Flooded Cities: Urban India Drowns in Political Apathy

July 26, 2005. Every monsoon Mumbai is reminded of the day when a system and nature conspired to devastate a people. This week Mumbai, along with a dozen cities, was marooned in misery. Every year floods ravage cities. It is the price of systemic sloth. Little has changed despite committees and missions. Cities occupy 3 per cent of area and contribute 60 per cent of the GDP. How about reinvesting some of the returns from the urban economy back into cities?

Shankkar Aiyar | The Third Eye | The New Indian Express | 28 July 2024?

July 26, 2005. Every monsoon reminds the people of Mumbai of the day when man-made blunders and nature conspired to devastate. The disaster left nearly a thousand dead, the loss of homes and livelihoods, and scars of untold grief. The catastrophe exposed everything that was wrong with India’s urbanisation?—?from planning to execution, from authority to accountability, from expenditure to outcomes.

This week, Mumbai found itself marooned in misery once again. In 2005, Mumbai was devastated by 900 mm of rain; in 2024, barely a third of the volume of rainfall shut down the city. Schools and colleges were closed, businesses downed shutters, the fire brigade and police had to brave the elements and rescue people. Nearly half a dozen Indian cities wallowed in water. Pune, once crowned a ‘smart city’, a hub of start-ups, had to call for two army columns to rescue people. Residents of Baner and Khadki found basements flooded?—?thanks to the fact that storm water drains are non-existent?—?and electricity cut off.

The 2005 disaster was followed by a fact-finding committee led by Madhav Chitale. The findings: excess rain, blockages caused by a lack of desilting, a non-operational disaster management plan, lack of communication and coordination, poor weather warnings and more. In December 2005, the UPA government came up with Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission “to encourage reforms and fast-track planned development”. The mission listed many ideas but found no place for the term ‘floods’. Five years later, after repeated episodes, the National Disaster Management Authority recognised the scourge of city floods, recommended steps, and listed dos and don’ts. A parade of committees and commissions since have paid lip-service to urban renewal.

Have things changed? Not really. In 2021, just in south India over 30 cities across five states were affected by flooding. Flooding is an annual event when residents pay the price for systemic sloth. Expectations are so low that failure is normal?—?and anger spills out every budget as more is taken for less. This monsoon, over a dozen cities reeled under floods. A dry-and-thirsty Bengaluru was followed by a hot-and-harried Delhi. Members of parliament living in Lutyens’ Delhi tweeted for help. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor joked he may need a boat, while Samajwadi Party MP Ram Gopal Yadav needed a VIP lift to leave his house.

Quintessentially, policy response in India focuses on the consequences of any event or disaster, while the cause is left for another day. Hope arrived in July 2014. In his maiden budget speech, then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley highlighted the state of affairs. He said, “Unless new cities are developed to accommodate the burgeoning number of people, the existing cities would soon become unlivable.” He added, “The prime minister has a vision of developing 100 Smart Cities as satellite towns of larger cities, and by modernising existing mid-sized cities.” Cities have become more and more unliveable.

The smart cities mission that followed the Jaitley budget didn’t list flood prevention as a priority. Mind you, the Smart Cities mission has funded over 8,000 projects worth Rs 1.64 lakh crore in 100 cities, but hasn’t focused on floods. The AMRUT mission has the potential to address one aspect?—?lack of drainage?—?but its track record reflects lack of scale: till 2023, only 719 projects worth Rs 1,622 crore were completed.

Flooding is caused by excessive rainfall, but turns into a disaster in the wake of poor drainage, high levels of silt, encroachment of river beds and water bodies, destruction of wetlands in coastal cities and deforestation. It is obvious that planning?—?and satellite imaging of topography to enable drainage and protect water bodies?—?is critical for prevention. Yet, poor planning is not considered a cause of urban flooding. It is easier to blame nature.

India’s cities are trapped between political apathy and systemic chaos. Typically, the authority of design and the accountability for execution are divorced. The design of policy is with the Union; states have little say. Implementation is with states over which the Union has little sway. Ergo, answers to questions in parliament are prefaced with the disclaimer “urban development including urban planning is a state subject”. What makes it worse is that the states have denied form, function and funding to urban bodies.

Historically, India’s political parties are invested in a rural bias?—?after all, rural India casts more votes. It may be useful to illuminate the political landscape with economic context. The world over, urbanisation is a force multiplier for growth and accounts for over 80 percent of global GDP. India is rapidly urbanising and is expected to add over 400 million to its urban population by 2050. Its cities occupy only 3 percent of the land mass, but contribute over 60 percent of GDP. Each percentage rise in urban population in a district ramps up the district GDP by 2.7 per cent.

Budget 2024 mentions urbanisation as one of the nine priorities, but lacks details beyond defining cities as growth hubs. That is necessary but not sufficient. India needs a well-funded policy to prevent catastrophic flooding, enable new expansion along connected corridors and induct a public-private partnership for new greenfield cities.

How about re-investing some of the returns from the urban economy back into the cities? The aspiration of advanced economy status calls for a review of the political stance and economic policies.

Shankkar Aiyar, political economy analyst, is author of ‘Accidental India’, ‘Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India’s 12-Digit Revolution’ and ‘The Gated Republic –India’s Public Policy Failures and Private Solutions’.

You can email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @ShankkarAiyar. This column was first published here. His previous columns can be found here