The Indian Government’s flood insurance packages can do better. This is how.

By Poulomi Roy and Sayanangshu Modak

The Indian government mostly prefers to construct embankments and create storage infrastructure as part of its flood-control strategy. The former entails a technological lock-in – meaning a vicious cycle of investment in ever more advanced technology to keep the water out. This translates to an added and increasing investment of public funds to construct and maintain embankments. Globally, there has been a marked shift away from ‘hard’ engineering solutions and towards non-structural ‘soft’ measures that are flexible enough to accommodate a range of future options, including ‘hard’ elements if required. This makes a non-structural measure like flood insurance a desirable tool for flood adaptation.

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Holistically designed and effectively implemented flood-insurance programs are the way forward. A revamped [Unified Package Insurance Scheme] UPIS does broaden the scope of insurance beyond crops, but limits itself to risk management instead of building resilience. Studies have shown that for flood-related risk reduction, development and recovery activities, women are more noteworthy than male counterparts. Despite these specificities, flood-insurance packages continue to discount the socio-economic realities in which they are used. Gender-sensitive and all-encompassing adaptive revisions in the formulation and implementation of flood insurance are the need of the hour.