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India has a well-structured disaster management framework for urban flooding, but preparedness often breaks down at the city level.
Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurugram show how ageing drains, unplanned urbanisation and loss of natural buffers have made monsoon flooding a recurring crisis.
Urban Local Bodies remain under-funded, under-mandated and weakly monitored, despite being the frontline agencies for flood preparedness.
The piece argues that India does not need another advisory framework, but stronger municipal authority, dedicated funding, third-party audits and enforceable rainwater harvesting.
The season of the monsoon, and with it flooding, is upon us. Every July and August, social media and newspapers fill with images of submerged streets, cars barely visible under water and people struggling to find safe ground. It almost does not matter which city or region is being discussed. The pattern has become familiar, recurring year after year for at least a decade.
Several Indian cities face regular flooding, often bringing everyday life to a standstill. In Mumbai, chronic flooding has become an annual feature of the monsoon. The city’s ageing drainage system, originally designed for lower-intensity rainfall, is unable to cope with the intense downpours now associated with a warming climate.
Bengaluru is infamous for being submerged after a single heavy shower. Its flooding is often described as a direct consequence of unplanned urbanisation and the disregard of the region’s natural hydrological systems. The city’s rapid expansion has outpaced its infrastructure, creating a situation in which even relatively short spells of rain can clog drains and paralyse parts of the city.
Gurugram offers another example. Its flooding is linked to a drainage system that has not kept pace with vertical and horizontal growth, along with the destruction of natural buffers such as the Aravalli hills and the encroachment and filling of seasonal lakes, including Ghata Lake and Najafgarh Jheel.
Climate change is an important factor in worsening urban floods. But when flooding at this scale has become an established pattern, and climate change has been part of mainstream policy discussion for more than a decade, the issue is no longer only one of rainfall. It is also one of governance and planning. Frameworks such as the National Disaster Management Authority guidelines have existed for years, and India is a signatory to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
The missing link is execution. India has been monsoon-ready for a long time, but only on paper.
Established under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, India’s disaster management framework shifted the focus from post-disaster relief to prevention, mitigation and preparedness. It created a vertical governance structure across national, state, district and local levels.
At the apex, the NDMA, headed by the Prime Minister, is responsible for national policies, plans and guidelines, and oversees the National Disaster Management Plan. At the state level, the State Disaster Management Authority, led by the Chief Minister, aligns state planning with NDMA guidance and integrates disaster risk reduction into development. At the district level, the District Disaster Management Authority, headed by the District Magistrate, coordinates planning and implementation. Urban Local Bodies are the frontline institutions for managing urban flooding, with the NDMA’s 2010 Urban Flood Guidelines recommending the creation of an Urban Flooding Cell in each ULB.
According to the NDMA’s 2010 Management of Urban Flooding Guidelines and the Standard Operating Procedure on Urban Flooding, 2017, preparedness is meant to follow a structured operational routine.
It begins with technical mapping. The guidelines mandate GIS-based mapping of all Class I, II and III cities, using high-resolution contour mapping at 0.2-metre to 0.5-metre intervals. This allows chronic flooding hotspots to be identified and inundation levels to be simulated for different rainfall intensities.
Operationally, pre-monsoon desilting of all major drains must be completed by March 31 each year. Silt is to be removed in seamless containers immediately after extraction, rather than left on the roadside where it can wash back into the drainage system. Preparation also includes installing high-capacity pumps in low-lying areas and strengthening systems in which real-time meteorological data feeds into hydrological models to generate early warnings for all line departments through dedicated networks such as Bengaluru’s Varuna Mitra or Chennai’s C-FLOWS.
On paper, the coordination chain is clear. The India Meteorological Department provides rainfall data to the National Emergency Response Centre, which transmits alerts to state and district emergency operation centres. Local networks of automatic rain gauges — ideally one for every 4 sq km — and Doppler weather radars provide real-time data to help Urban Local Bodies (ULB) issue watershed-based warnings with three to six hours of lead time.
The architecture is designed to be coherent, ensuring that every level has a plan that interlocks with the one above it. The National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP) 2019 further aligns this framework with the global Sendai Framework, emphasising “Build Back Better” and horizontal integration among government agencies. While states retain primary responsibility for disaster response, they are supported by a legal and technical umbrella from the Centre.
Although the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and the NDMA’s 2010 Guidelines provide a clear structure for urban flood governance, implementation often weakens at the ULB level because of persistent gaps in funding, institutional authority and accountability. As a result, operational preparedness remains difficult to implement consistently.
The first challenge is under-resourcing. Disaster risk reduction has no dedicated budget, with the NDMP requiring it to be integrated into existing government expenditure rather than funded separately. While schemes such as AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) and AMRUT 2.0 have allocated more than Rs 1.6 lakh crore for urban water and sewerage infrastructure, this meets only about half the estimated requirement. Inadequate operation and maintenance funding, and low cost recovery by utilities, force ULBs to rely on irregular grants instead of sustaining routine preparedness.
The second challenge is under-mandating. Drainage management is usually divided among municipal corporations, public works departments and irrigation departments, resulting in overlapping jurisdictions and weak coordination. Although the 74th Constitutional Amendment envisaged empowered ULBs, fiscal and functional authority largely remains with state-level agencies. Recommended Urban Flooding Cells often lack the authority to coordinate or direct other departments, leaving no single institution accountable for integrated flood management.
