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The current floods in Punjab are not only a natural disaster but also human-made. A major reason for this is the obstruction of surface water flow. This is the reason why flood water has stagnated in urban and rural areas of Punjab.
According to government think tank 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, obstruction of surface water drainage occurs when natural or artificial drains are not able to carry the drainage of rainwater within a reasonable time. This causes waterlogging and damage.
The NITI Aayog report has found that this problem is particularly severe in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal, along with Punjab. According to the report, about 20.54 million hectares of area has been protected from floods by drainage improvement and embankment construction.
There are many examples of obstruction of natural drainage in Punjab. A prominent instance is the construction of national and state highways.
The Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Food Processing, headed by former Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, has found that elevated highways have obstructed the natural drainage of fields, due to which the latter have been submerged.
The panel summoned National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) officials in this regard on September 2, 2025. It sought details of the planning report of highways and drainage arrangements from NHAI officials and asked them to submit a report within two months on the bridges and roads that have obstructed the natural flow of water.
Gurdaspur Lok Sabha member of Parliament Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa has constantly raised this issue. He told Down to Earth (DTE) that a major reason for the increased severity of floods in Gurdaspur, including the Kartarpur Corridor, a place of religious significance for the Sikhs, is that the NHAI did not build culverts for drainage on the highway. Randhawa has demanded that Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari take action against the officials responsible for this.
He had called NHAI officials to the site of the Kartarpur Corridor a few days ago to inspect and resolve the causes of waterlogging. But no official reached the spot.
Randhawa said there is not a single culvert on the three-kilometre stretch of highway from Kalabari to Chakawadi village. He added that locals in the Kartarpur Corridor had stated in the presence of the state governor on September 3 that waterlogging and flooding could have been prevented, were there culverts on the highway.
He further said that the roads have become elevated in the whole of Punjab. In such a situation, there is a need to identify culverts.
On this very issue raised by the panel and Randhawa, residents of Jalandhar district’s Gidderpindi area had blocked the Lohian-Makhu highway during the floods of 2023. 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 (PWD) had carried out a drone 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 activist group Alami Punjabi Sangat, points out another important issue: 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 in Punjab.
Sucha Singh of Panjab University writes in his study Punjab Floods: Some Lessons Learned for Flood Management, published in the International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews in December 2018, that during the heavy rainfall of August 2013, 236 villages were submerged and 174,000 acres of crop area was destroyed due to blockage of canals and drains in Muktsar district.
Rathore also blamed the paddy crop for the water not draining out in Punjab and said an artificial layer is formed in the paddy fields, which reduces the rate of water absorption in the fields. When flood water reached the fields already filled with water during the monsoon season, the situation became worse.
The sudden release of water from dams is also responsible for worsening the floods in Punjab. Vishnu P, program coordinator of Sphere India, believes that this year’s disaster is a mixture of natural and human causes.
Meteorological Department data shows that rainfall in August was 74 per cent more than normal. In districts like Pathankot and Gurdaspur, it was recorded to be up to 181 per cent more.
The Beas, Ravi and Sutlej started flowing above the danger mark due to the huge volume of water coming from the upper catchment areas in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Water was then released from the Bhakra and Pong dams in order to protect the structures. But the sudden inflow of water created a situation like 1988 and further increased waterlogging in Rupnagar, Amritsar and Ferozepur.
Randhawa raised this issue in a letter written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 31, 2025. He wrote in the letter, “At the peak of the flood, the Ravi discharged about 9,000 cusecs of water into the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC). This is its design capacity, but in practice it carries barely 6,000 cusecs during the dry season due to leakages and poor maintenance. Normally, the Ravi discharges 1-200,000 cusecs during the monsoon. But when the Madhopur barrage was breached, the flow momentarily exceeded 400,000 cusecs, causing our weak defences to collapse.”
According to the MP, the barrage still relies on colonial-era manually operated gates, which buckled under the onslaught of floods in the river. This critical infrastructure now needs to be completely rebuilt, using gates with electro-mechanical control and modern design standards to ensure its safe operation even during high flood flows.
Rathore also believes that mismanagement of dams has worsened the situation. Water was released from dams at a time when villages and towns were already submerged. Water was also suddenly released from the Bhakra dam on the Sutlej, which inundated low-lying areas.
Vishnu told DTE that anthropogenic factors worsened the disaster. These include encroachment on floodplains, uncontrolled urbanisation, neglect of drainage, illegal sand mining, silted drains and rivers and destruction of wetlands. According to Rathore, in the name of development, ponds that used to store excess water have been destroyed in most villages.
Policy reforms are necessary to protect Punjab from recurring floods. These reforms include stringent laws to prevent encroachment on floodplains, regular desilting of rivers and drains, restoration of wetlands, river valley management with a participatory and scientific approach, transparency in the process of water release from dams and its proper coordination with the weather department’s forecasts. Apart from this, an early warning system based on state-of-the-art hydrological-climatic models should be in place in every village.
Vishnu believes that only through integrated planning, climate adaptation and accountability of state, central and local agencies can Punjab save its agricultural economy and people from repeated flood tragedies.