When it became clear last weekend that the southwest monsoon would arrive on the west coast more than a week earlier than usual, it evoked cheers at first. Relief from heat and better hope for crops were on everyone’s mind. But the feeling soon turned to despair as civic infrastructures collapsed in Bengaluru and Mumbai, while Delhi found it difficult to stay functional as it got deluged by western disturbance. Records were broken as Mumbai witnessed 295 mm of rain in a day and Delhi logged 81.4 mm, making this May the national capital’s wettest on record. What became starkly apparent is that we can no longer blame extreme climatic events for our infrastructure failures.
It’s no longer enough for municipal officials and politicians to raise their arms in helplessness when our urban growth engines are halted more often with every passing year. It's not just about flooded areas. There are horrific tragedies of people getting washed away in drains, electrocuted by fallen power lines or crushed under falling trees. There are also the travails of marooned citizens, power outages, contaminated drinking water and damaged vehicles. Educational institutes are shut, public transport is paralysed and work is affected. Mumbai's flooded metro stations and Delhi's inundated airport disrupted the schedules of tens of thousands of citizens.
It’s time to question who is accountable for the mess resulting from faulty planning and where the solutions lie. Many of our city corporations are wealthy—the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, for one, has a budget of `74,427 crore this year. Some of these cities boast of triple-engine governments, but have little to show by way of critical governance. Some of the causes are known: outdated drainage systems, uncleared garbage and silt, encroached wetlands and unplanned growth. Despite this, corporations have no battle plans in place. Some of the oldest conurbations in the subcontinent—in the Indus Valley and Keezhadi—had some of the world’s most sophisticated water management systems for millenniums. But while we thump our chests out of regional pride in the 21st century, we cannot bring ourselves to demand and ensure basic civic infrastructure for some of our largest cities. It’s the citizens who bear the brunt, with the poorest hit the hardest. With extreme weather events having become the norm, all three levels of government in India need to shake off their apathy and work on long-term solutions. We surely deserve better.