Curse Of The Cusecs: How Punjab Floods Washed Away Lives And Homes Within Minutes

When the Ravi breached its embankment near Ghonewala around 5 am on August 27—and within 10 minutes washed away almost the entire village—Gurbhaj Singh, 38, of the neighbouring Jatta village in Amritsar district, had sat through the night in fear. He remembered the devastating 1988 flood that had washed away their family home. Rebuilt on higher ground, this time it survived the deluge that took down at least 60 per cent of the houses in Jatta. But the 40 acres Gurbhaj had leased to grow sugarcane went under water like most of the village farms. “How will I repay the Rs 26.5 lakh I had borrowed for the lease and the sowing?” he asks. “I can’t even sow the next crop as the fields are still waterlogged. People didn’t even get time to untie their cattle. They were washed away like our crops and most of the houses.”

Gurbhaj, who says it will take him at least five years to recover the losses, is only one of tens of thousands who suffered as the flood inundated 2,483 villages in the state. The flood this time, the worst since 1988, affected all 23 districts of Punjab, claiming 56 lives with four others missing so far. Of the four lakh people impacted, nearly 2.96 lakh were from the Majha region, which faced the fury of both the Ravi and the Beas. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had predicted rainfall 15 per cent above the average for Punjab, but actual rainfall turned out to be 50 per cent above the average. Moreover, with its snow-fed and rain-fed rivers originating from Himachal Pradesh and Tibet, excessive rains in the neighbouring hill state also cause floods in the Punjab plains. Indeed, any environmental disaster in the Himalayas that leads to flash floods and heavy rains is always likely to impact Punjab, too. During the flood this time nearly 400 lives were lost in Himachal, with homes and highways washed away.

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said the flood caused the state a loss of Rs 13,800 crore, though his government has claimed it is yet to assess the damage to livestock and homes. Schools, healthcare facilities and power infrastructure were also affected. The devastation makes Gurbhaj Singh wonder if the government could have done something to prevent it or ensure a reduced impact. For instance, he recalls that newspaper reports of villagers protesting against illegal mining on the riverbanks two months ago were not followed by any action. Gurbhaj also points to allegations that the earthen embankments along the Ravi were dug up at a few places during Operation Sindoor to set up temporary posts for the security forces and the gaps were never filled up.

After the flood, when several bureaucrats, including Ludhiana deputy commissioner (DC) Himanshu Jain and Amritsar DC Sakshi Sawhney, were seen picking up sandbags to strengthen embankments and distributing relief material themselves, not everyone was pleased. Sawhney, for example, drew flak from the villagers of Ghonewala, worst hit by the Ravi in spate, for not having taken action against illegal mining despite the issue being brought to her notice in June 2024. When the Punjab water resources department’s principal secretary Krishan Kumar went to take stock of the situation at a riverbank, angry villagers questioned him on the government’s previous alleged inaction.

In fact, locals and ecologists have often pointed out that riverine mining and unchecked construction have disrupted the natural flow of water in the region’s rivers. “With the Bharatmala highways project, for instance,” claims farm leader Guramneet Singh Mangat, “we have created a giant wall that stops water from flowing across the roads. The police used to come when land was being acquired for the project. Where are they now?”

While the Centre announced Rs 1,600 crore in aid, including Rs 2 lakh for families of the deceased, Rs 50,000 for the injured, and support for rebuilding damaged houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the Punjab government allotted Rs 4 lakh for kin of the dead and Rs 20,000 per acre for crop loss. The Mann government’s announcement of Rs 1.2 lakh for fully damaged houses and Rs 40,000 for partially damaged ones was mocked on social media for being too little for building even a single room.

The Punjabi people, however, given their Sikhism-inspired ethos, are not known to wait for help from outside and have traditionally rushed to help others. Building on such a communitarian legacy, the farmer unions that had become prominent during the protracted protests against farm laws also played a role in mobilising such mutual aid after the flood. People took their tractors and trolleys to help others. The Bharat Kisan Union (Ugarahan), a top farmer union in Punjab, is mobilising 5,000 tractors to clear sand from the fields and help farmers sow the next crop.

Sikh organisations also played a big role, including Kar-Sewa volunteers fixing breaches in the embankments. Moreover, the solidarity between Punjabis and non-Punjabis fostered during the nationwide protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act was visible again as Haryana farmers, including Mewat Muslims, came with relief material.

