Not just a question of weather anomalies, Climate Change will thrive in poorly planned urban sprawls in the coming years
Residents of Hyderabad are in a state of shock. Not one but twice within a week, the city has been swamped under unprecedented downpours and there is no clear answer to this outburst of nature that has left the city administration helpless. Figures of 160 mm to 320 mm rainfall in a day has left large parts of the city waterlogged and marooned and as every rise of water level adds to the toll of dead lives and damaged infrastructure, even current public health issues such as the covid pandemic takes an unfortunate backseat.
Though every incident of severe rainfall cannot be directly
attributable to climate change, this unnaturally high rainfall is the result of
a deep depression that originated in the Andaman seas and turned towards a
north-northwest alignment and finally turned towards the Andhra coast in the
past week. Though such depressions tend to dissipate quickly after touching
land, the intensity of the present depression has magnified with the sheer
amount of moisture contained within it. Augmenting this cocktail is the comparatively warm
air prevalent in the atmosphere and what we had was the perfect storm that
Telengana, North Karnataka and Hyderabad were least prepared for.
Singapur, a township within the Greater Hyderabad Municipal
Corporation witnessed 320 mm on rainfall on October 13th while as
many as 11 stations received upto 200 mm of rain in a day. To compare, Agumbe,
with its history of extremely high rainfall events, in the Malnad region of the
Western Ghats of Karnataka records relatively few days of more than 200 mm in a
day even in the peak of the monsoons in a good rainfall year. The number recorded in Hyderabad
brings to light an increasingly ominous future where sudden downpours will
become the normal and increased quantity of rainfall in a short period of time
will devastate cities and states in an increasingly erratic pattern.
What makes this particular rainfall event even more
devastating is that Singapur township again received 157.3 mm of rainfall on 17th
October, a mere four days after the record breaking rains of 13th
October. Such massive amounts of rainfall can overwhelm a well-planned nation
and Hyderabad with its moderate infrastructure currently seems to have no
answer to the deluge of the past few days.
Unfortunately, the city has received ample warnings about
its infrastructure in the past. As recently as November, 2019, Srinivas Chary
from the Centre of Urban Governance at the Administrative Staff College of
India had spoken about the lack of infrastructural readiness and added that
‘Resistance to vagaries is high but Day-0 is a 365 day reality’. These grim warnings continue to be
ignored and even when faced with sufficient data that extreme climate events
have the potential to turn cities into flood traps, not enough action is taken
to address the lacunae.
Some of the apparent causes of the immense flooding are easy
to enumerate and even less surprisingly, most common people of Hyderabad can
list the reasons with remarkable accurateness as would an expert. The state of
the Musi river, poor drainage and unplanned construction holds true for the
city but what stands as a grim reminder is by replacing the river Musi with
Mithi, Ganga, Adyar, Saryu or any of the several stressed river systems in the
country, incidents at Chennai, Mumbai or Hyderabad are but a precursor of the
threats that most urban conglomerates in the country face.
While this particular incident happened in Hyderabad, the
memories of the Chennai flood cannot be any longer dismissed as a once in a hundred-year
event. While Hyderabad lost more than 3000 hectares of wetlands in a matter of
years, Mumbai lost more than 71% of its wetlands, Bangalore lost 56%, Delhi and
National Capital region lost about 38% and India as a nation has lost more than
a third of its natural wetlands that have the unique capacity of managing
excess water flow.
Added to the virtual vanishing of wetlands, India’s rivers
starting from Badrinath where the Alaknanda gushes in its infant stage to the
Yamuna in Delhi, Hooghly in Kolkata, Jhelum in Srinagar, Cauvery in Trichy and
the unfortunate Mithi in Mumbai, the rivers in the country are dying a
collective death. Massive encroachment, unauthorized construction, dumping of
waste and the sheer inconvenience of some of these rivers have led to planners
often shifting their natural flow in order to make space for an airport or a high-rise
building. A country that was proud of its traditional water harvesting
structures is audacious enough to foolhardily believe that rivers can be moved
or trampled without any fear of consequences.
With the city flooded for a second time, administrators have
estimated a cumulative loss
of 6000 crores. In layman’s terms, the six feet deep hole in the
Falaknuma railway bridge or the loss of lives or the very expensive breach in
lakes is temporary as
the city will soon get back at its feet and begin reconstruction on a warpath.
Soon, in a few months, the memories of the floods would at best be recorded in
slick documentaries or in the tales of the ‘dadis’ talking about that dreadful
day in October. Just like Chennai or Mumbai or Assam, the unrelenting visage of
continuous floods in the monsoon season of the year 2020 would be relegated to
a faint memory in the flood fatigued TV viewer. The city would definitely stand
up but would climate change jumping piggy-back upon a less than satisfactory
urban infrastructure hold back now. Will climate change accelerate the cycle of
disasters that increases each year and force urban planners to take stock and incorporate
more resilience in their urban planning approach. We hope it happens before the
next Hyderabad or Mumbai strikes again.
