What is flood? It is a condition that exists when a river overflows its banks and the water spreads out elsewhere.

What causes the flood? The accumulation of a great deal of water in a river that comes from heavy rains, or from other streams or reservoirs that feed into the river. A river usually drains a vast area, or “watershed,” and it is the heavy flow of water from anywhere in the watershed that makes a river rise and flood over its banks. Some floods are very helpful. The Nile, ever since man’s first written history, has been bringing a life-giving flood every year to farmlands, by carrying down soils from the highlands. On the other hand, the Yellow River in China has brought death and destruction periodically. In 1935, it made 40,00,000 people homeless by flooding over!

Can floods be prevented?
This is probably impossible to accomplish, since heavy rains will come whether man wants them or not. But many efforts are being made to control floods, and this will probably be done in time.

There are 3 ways to control floods. One is to have levees or dikes to protect farm lowlands and other areas where the river waters build up. A second way is to have emergency channels, such as spillways or floodways, to help carry away the excess water. A third way is to develop huge reservoirs to hold back floodwaters and feed them more gradually to the larger streams.

All these cannot be possible in India where politicians will not allow the projects to be implemented.

For example, they believed that the shadow or reflection
of a human being was a part of the soul. So they considered
that you would harm the soul if you broke anything on which
the shadow or reflection appeared. Therefore, they
considered it harmful or “unlucky” to break a mirror.
Today, if someone considers it “unlucky” to break a mirror
he is Superstitious, because today we no longer believe
that a shadow or reflection is part of the soul. So Superstition
is actually a belief or practice that people cling to after new
knowledge or facts have appeared to disprove them.
That is why it is impossible to say when Superstition began.

In ancient times man tried to explain events in the world as
best he could with the knowledge at hand. So he made up
explanations and followed certain practices. The old beliefs
should have died out after being disproved by time.
So the Disproved beliefs became Superstitions.