BIHAR: WHY PATNA WENT UNDER
A deluge and official incompetence drown the Bihar capital
The city of Patna, capital of Bihar, received over 345 mm rainfall in three days beginning September 27. With almost 80 per cent of the city under water, Patna city resembled a marooned civilisation, with abandoned cars submerged in several feet of flood water,and people trapped in their homes without electricity or water for days. Among the people who had to be rescued was deputy chief minister Sushil Modi from his official residence in the lowlying Rajendra Nagar locality.
The latest crisis came as a triple whammy for Bihar, after the flash floods in 13 districts in July and the drought in 19 districts in August. September had come with the hope that the worst was over, but the deluge brought back memories of the devastating 1975 flood in Patna. While the blame game started soon after, it was clear the capital city’s age-old drainage network was the real culprit.
Patna is located on a level strip of land on the south bank of the river Ganga that slopes to the south and east. The city’s saucer-shaped topography poses difficulties in flushing out water. Shockingly, the capital’s drainage network has not been upgraded since 1968. “The existing drainage system faces a capacity deficit to hold and drain out excess
rainwater. The 2006 Patna City Development Plan admits that the drainage network is limited to certain areas. The situation was made worse because the existing drains were choked because of to heavy siltation and the dumping of garbage,” says a government official in Patna.
All this has triggered an administrative blame game, with Patna mayor Sita Sahu insisting the Bihar Urban Infrastructure Development Corporation (BUIDCO) is responsible for the mess, while urban development minister Suresh K. Sharma blames Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) ex-commissioner Anupam K. Suman for the slack in drainage cleaning works. “There was no coordination between BUIDCO and the civic body,” says Sharma. He claims that the PMC was given Rs 200 crore to carry out monsoon-related works.
The recriminations have obviously reached Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s office. Led by Union minister Giriraj Singh, a section of the BJP, ironically an ally in the state government, has been sufficiently vocal about the “poor governance” in the state. Leaders of the Janata Dal (United), on the other hand, have blamed the BJP for the mess given that almost all the civic authorities, including the mayor and the urban development minister, are from the party.
The crisis has also revealed the catastrophic levels of official apathy. The PMC, it turns out, does not even have a map of the drainage network in the city. This proved to be a major handicap this time as authorities tried to guide the water towards the drains. With the water now receding, the next big crisis that everyone is bracing for is a possible epidemic of dengue or other vector-borne diseases. Worryingly, 231 fresh cases have been reported in Patna in the past one week. ■
PATNA MUNICIPAL CORPORATION DID NOT EVEN HAVE A MAP OF THE CITY’S DRAINAGE NETWORK