Unseasonal rainfall and disasters in Nepal: With weaknesses exposed, it’s time to act

October remains to be one of the most important months in Nepal’s agricultural calendar. It is the time when rice planted in the monsoon is harvested. All the hard work the farmers do to grow each and every grain of rice for 190 days finally comes to pay off then.

But, this year’s October came like a thunderclap for the farmers. The whole nation witnessed an unusually heavy rainfall which resulted in massive flooding and landslides across the country. Many farmers and their families are in deep grief as hundreds of thousands of hectares of ready-to-harvest paddy are submerged in water. More than 100 people died in the hands of floods and landslides caused by these post-monsoon rainfalls. Some questions that got me were: Could those lives be saved? And, are pre- and post-monsoons just a cover-up for the irresponsible disaster management and risk reduction authorities in Nepal? Or do they just expose it? What should they do next?