‘When Rains Come, Our Hearts Beat Faster’
SRINAGAR & NEW DELHI, February 9 (IPS) - When the rain begins in Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, Ghulam Nabi Bhat does not watch the clouds with relief anymore. He watches them with calculation. How much can the gutters take? How fast will the river rise? Which corner of the house will leak first? Where should the children sleep if the floor turns damp?
“Earlier, rain meant comfort,” said Bhat, a resident of a low-lying neighbourhood close to the city’s waterways. “Now it feels like a warning.”
On many days, the rain does not need to become a flood to change life. Streets fill up within hours. Shops shut early. The school van turns back. A phone call spreads across families, asking the same question, “How is your area?”
For millions across India and the wider region of emerging Asia (a group of rapidly developing countries in the region, including China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), this is the new normal. Disasters no longer arrive as rare, once-in-a-generation ruptures. They come as repeated shocks, each one leaving behind repair bills, lost wages, and a deeper sense that recovery has become a permanent routine.
A recent analysis from the OECD Development Centre shows that emerging Asia has been facing an average of around 100 disasters a year over the past decade, affecting roughly 80 million people annually. The rising trend is powered by floods, storms, and droughts. The report estimates that natural disasters have cost India an average of 0.4 percent of GDP every year between 1990 and 2024.
Behind the national figure lies a quieter, more poignant story. It is the story of how repeated climate and weather shocks get absorbed by households and not just spreadsheets. By the savings a family built for a daughter’s education. By a shopkeeper’s stock bought on credit. By a farmer’s seed money saved from the last season.
In the north Indian state of Bihar’s flood-prone belt, Sunita Devi, a mother of three, says she has stopped storing anything valuable on the floor. Clothes sit on higher shelves. The grain container has moved to a safer corner. The family’s documents stay wrapped in plastic.
“When water comes, you run with children,” she said. “The rest is left to fate. You can rebuild a wall. You cannot bring back the days you lost.”
Her village has lived with floods for decades, but she says what has changed is frequency, uncertainty, and cost. It is not only about big river floods that make headlines. It is also about sudden waterlogging, damaged roads, broken embankments, and illnesses that rise after the water recedes.
“Earlier we could predict. Now we cannot. Sometimes the water comes fast. Sometimes it stays. Sometimes it leaves and then comes again,” Devi told IPS.
Professor Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment, and Health, told IPS that water bankruptcy in Asia should be treated as a national security issue, not a sector issue.
“The priority is shifting from crisis response to bankruptcy management: honest accounting, enforceable limits, protection of natural capital, and a just transition that protects farmers and vulnerable communities,” said Madani.
Across emerging Asia, floods have emerged as one of the strongest rising trends since the early 2000s, the OECD Development Centre report notes. The reasons vary from place to place, but the result looks familiar: disrupted lives, damaged homes, and a cycle of repair that drains communities.
In Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, small shop owner Bashir Ahmad keeps an old wooden rack near the entrance. It is not for display. It is for emergencies. When rain intensifies, he quickly moves cartons of goods off the floor.
“My shop is small; my margin is smaller. One day of water is enough to destroy many things. Customers do not come. Deliveries stop. You just wait and watch,” Ahmad said.
He says the biggest loss is not always the damaged stock. It is the days without work. For families that live week to week, even a short shutdown becomes a long crisis. Rent does not pause. School fees do not pause. Loans do not pause.
The OECD analysis, while regional in scope, points to a hard truth that communities already know. It claims that disasters have economic aftershocks that last long after television cameras leave. When repeated losses occur every year, they reduce growth and reshape choices. Families postpone building stronger houses. They avoid investing in small businesses. They spend more time recovering than progressing.
“Disasters are no longer exceptional events. They have become recurring economic shocks. The problem is not only the immediate damage. It is the repetition. Repetition breaks household resilience,” Dr Ritu Sharma, a climate risk researcher based in Delhi, said.
Sharma says India’s disaster losses should not be viewed as a headline percentage alone.
They should be viewed as accumulated pressure on ordinary life.
“A flood does not only damage a bridge. It delays healthcare visits. It interrupts immunisation drives. It breaks supply chains for food and medicines. It can push vulnerable families into debt traps. What looks like a climate event becomes a social event. It becomes a health event. It becomes an education event.”
In the report’s regional comparisons, the burden is uneven. Some countries face higher average annual losses as a share of GDP, especially those exposed to cyclones and floods. India’s size allows it to absorb shocks on paper, but that size also means more people remain exposed. From Himalayan slopes vulnerable to landslides to coastal districts bracing for cyclones to plains dealing with floods and heat, risk is spread across geography and across livelihoods.
Prof. Nasar Ali, an economist who studies climate impacts, says the real damage is often hidden in the informal economy.
“A formal sector company can claim insurance, borrow on better terms, and restart faster. A vegetable vendor cannot. A small grocery shop cannot. A family with a single daily wage earner cannot. Their loss is immediate and personal. They also take the longest to recover,” Ali said.
He believes disaster impacts also deepen inequality because the poorest households lose what they cannot replace.
“A damaged roof for a rich family is a renovation problem. A damaged roof for a poor family can mean sleeping in damp rooms for weeks, infections, missed work and children dropping out temporarily.”
The report also turns attention toward a policy question that has become urgent across Asia: how should governments pay for disasters in a way that does not repeatedly divert development funds?
The analysis highlights disaster risk finance, tools that help governments prepare money in advance rather than relying mainly on post-disaster relief. This includes dedicated disaster funds, insurance mechanisms, and rapid financing that can be triggered quickly after a shock.
For communities, the debate may sound distant. But the outcomes are visible in the speed of recovery and the dignity of response.
“When a disaster happens, help should come fast,” said Meena Devi, who runs a small grocery shop in Jammu’s RS Pura area and has seen repeated waterlogging during intense rains. “We close our shop. Milk spoils. People cannot buy things. Then we borrow money to restart. If support is slow, we fall behind.”
She said her biggest fear is not a single disaster but the feeling that another one is always near.
“If it happens once, you survive. If it happens again and again, you get tired from inside,” she said.
For Sharma, preparedness must be more than emergency drills. It must include planning that reduces exposure in the first place.
“Some risks are unavoidable, but many are amplified by where and how we build,” she said. “If cities expand without drainage capacity, or if construction spreads into floodplains, then disasters become predictable. That is not nature alone. That is policy.”
In Srinagar, Bhat says residents often feel they fight the same battle every year. Cleaning drains. Stacking sandbags. Moving belongings. Calling relatives. Watching the river level updates. The work looks small, but it is exhausting because it never ends.
He pointed to marks on a wall that show where water once reached.
“We always think, maybe this year it will be better,” he said. “Then rain comes, and your heart starts beating faster.”
Asked what would make him feel safe, he did not talk about big promises. He spoke about basics. A drain that works. A road that does not collapse. A warning that comes early. Help that comes on time.
For Sunita Devi in Bihar, the dream is even simpler: a season where the family can plan without fear.
“We want to live like normal people. We want to save money, not spend it on repairing what the water broke,” she said.
IPS UN Bureau Report
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