Waiting for the flood: technocratic time and impending disaster in the Himalayas Karine Gagné, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph, Canada A landslide occurred in the region of Zanskar in the Indian Himalayas in 2015, damming the Tsarap River, creating a lake that effectively became a ticking time bomb, threatening villagers downstream. During the period between the discovery of the natural dam and the bursting of the lake, the state’s approach to disaster management plunged the local population into a situ- ation where ‘technocratic time’ ruled, as government experts handled the impending disaster at a rhythm dictated by the production of studies and reports. Analysis of the temporality of dis- aster mitigation and preparedness measures during this anticipated flood, as well as of the factors that surrounded the events, reveals how attitudes towards the state shaped people’s perceptions of these interventions. In Zanskar, the technocratic pace and the state’s lack of transparency were seen as a form of oppression that further marginalised the region, in particular by subjecting its population to the process of waiting. Keywords: anticipation, flood, Himalayas, India, preparedness, temporality Introduction Floodwater swept down the Tsarap River 1 in Zanskar 2 in the Indian Himalayas on 7 May 2015, washing away dozens of bridges, irrigation canals, and a school. The disaster was not unexpected, though: authorities had known for months that a land- slide had created a natural dam upstream and that it would burst with the onset of spring. Television media aired self-congratulatory declarations by representatives of the federal National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), who implied that the absence of casualties was attributable to the efforts of the agency. The inhabitants of Zanskar, however, took a different view: the flood and its destruction of local infrastructure were the result of the state ‘taking its time’, as it always had when attending to the population of Zanskar, on the far-flung periphery of the Indian state. The high-altitude Himalayan region of Zanskar is located in the Ladakh region of eastern Jammu and Kashmir State (see Figure 1). Its terrain is as rugged as its winter climate is harsh. Zanskar is an administrative subdivision of Kargil, one of Ladakh’s two districts; the other being Leh. Group identities in the region are complex. The vast majority of Zanskarpas, as the people of the region are known, do not iden- tify with those administrative divisions. Zanskar’s majority Buddhist population is a minority within the broader majority Muslim population of Kargil; 3 the population of Leh is majority Buddhist. In terms of cultural and religious identity, therefore, most Zanskarpas feel more affinity with Leh (or Ladakh, which they commonly use as a metonym for Leh District) than with Kargil. 4 doi:10.1111/disa.12379 Disasters, 2019, 43(4): 840-866. © 2019 The Author Disasters © 2019 Overseas Development Institute