The third challenge is under-monitoring. Audits by the Comptroller and Auditor General have shown that reported compliance is often notional, monitoring processes are inadequate and projects rely heavily on self-certification. Financial incentives have also had limited success in changing operational behaviour. Taken together, these weaknesses turn critical preparedness measures into procedures rather than safeguards.
The persistent weakness of ULBs stems from the incomplete implementation of the 74th Constitutional Amendment. Municipal bodies remain fiscally dependent on state and central grants, understaffed and constrained by state control. This limits their ability to independently manage urban flood preparedness.
This institutional weakness has created a governance grey zone in which flood management responsibilities are fragmented across departments and parastatal agencies. States formulate urban infrastructure policies, ULBs are expected to implement them, and the result is overlapping mandates, weak coordination and the absence of a single accountable authority. The problem is compounded by inadequate urban planning, with many cities lacking statutory master plans or failing to integrate climate risk into existing plans.
Recent policy frameworks acknowledge these structural shortcomings but offer limited remedies. The National Urban Policy Framework 2018 highlights persistent fiscal dependence and proposes outcome-based funding, while the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat 2021-2030 emphasises disaster resilience but relies on existing schemes rather than dedicated financing. Urban flood preparedness therefore continues to rest on an under-resourced institutional foundation.
India’s international commitments under the Sendai Framework, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure and Making Cities Resilient 2030 are constrained by weak domestic governance. Although the NDMP aligns national policy with global resilience goals, the absence of dedicated financing and the creation of parallel mechanisms, such as Smart Cities Special Purpose Vehicles, dilute the authority of elected ULBs. Until municipalities receive genuine fiscal and functional autonomy, global resilience commitments are unlikely to translate into preparedness on the ground.
Major Indian cities are already struggling with severe water stress, driven by rapid urbanisation and structural mismanagement. In Maharashtra, the problem is particularly acute in Mumbai and Pune, where falling reservoir stocks have forced municipal authorities to impose conservation measures and supply cuts.
As of mid-June 2026, the total water stock in the seven lakes supplying Mumbai had dropped to around 10.35 per cent to 12 per cent of total capacity. Pune, despite being surrounded by four major dams — Khadakwasla, Panshet, Varasgaon and Temghar — is facing a dry summer and heavy dependence on water tankers. To ensure stocks last until the end of August, the Pune Municipal Corporation introduced alternate-day water supply from June 15, 2026.
Residents in suburban areas and poorer communities are the worst affected, often forced to depend on expensive private tankers or informal water markets. One way to address both flood and scarcity risks is to divert rainwater into storage, reducing flooding while improving water availability in the following summer.
Legislation such as the Model Building Bye-Laws, 2016, which includes provisions on rainwater harvesting, already exists at national and local levels. Issued by the Ministry of Urban Development, the guidelines recommend that all buildings on plots of 100 sq m or more include rainwater harvesting proposals. Yet implementation remains weak because of fragmented governance, poor enforcement and inadequate monitoring. Effective enforcement requires regulatory mandates, utility-linked sanctions, fiscal incentives and institutional monitoring.
Bridging the gap between India’s well-designed disaster management framework and weak local implementation requires reforms that strengthen accountability, financing and coordination.
First, State Disaster Management Authorities should conduct mandatory annual pre-monsoon third-party preparedness audits of all ULBs using standardised NDMA checklists. Publishing audit results would improve transparency and allow communities to monitor critical activities such as drain desilting and flood preparedness.
Second, a portion of the tied grants already received by ULBs through Finance Commission transfers should be directed towards flood preparedness. This need not require a new fund. The Finance Commission already provides tied grants to ULBs for water supply, sanitation and solid waste management. These transfers should be expanded to explicitly include stormwater drainage operation and maintenance as a mandatory sub-component. Release of this earmarked share should be conditional on preparedness compliance. The ask is not for additional resources, but for structure within resources ULBs already receive.
Finally, states must amend municipal legislation to reduce jurisdictional fragmentation by designating ULBs, through dedicated Urban Flooding Cells, as the single accountable authority for city-wide drainage management and enforcement of rainwater harvesting mandates. This reform differs in kind from existing guidelines. NDMA guidelines, the NDMP and missions such as NUPF and NMSH are advisory instruments. They recommend coordination but do not bind departments that choose not to comply.
Fragmentation at the ULB level is a statutory conflict, with municipal corporation Acts and laws governing public works and irrigation departments assigning overlapping responsibility for the same drains. No audit mechanism or earmarked budget can resolve a contradiction written into law. Only amendments to these specific Acts can. This is not another advisory layer, but a legal correction that must work alongside audit and financing mechanisms so that authority, oversight and capacity function together.
The stakes of this governance gap are not abstract. India is urbanising rapidly, adding millions of residents to its cities each decade, many in flood-prone areas and many with the least capacity to absorb losses when preparedness fails. Climate projections for South Asian cities indicate increasing frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events, narrowing the window for structural reform.
Yet India’s global resilience commitments rest on a domestic foundation where the last institution in the accountability chain remains the least equipped to act. The reforms proposed here are not ambitious reimaginings of Indian governance. They are the minimum structural corrections required to ensure that a framework coherent at the national level actually reaches the ground.
Every monsoon that passes without them is a reminder that the distance between policy and preparedness is felt most strongly in the accountability gap at the last mile.
Ritika Singh Thakur is an urban policy researcher. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth