A flooded Bengaluru reminds us of Indian cities' lack of preparation

The money spent by the cities for flood is often far less than needed and since the buy-in from the public is weak, the effectiveness of the projects is shallow

A remarkable book, Cities and Flooding, written by a World Bank team of authors led by Abhas Jha noted presciently in its conclusion “Urban flood risk management then becomes an iterative process, with a long-term target to be approached through a series of steps”.

The authors were suggesting that no matter how serious the episode of a flood, it could be forgotten in less than three years after it happens. The implication is Bengaluru may be reeling under a flood in 2022, but unless there is “Ongoing communication (to) counter the tendency of people to forget about flood risk”, by 2025 monsoons, neither the administration nor the city’s population shall remember.

For instance, no municipal bodies pick up notes from the National Disaster Management Authority that says floods reach their peak within minutes in urban areas. “Urban flooding is significantly different from rural flooding as urbanisation leads to developed catchments, which increases the flood peaks from 1.8 to 8 times and flood volumes by up to six times. Consequently, flooding occurs very quickly due to faster flow times (in a matter of minutes)”.

This attitude, more than anything else, seems to cover the on-off response to floods in urban areas of India. Responses begin fast but peter out equally fast. As Jha’s book notes, it happens because often sustained communication with the public rarely happens to build up support. So the money spent by the cities for floods is often far less than needed and since the buy-in from the public is weak, the effectiveness of the projects is shallow.

Changing response

Possibly that response picture is changing as the scale of floods in urban areas has become more intense every year.

In December 2015, Chennai suffered a massive flood due to a cyclone. It was to be the first of the massive city-by-city strike of the rains in India that has now become so familiar. But it is only this year, seven years later that the city administration has woken up to allocate half of its annual capital expenditure for flood mitigation projects. This sort of focused attention was not the norm till recently. Most of the Rs 1,235 crore will be used to build or refurbish storm water drains in different parts of the city. The money is largely from Asian Development Bank’s $251 million loan for flood protection in the city.

It also helped that Chennai has gone through a less intense but damaging enough flood in 2021. Five persons died and the Madras High Court rapped both the state government and the Greater Chennai Corporation for their “unpreparedness”.

Other metros are also just getting into long-term planning to tackle floods. Mumbai has scratched its existing system of flood warnings and rolled out a new one this year. The Integrated Flood Warning System, also called iFLOWS-Mumbai has been developed by the centre’s ministry of earth sciences and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to relay alerts of possible flood-prone areas anywhere between six and 72 hours in advance. Starting this monsoon, citizens will be able to check the areas that are likely to get flooded up to two hours in advance, the Corporation claimed.

Till recently, elected mayors or appointed officials like municipal commissioners in urban bodies, have rarely spent time to work on floods when the skies have not opened up. In 2018 the Asian Development Bank financed a flood forecasting and early warning system for Kolkata City to help city officials and citizens act decisively to minimise damage before and during disasters. It was a first of its kind for Indian cities. At about 400 key points across the city, identified as hot spots vulnerable to inundation during flood events, canals, pumping stations, traffic junctions, and schools, instruments were set up to send real-time data to a cloud-based dashboard. An ADB press release noted this was India’s first such urban system, named the Kolkata Environment and Infrastructure Improvement Project and financed from its Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund. It didn’t cost much and the then city mayor announced the project will include a new pumping station at Joka to drain out water from some of the city’s low-lying areas. Fast forward to 2022 and the city bosses are still working on the water pumping project, and an intense spell of rain is about to hit the city later this month.

Among its numerous floods, the one of July 26, 2005, still ranks as the worst for Mumbai. Post the flood, municipal officials fished out an abandoned project to rebuild the stormwater drains at was sanctioned in 1991 with an investment of Rs 616.3 crore. But while there was a flutter, a Business Standard report shows the project is still limping along. Rs 2439.5 crore has been spent till 2021 and yet another Rs 2,100 crore is needed to complete the project. There is hardly any news about it in the media with almost nil effort by the state or municipal officials to communicate with the city residents about the project.

The list of neglect in all major cities can go on and on. Hyderabad is blessed with a massive number of lakes. Here too, of the 185 enumerated lakes in the city, the corporation had issued bids for flood management work at 63 lakes in 2019, to cost of Rs 94.17 crore. A media report noted that work has started in less than a third of the lakes.

Options

In the list of options for a better response is a suggestion by a Parliamentary Standing Committee from last year. The committee on water resources headed by Sanjay Jaiswal, MP examined flood management to suggest the central government should build consensus on placing flood control and management under the Concurrent list of the Constitution. It argued that most rivers are inter-state, so flood control has “ramifications beyond the jurisdictions of states”. It however did not examine why that should be a concern to reduce city-level floods. In the Constitution, water is a matter included in Entry 17 of the State List.

Industry chambers, both Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Ficci) get into flood relief in a big way but have avoided getting into issues of why these occur. Post the Chennai floods and later the Kerala floods, CII formed task forces for relief but did not engage with the government on long-term remedies. Ficci has also moved the demands for accountability to associates like Ficci Ladies Organisation.

The conclusions of the World Bank report are buttressed by OP Agarwal, CEO of World Resources Institute, India, a global non-profit aiming to “create practical solutions that improve people’s lives and ensure nature can thrive”.  He notes that it is the drive for short-term gains, which stops municipalities from developing long-term engagement with the citizens. “Urban floods are due to poor planning capability, weak laws and the greed for short-term gains”.

He agreed with the World Bank assessment that floods can only be reduced but not eliminated. “Flood events will continue to devastate communities despite the best risk management practices, it is important to plan for a speedy recovery. This includes planning for the right human and financial resources to be available. The best recovery plans use the opportunity of reconstruction to build safer and stronger communities which have the capacity to withstand flooding better in the future”, the report notes.

Average stormwater drains designed for rainfall intensity of 12–20 mm in a day. 
Bengaluru received 131.6 mm of rain on September 5, 2022

Flood peaks in built up areas happen 1.8 to 8 times and volumes by up to 6 times against open spaces 

Indian flood policies

a) First flood guidelines in 1954

b) High Level Committee On Floods – 1957 

c) National Flood Commission (Rashtriya Barh Ayog) – 1980 

d) Rangachari Committee to Review the Implementation of Rashtriya Barh Ayog

e) National Water Policy ( 1987/ 2002/2012)

Major floods since 2000

Hyderabad: 2000

Ahmedabad: 2001

Delhi: 2002, 2003, 2009

Chennai: 2004, 2015 

Mumbai 2005, 2017 

Surat: 2006

Kolkata: 2007

Jamshedpur: 2008

Guwahati: 2009, 2012 (Kaziranga National Park)

Bihar: 2008, 2017

Uttarakhand: 2013 

Gujarat: 2015, 2017 

Kerala: 2018