Coping with the monsoon impact

Last Friday, Delhi received a record downpour of 228.1mm rain, the highest for a single day since 1936. A taxi driver died when the canopy of a terminal at the Indira Gandhi International Airport collapsed on his car and 11 others were injured as rain battered the city. It triggered an infrastructure collapse in the national capital of a scale that raised serious questions about urban governance, especially the preparedness of the city and state governments to deal with the monsoon.

Exceptional rainfall is becoming common around the world – and wreaking havoc in countries big and small, rich and poor. It is always difficult to prepare for such extreme events (which are increasingly becoming common), but Delhi’s multiple administrations (the LG, the UT’s elected government, NDMC, MCD) had adequate warning. A record 153 mm rainfall on July 9 last year led to massive flooding in the city with the Yamuna waters breaching its bunds and inundating areas close to the river. Soon after, the powers that be promised that the city’s infrastructure would be augmented to ensure that it would never encounter a similar situation. The truth is little has been done. Last week’s flooding happened because the city’s choking sewage drains had not been cleared, the nullahs had not been de-silted, pumps had not been readied to limit water logging and other maintenance work was left incomplete or ignored. Worse, the big problem highlighted a year ago – storm water drains being used for sewage and vice versa – was also the big reason why many parts of Delhi flooded on Friday.

The city’s administrators have to address the issue across three time horizons. In the short-term, they will have to ensure the efficacy of existing infrastructure, carrying our routine maintenance work regularly, and putting in place a protocol for inspection. In the medium-term, they will have to augment infrastructure. And in the long-term, they have to accept the new reality forced on us by the climate crisis, factor in extreme events as routine ones in the planning process, and design a city that can withstand events such as Friday’s. It is important to remember that much of the visuals of flooding coming in from Europe are because of the inability to do the third. Delhi’s problem is more first-generation. That’s the real tragedy.