudwara in Jadmangoli village in their tractors to load them with fodder. Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee volunteer Saranjit Singh says no help from the government has reached these areas: “Here, only residents are helping each other.”
This article was originally published in the September 16-30, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth