Major cities drown in monsoon sorrow

Three major metropolises of India are currently drowning in the sorrow of their citizens who are horrified by the despicable state of their cities when drenched by monsoon rain. Mumbai, Bengaluru and the National Capital Region are the ones affected most severely by this season’s rainfall, which has not been torrential by any standard. Chennai had suffered a worse fate last December at the hands of an extreme weather event — 50 cm of rain in a little over 24 hours — that led to a deluge of Biblical proportions and rivers and reservoirs overflowed. The established pattern of rainwater flooding the major urban centres of India every monsoon, even if it is one of the normal variety, is a pointer to not just collapsing city drainage but a completely crooked structural system run by the politician-babu-builder-contractor-city planner nexus that sees the poorest possible designs, material and labour used in urban infrastructure. The corruption is endemic.

The malaise goes beyond ordinary failure of systemic inefficiencies of government. The annual flooding of cities in a rapidly urbanising country — more than 60 per cent of the population will be living in cities even before the older generations bow out — represents a total collapse of municipal governance. The failure is rampant regardless of what sort of hierarchy runs the major metropolises, be it elected mayors heading corporation councils or panchayat heads of areas contiguous with cities. In the insatiable push for urban space, planning permission is conspicuous by its absence. Where we fail utterly is in providing any sort of elected representative or appointed bureaucrat with the necessary expertise in civil engineering and city planning to ensure that most of the water flows out without disrupting daily life.

The way forward is to bring in expert town planners and private enterprise to advise politicians, bureaucrats and civic engineers on how to make drainage systems work and roads survive the battering, and point out the many negatives in allowing free expansion of cities without a thought to natural gradients and scientific definitions of water bodies.

Unless there is accountability, the problems are going to recur. Major cities of the world may buckle in the face of extreme weather events like torrential rain, snowstorms and overflowing rivers, but they pride themselves in commanding the expertise to minimise damage and restore normality quickly. Unless we can guarantee minimum standards of liveability in our cities, what use is it of dreaming of bullet trains and smart cities with digital connectivity The least we can do is give everyone a shot at living as close to normality as possible, even when it rains. Considering how important monsoon rainfall is to India’s food production, at least we can prepare our cities better to deal with the precious annual rainfall.