In the wake of the recent floods in Kerala, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is set to rope in the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) to chalk out ways in which the ministry can take charge of prevention and mitigation of floods in Indian towns and cities.

Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told The Indian Express, “We will ask the NIUA to put together facts on the recent floods, be it in Kerala or Kashmir, and hold talks with experts to look at the causation. We will begin with urban flooding for now and later look at disaster management in all kinds of urban areas.”

The move is part of attempts by the ministry to belatedly set into motion the national guidelines on management of urban flooding issued by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) expert panel in 2010.

The NDMA panel, set up in the wake of the 2005 Mumbai floods, held that urban flooding is a phenomenon distinct from rural flooding. Hence, the panel said, it needs to be dealt with by the ministry in charge of urban affairs through an urban flooding unit headed by an officer at the level of joint secretary.

In July 2012, the Ministry of Home Affairs had issued orders designating the urban affairs ministry as the nodal ministry for urban flooding, but since then there has been no movement to make it operational.

Puri said that while on some level, flooding can be an indictment of municipal management, as in lack of dredging and drain cleaning, it can also be caused by the urban heat island effect.

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