EDITORIAL: Another monsoon, another death toll crossing the one hundred mark, another round of emergency meetings, warnings, and rescue operations. By now, this cycle has become painfully familiar.
As Pakistan entered yet another spell of heavy rainfall, the official response once again centred on managing an unfolding disaster rather than demonstrating that lessons from previous years had finally been learned.
The tragedy is no longer that the rains arrive with devastating force. It is that the country continues to prepare for them as though they remain an unexpected event.
That should concern policymakers far more than the weather itself.
Monsoon flooding is not an unforeseen emergency. It is a predictable annual occurrence. Governments know when the rains are likely to arrive, which districts face the greatest danger, where drainage systems repeatedly fail and which communities remain vulnerable to flooding, landslides and house collapses. Yet every year familiar images return: submerged roads, overflowing drains, inundated neighbourhoods, collapsed homes, prolonged power outages and families waiting for rescue after disaster has already struck.
This year has been no different. If anything, it has been worse. More than one hundred people have already lost their lives, while floodwaters continue to affect large parts of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Entire communities remain under water days after heavy rainfall, infrastructure has suffered extensive damage and emergency services continue responding to crises that should have been anticipated well before the first storm clouds gathered.
There are, admittedly, encouraging signs.
The Punjab irrigation department’s introduction of an artificial intelligence-based reservoir monitoring system reflects a sensible response to India’s continued refusal to share upstream hydrological data. Satellite imagery and geospatial analysis can never fully replace formal treaty-based information sharing, but they at least provide authorities with better situational awareness than they previously possessed. Such innovation deserves recognition because climate adaptation increasingly demands technological solutions alongside conventional infrastructure.
Technology alone, however, cannot compensate for weak governance.
Every monsoon exposes the same institutional shortcomings. Drainage systems remain inadequately maintained. Encroachments continue blocking natural waterways. Construction proceeds in flood-prone areas with little regard for long-term risk. Relief efforts improve only after lives have already been lost. Administrative coordination often strengthens during the emergency itself rather than before it. These failures have accumulated over decades despite repeated commissions, inquiries and promises of reform.
That points towards a deeper problem. Pakistan has no shortage of disaster management plans. It suffers from an absence of legal accountability for implementing them. Government departments routinely announce preparedness measures before every monsoon season, yet there is remarkably little consequence when those preparations prove inadequate. Officials move on, committees are reconstituted and next year’s rains produce another familiar round of explanations.
That culture must change.
The country now needs comprehensive legislation that imposes clear statutory responsibilities on every department involved in flood preparedness. Drainage authorities, municipal administrations, irrigation departments, provincial disaster management authorities and local governments should all operate under legally enforceable obligations rather than discretionary administrative instructions. Deadlines for drain clearance, inspections of vulnerable infrastructure, emergency equipment readiness and floodplain management should become mandatory, independently audited and publicly reported.
Accountability must extend beyond paperwork.
Where official negligence contributes to preventable loss of life or property, responsibility should be clearly established and administrative action should follow. Preparedness cannot remain a public relations exercise measured by meetings held and directives issued. It should be evaluated by outcomes: functioning drainage systems, timely evacuations, protected infrastructure and, above all, lives saved.
Climate change will almost certainly make Pakistan’s monsoon seasons more unpredictable and more destructive in the years ahead. That reality cannot be altered. The country’s preparedness, however, remains entirely within human control.
Pakistan has spent years treating every monsoon as a temporary emergency. It is time to recognise it for what it has become: a permanent governance challenge requiring permanent institutional reform. Until that happens, the country will continue counting casualties after every rainy season while congratulating itself for responding to disasters it should have been far better prepared to prevent.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026