A necessary brake: The Hindu Editorial on altered weather patterns and infrastructure development

Being an El Niño year, the expectation was that north India would see a sparse monsoon. July saw record rainfall in many parts of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand and the rare sight of the Yamuna nearly spilling into the Red Fort in Delhi. The worst, however, was yet to come as the week saw multiple floods in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand that have claimed at least 60 lives since Sunday. However, the WD appear to be overcompensating for their absence, with several of them incident over north India in the last two months — a time when they normally should not be around. While State governments tend to search for short-term solutions such as demanding compensation from the Centre for ‘disaster relief’, it is time that more serious thought is given to the nature of infrastructure development and, if need be, restrictions imposed in the larger interest of minimising hazards and maintaining stability.