Early monsoon woes show why Indian cities must plan for climate change

A record-breaking early onset of the monsoons brought Mumbai, India’s financial capital, to a standstill, offering municipal and state administrators across the country yet another warning of the perils of poor urban planning in an era of climate change. The arrival of the rains on May 26, almost a fortnight ahead of its annual schedule, hit Mumbai just two days after it crossed the Kerala coast. This development appears to have wrong-footed all the authorities concerned, starting with the India Meteorological Department (IMD). After issuing a “yellow alert” (signifying 64.5 -115.5 mm on rain) in the early morning, the IMD had raised threat level to orange (115.6-204.4 mm) by the afternoon and, finally, red alert (>204.5 mm) by the evening, advising people to stay at home. By then, it was too late. Parts of the city were submerged, and water poured into a metro station that was inaugurated just weeks ago. Local train service, Mumbai’s lifeline, flights, and road transport were disrupted.

 

Mumbai is the centre of India’s banking and financial services, and is headquarters to most of India’s largest corporate groups. Yet, it is not an outlier. Whether it is Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, or Kolkata, urban India’s inability to cope with heavy and unpredictable rain in the 21st century is out of sync with the progressive image it seeks to promote around the world. Though even developed countries have experienced floods as a result of unanticipated rain in recent years, disruptive floods seem to have become a routine event in major Indian cities. Delhi and Bengaluru, for example, have already experienced dislocating floods even before the monsoons arrived as a result of record pre-monsoon rain. The problems are old ones: Blocked storm-water drains, indiscriminate construction on water bodies, the felling of trees, the unchecked buildup of malba (construction debris), and garbage on roads and open spaces, reducing further the space for surface runoff. Storm-water drains and water bodies constitute every city’s natural drainage system. A National Institute of Urban Affairs study says most Indian cities have lost 70-80 per cent of their water bodies. In Delhi, a court case revealed that the city authorities had felled over 12,000 trees between January 2021 and August 2023. All this points to the lack of comprehensive urban planning. More to the point, these problems are easy to fix. But solving them demands stronger political resolve, more so given the increasing heft that realtor lobbies wield in state administrations.

 

The basic business of getting Indian cities monsoon-ready remains stubbornly sub-par even as the incidence of unpredictable weather patterns and heavier rain events is likely to rise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that the rising frequency of extreme rain could overwhelm most urban drainage systems in India. The long-term consequences of a monsoon-unready city can be severe. In a country where income inequalities are wide, it is the poor and disadvantaged who suffer disproportionately. This was seen in Mumbai in 2005, when unexpectedly heavy rain caused the death of over 1,000 people, most of them living in slums. At a time when India is seeking more foreign investment as a China-plus-one option, it must get the basic urban infrastructure in place.