Delhi’s annual infrastructure shock

Come up with a comprehensive solution to deal with heavy rains

On Sunday, heavy rainfall hit Delhi for three hours, the season’s first major shower since monsoon arrived on June 24. The rains are an annual feature, but so is the collapse of the city’s infrastructure. This year too, the deluge led to the inundation, water-logging, traffic congestion, uprooting of trees, and damaged hutments in the slum areas. The collapse of the infrastructure sparked a blame-game between the Aam Aadmi Party (Aap)-led city government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (Bjp)-controlled municipal corporations. While the BJP blamed the government for not undertaking desilting of drains, the AAP said there was need for better coordination between government departments and corporations since cleaning and desilting of the drains are a joint responsibility.

However, the flooding problem cannot be solved by desilting the drains alone. The city will have to undo decades of bad developmental planning and overconcretisation, which has destroyed or built over the city’s natural drainage system. It will have to check construction on the Yamuna floodplains because they reduce the water-carrying capacity of the river. And it will have to restore wetlands, which act as sponges to control flooding. A few years ago, experts recommended solutions, which included restoration of the natural drainage network; removal of encroachment of storm water drains; stopping of dumping of garbage inside storm water drains; and separating sewage network from the drainage network. The government must look into these recommendations, and consider setting up a single agency to tackle the drainage-flooding problem so that Delhi does not suffer every year.