Punjab floods. The Sutlej, Beas and Ravi flood their bets when the dams release, and the Ghaggar floods the southern districts when the Shivalik catchment fills.
Major events include 1988, when a large part of central Punjab was under water and the release from Bhakra was disputed afterward; 1993; 2019; 2023, when the Beas and Sutlej took large areas of Rupnagar, Jalandhar and Kapurthala.
The pattern is consistent: heavy rain in the catchment, dams filled early in the season with no room to absorb it, an emergency release, and the bet villages taking the water.
Dam operating rules balance irrigation storage against flood cushion, and the incentive is to store, because water is money and a flood is an act of God.
The relief afterward is compensation for crop loss and a rebuilt bund. Nothing structural changes, and the same villages flood again.
The bet is the land between the river's banks and its outer edge, farmed in the dry season and given up when the water comes. Villages in the bet are built on mounds or are rebuilt.
2023 was the worst recent year, with releases from the dams coinciding with heavy rain and the Ghaggar breaching in several places across the Malwa.
The Ghaggar is the harder problem because it has no dam and no defined channel through much of its course, and it takes the drainage of a large area with nowhere to put it.