Experts at the Floods Information Centre in Dhaka began to get concerned towards the last week of August because of heavy rainfall in Bangladesh and in the catchment areas of the 23 tributaries of the Brahmaputra, Ganges and Meghna. On 31 August, flood levels rose dramatically and vast sections of the country went underwater. By 14 September, the flood was at peak, submerging 80,000 sq km of low-lying land, two thirds of the entire country.
The losses were staggering, far worse than the cyclone of 1985 and the floods of 1987. Thousands died. Millions of hectares of crops were damaged. Nearly 45 million people, over 40 percent of the population, lost something: a house, land, crops or cattle. This included 1.2 million homes, one hundred thousand cattle, 61,483 kilometres of roads, and 8,393 schools. The quantifiable loss alone was put at a staggering U$ 2 billion.
Even as the rescue and rehabilitation efforts began, the search was on for the cause of the floods and a possible remedy. And the Himalayan region loomed large on both counts. Was the land erosion in the hills of Nepal and India to blame, or was this a freak once every 70 year occurrence, against which there was no protection? Should there be high dams built in Nepal and India, a link canal to connect the Brahmaputra to the Ganges, more levees, or vigorous reforestation of the high slopes?
The need for an answer to these questions was urgent. The big fear was that the media would soon lose interest and that the administrators would find it politically , expedient to lie low and forget the emergency.