City drowns under administrative lapse

The torrential rains that hit Bengaluru city last week, with a peak of 13 cm of rainfall on Independence Day eve, caused immeasurable hardship to thousands of residents and yet again exposed the callousness of the civic authorities. Promises of additional funds and clearing the bottlenecks on a war-footing, made last year after a similar episode, remain mostly on paper. Politicians and officials, instead of rushing to the affected areas and helping the hapless, flood-affected people, were busy with VIPs at the Indira Canteen inauguration. Many residents of Koramangala, Madiwala, Bommanahalli, Indiranagar, JP Nagar, HSR Layout, Ejipura, Wilson Garden, Manjunatha Nagar and so on were woken up in the dead of night as the rainwater gushed into their homes. They had to fend for themselves. It clearly shows the failure of disaster early-warning systems and the ill-preparedness of civic agencies to respond to such situations. Officials of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre have indulged in the usual blame game, but what the people want is speedy and time-bound remedial action to prevent such calamities visiting again.

There is no doubt that haphazard growth and poor planning coupled with enormous corruption at the official level have led to this state of affairs. The BBMP, the BDA and the state government are equally to blame. As has been well-documented, there are two principal reasons for flooding of rainwater in Bengaluru city. One, many lakes have been closed to make way for residential layouts and apartment complexes. The massive housing project at the Koramangala sports complex which lies on a lake-bed is one such example. The second reason is the blockage and encroachment of storm water drains thoughtfully constructed by more enlightened administrators of the past.

After last year’s rain disaster, the state government had asked the BBMP and the BDA to mercilessly demolish the buildings that had encroached upon storm water drains and sanctioned Rs 800 crore to remodel those drains. The demolition drive which rendered hundreds of middle and lower middle-class people homeless — as the government made no alternative arrangements for them despite being aware that they were the victims of land-grabbers — came to an abrupt halt when certain VIPs’ properties, too, were found to be sitting on storm water drains. Learning a lesson from last week’s disaster, the state government should immediately resume clearing all illegal structures blocking the free flow of water and speedily remodel the storm water drains.