Rain rigmarole

Published : Jul 15, 2011 00:00 IST

A cart carrying cans of milk being pushed in the rain through a waterlogged street in Mumbai on June 11. - RAJANISH KAKADE/AP

A cart carrying cans of milk being pushed in the rain through a waterlogged street in Mumbai on June 11. - RAJANISH KAKADE/AP

It is time the Ministry of Urban Development and municipal corporations sat down and addressed the perennial problems of potholes and waterlogged roads.

THERE is a ritual that is performed every year in at least three or four of India's biggest cities. It has nothing to do with any religious or cultural event but is one that may well develop attributes that will be hallowed and sanctified over time.

The ritual consists of the head of the municipal corporation declaring with smiling confidence that this year all arrangements have been made and there will be no waterlogging on the roads, nor will they develop potholes and become repositories of slush and mud. Then, as soon as the monsoon arrives, the roads are duly waterlogged, sometimes for days, and potholes of varying sizes appear with slush that may be a good six inches thick.

The third part of this ritual involves the same municipal authorities quickly allocating the blame for the mess to other agencies the power agencies that dig up the roads and do not repair them as they should, the water supply people who do the same thing, and so on.

Meanwhile, the wretched inhabitants of these cities have to wade through filthy water if they can, try to take buses which may or may not cover the entire distance, and go about their lives making do. Anger builds and then some hasty, patchy repair work is done in some areas to some roads. Then, it rains again.

Win-win situation

It is not that money is not being spent on what passes for the cleaning of drains and sewers or in repairing roads. Money is being spent, but on what no one really knows. It is common to hear angry citizens say that it is a well-organised system: the drains are not cleaned fully, water is allowed to accumulate on roads, the roads then develop potholes and the exposed raw surfaces turn into mud and slush, and then more money is spent on repairs. The system keeps contractors and their workers happy, and the babus in the corporations get their share, so they are happy too. It is what the Americans would call a win-win situation.

This year was no different in terms of the ritual. The Mumbai Corporation authorities made brave declarations that all would be well, there would be no waterlogging and no transformation of roads into horrifying obstacle courses fit only for Army tanks. But sure enough, waterlogging has visited the poor Mumbaikars, and even flyovers have developed potholes, a truly brilliant achievement for which the engineers doubtless have a brilliant explanation. The rains have only just begun; one can only share the anxieties and tension of the citizens of that afflicted city as they wait for the next round of waterlogging and the inevitable collapse of roads, which makes using them a nightmare for car drivers and bus passengers alike.

Kolkata, to be fair, is slightly different. Even though it is on the banks of a big river, the city actually slopes away from it, so drains cannot empty into the river as they do elsewhere. Water is carried by storm water drains to a small tributary that is further down the slope away from the Hooghly river, and the tributary travels downstream for a good distance before it empties into the Hooghly. Since the Hooghly is a tidal river, during high tide the tributary cannot empty its load of rainwater into the river, and therefore it backs up, and the water stays on the roads until the tide goes out.

That, at least, is the bare fact. But are the drains desilted? Are roads repaired and made strong enough to withstand waterlogging for a day or two? No prizes for the right answer. Oh, and what happens to the electricity during all this? No tidal effect there, surely? So why does it go off when the rains come down? Again, no prizes for the right answer.

One does not know enough about the situation in Bangalore, but it is common knowledge that the corporation's efforts to provide drainage and repair roads have not kept pace with the rapid expansion of the city. The result is that it, too, becomes a nightmare when the rain comes down heavily.

And then, of course, there is the capital city of India, that emerging economic superpower whose growth has the First World all in a twitter. As usual, the municipal corporation has assured people that all will be well this year. The drains, it has declared, have been cleaned, and all is in readiness.

Of course, the monsoon has not yet arrived as one writes this column. But the city had a few small squalls; it rained for around 15 minutes on two occasions, ranging from a drizzle in some areas to a brisk shower in others. That was enough. Roads were waterlogged for hours, traffic was reduced to a chaotic mess and, inevitably, several roads surfaced with large potholes, ready for the contractors' ministrations for their usual contracted amount, with everyone being kept happy.

What must evoke awe is the excellence of the organisation that is in place; the crafty cleaning of drains left just conveniently incomplete; the patchwork repairs for which the people concerned appear to have the materials ready, and that patchwork repair done just so, enough to pass muster until it rains again and it all comes undone.

The whole business is a carefully developed system that, were it to fail, would result in the loss of employment of many. Contractors would not get money if all the rainwater drained out because roads would not need to be repaired. They would lose money, so would their labour. So would the babus who depend on the cut they get from contractors to buy flats.

The abiding mystery is why the system cannot be fixed so that this shadowy economic structure of earning, where it is finally the ordinary taxpayer who foots the bill, can be replaced by something healthy using the same skill as in the underhand system. A really effective drainage system would serve as another inducement for people to come to these metropolitan areas and those adjacent to them. If the corporations do not know how to do it, why do they not call in someone who does know, from Singapore perhaps, and arrange for the great metropolitan areas to have not only effective storm water drains but truly effective sewage disposal systems too.

Paris has apparently devised local sewage disposal systems that arrange for an environment-friendly disposal of waste, discharging wastewater which is as clean as water anywhere into the river Seine and incinerating solid waste in a manner that does not pollute the air. And all this occurs in a large but not enormous building. In all these years, municipal officials from the big Indian cities have gone across the world ostensibly to study such systems. Have they learnt nothing from all these trips?

One knows the answers to all these questions. Surely, it is now more than time for the Ministry of Urban Development and the municipal corporations to sit down and address seriously these problems that are a perennial feature of city life.

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