varanasi different parts of the country are witnessing flood fury with the loss of lives and property in uttar pradesh the swollen ganga had flooded many districts of eastern region including varanasi allahabad mirzapur ghazipur and ballia the report of the ministry of water resources admits that the approach to flood management presently exercised in india need to get a relook and have an integrated strategy floods have been recurrent phenomenon in many parts of india causing loss of lives and property and bringing untold misery to the people especially those in the rural areas according to the preliminary consolidated report on effect of climate change on water resources up has 734 lakh hectares floodprone area the highest in the country of which only 1703 lakh hectare area is protected as reported up to march 2006 the report says that as the flood events and intensity are likely to increase due to climate change phenomenon the flood pronearea is further likely to increase the likely increased sediment flow may affect the morphology of rivers the report further says that it is necessary to review floodprone areas by using modern technologies like remote sensing satellite data and airborne laser terrain mapping it also suggests that flood plain zoning bill should be adopted and enforced flood hazard zonation maps should be prepared and widely publicized flood forecasting and warning network should be strengthened and modernized the instrumentation for monitoring of glacial lakes and warning for outburst flood should be mandated to appropriate organization and necessary institutional arrangement should be setup with nepal for this purpose special studies and mitigation measures for landslides due to changing weather conditions in the fragile and youngest mountain range of himalayas should be taken up regarding flood management strategies the report says that structural and nonstructural measures are normally adopted for flood management the change in climate may result in change in the flood characteristics of the rivers hence the longterm flood management strategies should be reexamined and actions taken accordingly all the methodologies involved for the computations of flood characteristics need to be modified considering various factors affecting the floods in the basin due to the impact of the climate change in addition to various other factors responsible for floods according to the report of water resource information system wris ganga and its tributaries of which important ones are yamuna sone ghaghra gandak kosi and mahananda constitute ganga river region it covers 10 states of uttarakhand uttar pradesh jharkand bihar south and central parts of west bengal parts of haryana himachal pradesh rajasthan madhya pradesh and delhi in its basin the normal annual rainfall in the region varies from 60 cm to 190 cm of which more than 80 occurs during the south west monsoon the rainfall increases from west to east and from south to north the flood problem is mostly confined to the areas on the northern bank of ganga the damage is caused by the northern tributaries of the ganga by spilling