‘Poor dam management also contributed to Kerala floods’
Floods recently hit God’s own country but much of this was man’s own making, says KT Ravindran, Dean Emeritus, RICS School of Built Environment and Founder of the Institute of Urban Designers, who was former Chairman of the Delhi Urban Art Commission (DUAC). For two decades, he was Dean at School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) New Delhi. More recently, he was the Vice Chairman of the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee of the Government of India in the last five years, where he has to oversee environmental sustainability of national-scale architectural projects. However, apart from everything else, KT Ravindran is a Keralite first with insights on how to cope with disasters. Edited excerpts: of it, diverted the water and airport is made on that ground. Yes, and poor planning has compounded the problem. Kochi airport is a case in point and like that there are hundreds of cases of housing, institutions, colleges, churches, mosques, temples that were built on the flood plain. Not all housing exists on paddy fields but a lot of the newer housing has come up there. There is already a law against conversion of paddy fields into residential and commercial and yet this has happened. You can’t say it was entirely illegal. There are very many mechanisms through which you can kind of negotiate these things. The person who is going and occupying the land may not know exact implications of the land he or she is buying. Some people may know exactly and still they may be doing it. Certainly if no one knows, at least the planning body is supposed to know. What about the planners at the State and district level. As per the Constitution, the role of development and master planning is at State level. There is a central planning authority but that is in Union Territories. According to the 74th amendment the municipality is supposed to develop the plan. It is ultimately a failure of the network of agencies entrusted with the task of planning and development.
Planning needs to be done according to the differentiated land form in Kerala. The state has three types of land forms. First, you have flattish terrain coastal area (thousands of kms where the railway line, highways are running). Then it becomes what is called mid lands which is the undulating land form. That’s where the forest wealth and the ayurvedic medicines are and that is densely populated. Third is the high ranges. These big dams are in the threshold between mid-lands and hi-ranges. And some are in the mid lands too. Kerala has linear structure with Arabian sea on one side and mountain ranges on other side and all the water is flowing down constantly towards the sea. This linear straight state is traversed by hundreds of rivers and riverets – any kind of development you do in the mid lands you will have a serious impact on how the coastland would behave in terms of water. It is not conducive to same kind of development as we have in Delhi. Kerala has a very differentiated land form. Traditionally Malayalis have lived in a homestead and not just a house. Homestead is a home with land around it and Keralites take pride in it. Every house had a well. We were entirely dependent on pumping water from the well right up till the tank. Then by gravity it went into our taps. Kerala state was almost autonomous in its original form, not supply based system where everyone depended upon wells. In Kerala, the land area is very undulating except for a few areas along the coast. With this undulating land form and lot of settlements in undulating areas, it is difficult to have organised water supply system. Its not a flat area where you can have a set of distributions and dispersal of sewerage. It has to be localised because there are small water shed areas within these settlements have come up. All this refers to dam management. Historically, the dams in Kerala were built not so much for water management but for hydro electric power. All the larger dams are also power generation projects. Kerala relies entirely on its own hydro electric power. There are very few or almost no thermal power plants – the local people don’t allow coal based thermal power plants and there are not many factories as local people agitate about pollution. Kerala is entirely dependent upon hydroelectric power. As a result the dams were managed by Electricity department – these dams are located in very high areas where there are no settlements and normally outside the local authorities. They are state level assets not local assets. There certainly is a need for reform in the management of water. You need to recast the management system as a more multi-disciplinary team. After all it is in the interest of the Electricity department to generate more and more electricity. The higher the water level in the dam, the better the pressure on the turbine and better the electricity. So they want it high always. Whereas from a perspective of disaster management or flood control, you should have different way of looking at how much is the water height. There is a need for checks and balances. That means you need to have better administration rather than just looking at it from power generation perspective. In every city there were floods but for different reasons. However floods in Chennai were caused by very similar reasons as Kerala. In Chennai, there is a system of ponds and talabs that overflow into main river and finally into estuary and all traditional port cities like Chennai are located in the estuary of three rivers flowing into the sea Bay of Bengal. In the hinterland of Chennai there was this thousand year old water management system as number of eris, which are large talabs, were constructed to manage and control the flow of water which irrigated the paddy fields, and this was the backbone of rice cultivation in the Tamil Nadu state. What has happened in the last 20 years is those hinterlands have been brought under industrial development. So all these large car manufacturers for which Tamil Nadu is a big hub, have come up in the water shed areas and they have been given 500 acres and more- they have concretised the land and it’s a totally transformed landscape. As a result there is a much higher run off of water as well as high levels of siltation in existing lands. I am sorry but we have to go back. Its just you have to prioritise. If you have to confront climate change, you have to look at every means to mitigate climate change. I am not saying show the door to automobile manufacturers but re-plan this whole system. Don’t take it for granted that now it is being done, it is done. Otherwise you will have to evacuate the city. Just like it happened in Chennai city where water from the Chembarambakkam lake was released at two in the night because it became impossible for them to contain it. Overnight the whole city was flooded. Again Chennai airport in worst location because it was on the river bed. The entire catchment of these rivers had been developed by industry. The fact is that Madhav Gadgil is proved more than right. The country needs to revisit that report and take him far more seriously.the report was rejected at many levels, first at central level (where they sat on it for two years) and then at state level. The report referred to four states along Western Ghats namely Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa. It did not suit vested interest groups of any of these states because it would hurt the local mainstay industries. Add to that the quarrying interests. Everyone knows that there is massive amount of illegal mining which happens on the hillside. This is where the pointer towards the landslide and the flash flood are. You know how quarrying is linked to politics. It’s a whole mired thing of vested interest groups which plugs into investment into politics but needed protection now. Real estate lobby is like any other lobby. They are interested in the profit and environment is a monster. I recall the reports that were submitted for projects clearance when I was the Vice Chairman of the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee. The reports were sometimes a complete cut, copy, paste from high school geography textbook- it was completely plagiarised and unbelievably unethical. I would say it’s an insult to the intellect of the person who is reading that report. I would say that real estate developers need to do development with integrity – which means integrity towards the product, the customer, the resources you use, the society and ethics. If these are forgone for increasing your profit, you will find all kinds of aberrations. In most cases, nature pays the price. Nature is seen as a passive player till it gets active like this. It is indeed an opportunity to reimagine the whole development model. First and foremost, do not go back to reconstructing the flooded houses because if you go back to the same location the floods can be more frequent than they have been in the past. Climate change is here to stay. What is expected hundred years later can come day after tomorrow. There is a great uncertainty about how systems are going to behave post floods. Second is that there should be a “massive rehabilitation program” in which planners should identify land that is suitable for development and rethink patterns of the traditional homesteads, where you have large amount of land and one house in the middle. Cluster formations will have to be built with proper social infrastructure in those areas. As far as flood reconstruction is concerned, I will strongly suggest the planners to revisit the report. If we don’t take climate change seriously today, then we will face the consequences tomorrow. It’s a wake up call for the entire country.