Floods recede in southern India

Survivors are beginning to return home

Flood waters continue to recede in the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, officials say.

Days of heavy rains and floods in the two states have left at least 300 people dead and 1.5 million homeless.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops have been damaged in what is being described as the worst floods in a century.

Meanwhile, a senior government official has told the BBC that the devastation could have been avoided.

'Improved'

Survivors of flash floods have begun to return home to discover what is left of their houses and belongings.

Aid workers say water has receded enough in many areas for them to shift focus to rehabilitating the homeless.

"The situation has improved a lot. The discharge from reservoirs has come down considerably," news agency AFP quoted Dilesh Kumar, commissioner of Andhra Pradesh's department of disaster management, as saying.

Meanwhile, chairman of the Central Water Commission Arun Kumar Bajaj told the BBC that the floods could have been avoided if crucial warnings about the Srisailam dam's maintenance were heeded by the government of Andhra Pradesh.

"On 2 October, we had passed on the forecast to the state government that they could expect more than two million cusec water. The Srisailiam dam is capable of handling only 1.35m cusecs [cubic feet per second] in normal condition."

The government should have started evacuating people soon after the warning, he said.

"The commission assesses old dams to check whether they can function. In 1993, we had advised the government to augment the storage capacity of the dam to 1.9 million cusecs and again in 2005 to raise it to more than 2.5m," Mr Bajaj said.

"But we can only advise. We cannot force state governments to do what they do not want to do," he added.

The rains in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka came on the back of one of the worst droughts in India.

Relief workers are trying to transport food and medicines to hundreds of thousands of people who remain cut off in their villages by flood waters.

More than a million people are now living in temporary relief camps and concern is now growing over the long-term impact of the floods.