Surat is Gujarat’s showcase city, churning out much of its revenue and with a future so bright as to be deemed headed the Singapore way. One terrible flood has washed away those dreams, another is said to be on the way.

For three days Surat was hell on earth: The city was covered in water 5-15 feet deep. Ninety per cent of the 2.5 million residents had no water, food or electricity. Initial estimates by the Southern Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the damage stand at Rs. 15,000 crore. Surat produces 40 per cent of India’s synthetic textiles and polishes 80 per cent of the world’s diamonds; for three days, everything was under water.

And any consolation drawn from the receding waters, even before Tuesday’s alert of another flood, was overwhelmed by the very real possibility of an epidemic.

The pity of it all is that the floods have been caused not by rain but by a stifling absence of common sense. Specifically, by the sudden - and avoidable - releases of high volumes of water from the Ukai dam. Figures indicate that there was good inflow of water in the dam from around mid-July; water releases could have been started immediately. The dam, over the Tapti, was 51 per cent full on July 20, 77.5 per cent on August 3 and near-100 per cent on August 7. Instead of gradually releasing this inflow, as high as nine to 10 lakh cusecs, the authorities waited for the water to touch 335 feet against a full reservoir level of 345. The releases thereafter to Surat went up to 10 lakh cusecs, and, because they coincided with high tide in the Arabian Sea, on whose mouth Surat is situated, flooding was a foregone conclusion.

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