Punjab’s singers and artists talked widely about the suffering, with a few also making trips to the affected areas. Singer Arjan Dhillon participated in flood relief before leaving for his music tour in the US, while fellow singer Mankirat Aulakh sent several new tractors to help farmers clear sand from their fields. No wonder the state seemed to get more national attention than neighbouring Himachal.

The fury of the rivers has reminded everyone of the impending climate crisis, and shown how mismanagement and policy failures can multiply the damage. The Ravi’s water flow turned out to be the most destructive of all, surpassing the record 11.2 lakh cusecs recorded in 1988 with 14.11 lakh cusecs on August 26-27, against a capacity of 9.7 lakh cusecs, according to Punjab water resources minister Barinder Goyal. The Bhakra dam on the Sutlej and the Pong dam on the Beas, too, faced unprecedented water levels. Manoj Tripathi, chairperson of the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), which manages both dams, claimed Pong recorded the highest ever inflow, while Bhakra witnessed one of the highest.

Instead of taking responsibility, however, the state and central governments played a blame game. Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan called out illegal mining for the flood, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government blamed the IMD’s weather updates. Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Badal went to the Sutlej’s Sarangpur village embankment in Rupnagar district, offering bundles of notes to farmers and diesel for their tractors. As Sarangpur belongs to Chamkaur Sahib, his former assembly constituency, former Punjab CM and Congress MP from Jalandhar Charanjit Singh Channi also followed suit.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Rs 1,600 crore relief fund for the state and mentioned it was in addition to Rs 12,000 crore already lying with the state’s disaster relief fund (SDRF). The state’s finance minister, however, said there was not even a penny in that account. AAP Punjab chief Aman Arora claimed the SDRF was shackled by the Centre’s rules. Many also questioned PM Modi for tweeting on the Afghanistan earthquake but not on the Punjab flood. CM Mann wasn’t spared either. His repeated visits to a private hospital, even getting admitted from September 5 to 11, made his heart issues the talk of the town even as he held meetings from the bed with a medical device attached to him.

Water resources management, especially concerning dams, has always been a big issue in Punjab, and the fears of its people have been triggered again by a public tug-of-war among the Centre, the Punjab government, the Himachal government and the BBMB. Punjab’s politicians had opposed the Dam Safety Act, 2021, which gave sweeping powers to the Central Water Commission and the Centre over the day-to-day operations of dams. In 2022, the Centre amended the service rules to allow non-Punjabis to be appointed to the two posts of BBMB permanent members that used to be held only by officials from Punjab and Haryana. This May, Punjab minister Harjot Singh Bains detained BBMB chairperson Tripathi inside a guest house at the Bhakra-Nangal dam when the official tried to release excess water to Haryana. In July, the state assembly passed a resolution against the deployment of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) at the dam.

Pointing fingers at the Punjab government, the BBMB said proper management of rivers and canals, with timely desilting and strengthening of embankments, could have averted the flood situation from turning worse. The government, in turn, criticised the BBMB. When Punjab wanted 29,500 cusecs during the paddy season in June, minister Goyal recalled, it was given only 21,000 cusecs. Had the demanded quantity been released, then the Bhakra dam’s reservoir would have had enough storage capacity left to handle the flood, claimed Goyal, accusing the BBMB of working at the behest of the Centre.

The Punjab government also wrote to the BBMB accusing it of increasing and decreasing the outflows of water from the dams without taking it into confidence. On his part, Himachal CM Sukhwinder Sukhu accused the BBMB of causing floods in several parts of his state by releasing reservoir water. In fact, the Himachal police lodged an FIR against the BBMB on July 26.

Claiming the floods in Punjab were a man-made disaster, Ludhiana-based environmental group Public Action Committee (PAC) filed a petition with the National Green Tribunal (NGT), asking the panel to investigate the functioning and management of dams under the BBMB. The group alleged the BBMB paid no heed to its notice demanding that the reservoir levels be lowered for the sake of safety and instead kept filling up the reservoir until August 18. In 1988, too, the BBMB had been accused of deliberately flooding Punjab, leading to the assassination of its then chairperson, Major General B. N. Kumar, by Khalistani militants. No wonder jingoistic talk of water as a weapon of war against Pakistan, on the rise since the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty, finds little traction in Punjab that hasn’t forgotten how water, too, becomes a reason for bloodshed.

Sandeep Singh Is a journalist based out of Chandigarh. He writes on farming, religion, misinformation, caste, and politics.

(The article appeared in the Outlook Magazine's October 1, 2025, issue Nepal GenZ Sets Boundaries as 'Curse Of The Cusecs')