About 300 people have been killed in floods caused by torrential rains that lashed parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra over the weekend.

Almost three million people have been rendered homeless and property worth over $5 billion destroyed in the worst floods witnessed in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in a century. River Krishna, one of India’s most important ones which traverses across the Deccan plateau and through the three states for 1,400 km before emptying into the Bay of Bengal, has been in spate following incessant rains. The raging river has breached several embankments, devastating crops, flooding hundreds of villages and even threatening cities as large as Vijaywada. The floodwaters have destroyed millions of acres of farmland in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, which ironically were experiencing drought-like conditions just a 
few weeks ago.

Fortunately, the state machinery has been quick to respond, both in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and the Indian army has also rushed in to rescue hundreds of thousands of villagers stranded in isolated hamlets lying along the path of the furious river. In Maharashtra though, the heavy rains have done less damage, upsetting the schedules of politicians criss-crossing the state to address rallies just a week before the assembly elections. While the rains have eased, the situation remains tenuous, especially in coastal parts of Andhra Pradesh. Local authorities have been dumping sandbags to fortify embankments that threaten to give way, endangering thousands of lives. Worse, the feared outbreak of water-borne diseases, triggered by human and animal carcasses, will cause many more deaths if 
left unchecked.

Government leaders from the affected states have already dashed off pleas to the Indian government, seeking billions of rupees in emergency aid. The federal government has been quick in responding, but a lot more remains to be done to alleviate the situation. Care also needs to be taken to ensure that relief funds are not siphoned off by powerful lobbies and the politically well-connected, or worse, by corrupt officials and leaders.

Importantly, the federal government also needs to enforce better coordination between the authorities in different states lying along the path of major river systems such as the Krishna, to ensure that dam waters are not released arbitrarily, endangering lives of people living downstream. While sharing of river waters has remained a contentious issue in India for decades, even exchanging precious information relating to floods and the release of waters gets caught up in trivial, though nasty, fights.