As heavy rain leads to waterlogging, traffic jams in Gurugram and several parts of the Delhi-NCR, we raise these questions on the show: Why is India's urban infrastructure crumbling? Can we make Metros monsoon proof?
00:00Arunabha, to you first. I mean, are we surprised by what we've seen or is it simply getting worse every year?
00:06The complete lack of planning has led to the collapse of Gurugram and now it's too late?
00:13We shouldn't be surprised by what we're seeing because this is...
00:17Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
00:22Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.
00:24Thank you, Rajdeep. We shouldn't be surprised by what we're seeing
00:27because it's a combination of a worsening monsoonal pattern
00:32combined with, which is compounded rather by, poor urban planning.
00:39See, across country, we have 4,500 odd teisils.
00:4464% of those teisils, that's nearly two-thirds,
00:48have seen an increase in the frequency of heavy rainfall days
00:53over the last decade compared to the previous three decades.
00:57That means we have already entered a world where our cities are faced with non-linear climate risks.
01:06It means what was an extreme event yesterday is becoming more and more normal today.
01:12This is what we are already encountering.
01:14And we have to understand that as we build and plan for new cities,
01:19we have to plan for a very different climatic environment in which we live in.
01:24That being said, we are compounding this with many of the things that your reporter mentioned in his report.
01:31Rapid urbanization.
01:33In Delhi alone, the built-up area has gone up at 35% over the last 15 years.
01:39We have built, in Gurgaon or in Delhi, we have built over our natural drainage areas.
01:45We have built over water bodies, etc.
01:48So you're preventing the water from seeping into the ground, what is called,
01:52we have to create sponge sitting.
01:55And if we build over it, if you concretize it, you're not going to be able to do that.
01:59Second problem is that you have inadequate drainage infrastructure.
02:02The drainage infrastructure is built for average rainfall intensity of 12 to 20 millimeters per hour.
02:09Now, that is very different from these intense rainfall patterns that we're repeatedly identifying
02:15and have pointed out through our reports at CEW.
02:18And then you have the mix of the sewage drains and the floodwater drains,
02:23which when they are clogged up, again, because of our negligence, not just as governments, but as citizens,
02:29then you have a backflow both of the stormwater as well as the sewage.
02:33So what we are seeing is tragic, terrible, but also entirely predictable.
02:44Let me bring in Vivek Menon.
02:46You know, Vivek, the question is, is it too late now?
02:49You build this millennium city in Gurugram.
02:52We've seen the same with the IT city in Bengaluru.
02:54You build these large concrete structures.
02:57You take away from water bodies.
02:58Do you believe it's too late now to fix the problem, particularly of drainage,
03:03when you're building on areas which were once water bodies?
03:09Well, actually, I don't think so.
03:10I think it's never too late to start the planning process or to at least change the design narrative that we have today.
03:16I mean, I've been designing, you know, urban infrastructure across the world,
03:21especially in the United States for the past 25 to 30 years.
03:23And I live in Houston for the longest time.
03:26And we have, you know, significant amount of rainfall as well as, you know, hurricanes that come through there.
03:31The bottom line is that, unfortunately, our infrastructure planned by our agencies,
03:36these agencies that are responsible for maintaining both the, you know,
03:40the primary, secondary and tertiary systems,
03:43have absolutely no intellectual capabilities within themselves.
03:47I see that in Bangalore over here.
03:49We've got several agencies and we've got one too many, I believe.
03:52And none of them takes responsibility for, you know, how all of this is planned.
03:56You know, my previous speaker just mentioned that.
03:58You know, I mean, Bangalore, we estimate about, you know, 40 to 55 mm of rainfall per hour.
04:05Now, of course, you know, Kerala, I design projects in Kerala where we usually extrapolate that to about 70 to 90 mm per hour.
04:12And everything is designed around that.
04:14So the storm drain systems that are designed around the roads
04:17are typically designed to ensure that we can actually absorb the water.
04:22The road is the secondary drainage structure, if you will.
04:26But the primary drainage structure has to be designed with roadside drains
04:31with adequate capacity for the water to enter the drainage system.
04:35And that is non-existent.
04:37I see road after road, highway after highway being built
04:41without a storm drain system that can actually absorb the water.
04:44The ponding height and the ponding width, which we model.
04:47And, you know, there are enough of modeling softwares out there that can be used
04:50to basically model this entire thing to where the water actually drains off of the roads
04:56within five to seven minutes.
04:58And then, of course, it connects back to a secondary drainage system and a tertiary drainage system.
05:03Are you saying, are you saying, Vivek, are you saying this is possible if you had experts?
05:09You see, you have urban civic bodies with no real expertise focused only on drainage.
05:15Are you saying, for example, every major city now needs almost like a ministry of drainage
05:21which only singularly handles this right through the year and then can be held accountable?
05:26Today, I don't know in Gurugram who to hold accountable.
05:29Yeah, absolutely, Rajdeep.
05:32You know, let me compare this with what we do in the U.S.
05:36There we have what we call a flood control district.
05:39In addition to that, we have FEMA, which is a federal emergency management agency
05:43that creates flood maps.
05:45And these flood maps are updated on a year-to-year basis.
05:49So you know that if it's a 100-year flood that you're looking at,
05:52or probably even today a 200 to 300-year flood,
05:54these maps are constantly updated to ensure that if any construction happens within these zones,
06:01then there are two things that you need to do.
06:02One is you need to provide detention within your own project.
06:06You cannot release the stormwater that you have created due to what we call as impervious cover.
06:12When you put concrete over a surface,
06:14you're preventing the water from actually seeping and infiltrating into the ground.
06:18And that's called impervious cover, which creates sheet flow.
06:20The sheet flow that comes off of it is what you're seeing on the roads currently.
06:24And if you can manage that sheet flow within your own project,
06:28if you have a 100-acre project, it's very easy to calculate the amount of detention that you need to provide.
06:32So you're not releasing the floodwaters from your project into the government's storm drains.
06:39And that then creates the capacity within the drains to basically drain off into a primary drain
06:44and probably into an outfall.
06:46You know, when I look at Gurugram, when I look at, you know, the Yamuna that flows not too far away from all of that, right?
06:52I mean, in Noida, you have the Yamuna that flows there.
06:54If you can outfall into the Yamuna, and I'm, in fact, actually doing two projects in Indirapuram,
06:59and we calculate all of this, we make sure that none of these, you know, private developments actually flood.
07:05So it's actually engineering.
07:07It's pure and simple engineering.
07:09And if you can do that the right way, I mean, I do this on project to project.
07:12I do it in Kerala, where, you know, the rainfall is 2,300 mm per year, and the intensities are in the range of 80 to 100 mm per hour.
07:21And we have flood-free communities.
07:24So it's not that you cannot do it.
07:26But unfortunately, none of the agencies today have urban planners.
07:30None of these agencies have a flood-controlled district, which controls the flooding and looks at specifically only flooding, detention, retention.
07:38So I think, you know, unfortunately, what's happening is, you know, obviously urban growth has created, you know, compounded the problem of flooding.
07:46But there is no one who's actually taking that bull by the horns and addressing it.
07:50Even a city like Mumbai, which is at sea level, you can prevent flooding over there.
07:55If you create drainage tunnels and make sure that you detain the water, you can actually prevent flooding and you can keep the roads dry.
