Image: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar
If water were wealth, Nepal would be awash in prosperity. This year’s monsoon, according to the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, promises more rain than usual across much of the country. From the parched flatlands of the Madhesh to the steep valleys of the mid-hills, the skies are expected to open with gusto. Yet the forecast has elicited more apprehension than anticipation. In Nepal precipitation has a way of delivering calamity with its bounty.
Meteorologists unveiled their seasonal outlook on May 22nd at a briefing in Lalitpur, speaking in the guarded tones of those who know forewarning does not equal foresight. There is a 55–65% chance of above-average rainfall in the western and central provinces of Karnali, Lumbini and Gandaki; the rest of the country faces similar odds, albeit with less certainty. Temperatures, both maximum and minimum, are also projected to rise. The fallout will be a “hot and wet” season.
Such weather is not really a surprise. Monsoons deliver roughly 80% of Nepal’s annual rainfall, a predictable feature of the Himalayan calendar. Yet the state is as unprepared for the deluge as it was a decade ago. Each year brings familiar catastrophes: flooded highways, landslide-blocked roads, farmland submerged under murky water, among others. In 2023 more than 150 lives were lost to monsoon-related disasters: with economic losses running into the tens of billions of rupees. In Nepal forecasts of abundant rain tend to resemble polite warnings to expect disaster.
This is a country that should, by all accounts, know how to turn torrents into treasure. Hydropower accounts for north of 90% of its electricity. And yet the systems built to harness water have aged faster than the rivers they depend on. Reservoirs are too few; early warning systems are patchy; flood control measures are rudimentary. Most infrastructure was designed for a more stable climate. It is as though the country has mastered the art of predicting rainfall, but not responding to it.
Agriculture, the mainstay of the economy and employer of above 60% of the labour force, fares no better. Farmers depend on the monsoon but on its regularity not its exuberance. Excess rain tends to means disaster: standing crops are flattened, soil eroded, seeds washed away. Last year unseasonal showers drowned the paddy harvest in the eastern Terai. This year’s rising night-time temperatures could add more trouble, decimating yields by disrupting pollination cycles and encouraging pests. Hydropower may flourish in a wet year; horticulture may wilt.
Blaming climate change is convenient and partly correct. Nepal’s glaciers are melting, rainfall patterns are becoming erratic and the monsoon’s timing increasingly unpredictable. But climate is only half the story. The other half is a structural muddle. Disaster management is split across ministries, provinces and international donors, none of whom seem to own the problem. Budgets tend to appear only after damage has been assessed. Insurance for crops and homes is rare—and enforcement of planning laws even rarer. Kathmandu’s urban sprawl now creeps into floodplains with the confidence of a gambler betting against physics.
The hydrological chaos does not stop at the border. Nepal’s rivers flow into India, making the politics of flood management as murky as the waters themselves. Cross-border co-ordination is minimal, notwithstanding repeated calls for joint basin-level planning. India’s dams can worsen downstream flooding in Nepal while silt clogs reservoirs further south. Technical cooperation is hostage to diplomatic mood swings. What is needed is a shared strategy for a shared river system. What exists is an unspoken agreement to wing it.
Still, not all is bleak. The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology has improved its forecasts thanks to better modelling and regional data-sharing. Real-time alerts via mobile apps have become more widespread. Some communities are experimenting with low-tech flood sensors and evacuation drills. These are promising signs. But they are still pilot projects, not policy. Donor-led and grant-bound, such efforts lack the permanence and scale needed for real resilience.
The monsoon, then, is less a natural event than a test of national capacity. It exposes the state’s ability—or inability—to translate forecasts into action, and rainfall into advantage. If all goes well, the rains will fill dams, irrigate crops and cool overheating cities. But few in the country expect such luck. In a nation where landslides announce the weather more loudly than forecasts, the question is not whether the rains will come. It is whether anything will hold when they do.
I can’t stand the rain
As the clouds gather, Nepal once again finds itself staring skyward: hopeful, worried, underprepared. Here the wet season is not only a time of year but a reckoning. ■
