Accurate forecasts play an important role in mitigating the losses caused by floods. Government data indicates that while the number of level & inflow forecasts has more than doubled between 2015 & 2019, the accuracy has reduced from 98% to 86.6%. Recent floods due to depression in Bay of Bengal wreaked havoc in the states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka & Maharashtra leading to loss of human life as well as property. Earlier, Assam was hit by floods which has now become an annual affair. It is estimated that around 2.25 lakh people were affected by these floods in the state of Assam. Rains during the monsoon season and unseasonal rains in different parts of the country have over the years, resulted in immense loss to human life, crops, property etc. Governments at the Centre and the States have developed mechanism to predict the floods and mitigate the potential loss. Despite all these measures, significant number of human lives are lost in addition to loss of property, and death of animals etc. In this story, we take a look at the magnitude of losses caused due to floods in India. More than 8,800 deaths are estimated to be caused due to floods between 2017 & 2020 Responding to a question in Lok Sabha in November 2019, the Union Minister for Jal Shakti provided the details of Death toll caused due to floods. The total losses due to floods was provided as a response to a different question in July 2019. As per the information, in 2016-17, 1550 human lives were lost due to rain oriented natural calamities. This number increased in the year 2017-18, when a total of 2,494 deaths were recorded as caused due to floods across India. In the following year of 2018-19, the number reduced slightly with 2,400 deaths being attributed to floods. As per the available provisional estimates, there were around 2391 deaths that were cased due to floods in 2019-20 up to November 2019. Over this four-year period, the highest number of deaths were reported in the states of Bihar & West Bengal. Both these states have recorded over thousand deaths each between 2017 & 2020. While, the number of deaths in West Bengal have been consistently high in each of these years, the overall numbers of Bihar are skewed with 2017-18 along recording 649 deaths. Madhya Pradesh reported around 674 deaths in 2019-20, while Kerala & Himachal Pradesh lost more than 400 people each due to floods in 2018-19. Increase in numbers of Livestock lost and Houses Damaged in 2018-19, while there is a fall in crop area affected In a response provided in July 2019, the union government states that the measures taken by Central & State governments have improved disaster management and reduced the causalities during natural calamities. However, the data provided by the government in the same response, provides a contrasting picture. The latest data available for 2019-20 is only an estimate, hence only the information for the three-year period i.e. 2016-19 is considered for the analysis. States with regular problem of floods lost fewer livestock in the last two years The inconsistent nature of the occurrence of floods does not present an accurate picture to compare the trends over the years. For example, the increase in the number of livestock deaths in 2018-19, can be attributed to the large-scale floods that occurred in Kerala during that year. Out of the 1.22 lakh livestock deaths, 76.8 thousand deaths were in Kerala. Tamil Nadu which also had severe floods in 2018-19 reported more than 20 thousand livestock deaths. However, in the previous years, these states had significantly fewer deaths making it difficult to understand effectiveness of disaster management. However, improvement was observed in the case of Assam & West Bengal – two states which are regularly affected by the floods. The loss of livestock in 2018-19 was significantly less than in previous years in Assam. Similar was the case with West Bengal. Bihar did not report any loss of livestock due to foods in 2018-19, but the trends in previous years do point to a decline. In most of the other states, the higher numbers are because of a higher number in a single year. Similar trend observed in the case of Damaged houses A similar trend was observed in the case of damaged houses, with Kerala & Tamil Nadu reporting a damage of 6.54 lakhs & 5.67 lakhs in 2018-19 out of the total 15.57 lakh houses damaged in that year. Even the numbers for West Bengal, Bihar & Assam are inconsistent over the years and does not point to any specific trend. The variations in specific states, the severity of flood in those areas etc. makes it a challenging to compare the numbers across the years.