From Indias largest. Newsroom I'm Arun George and
this. Is.
The Times of India Podcast. Last year, it was Bengaluru and
Guwahati. This year, it was the turn of
Chennai to experience heavier than expected flooding.
Floods in Indian cities are regular fairs, but instead of
dealing with them better over the years, we seem to be dealing
with them just as badly every year.
In Chennai, the arrival of Cyclone Michong caused at least
18 deaths, widespread flooding and damage to property.
While it isn't right to compare a city with another, there's a
remarkable similarity in how badly cities cope with such
events. While drainage solutions are the
1st to be blamed, we've done this episode earlier in which we
spoke of why just building drains isn't a solution for
cities. In this episode we've spoken
with Jagdish Krishnaswamy, who is the Dean of the School of
Environment and Sustainability at the Indian Institute for
Human Settlements. He'd explain what cities need to
change if they want to reduce the impact of urban floods, and
how even buildings and cities might need to change completely
to adapt to the changes in climate we could see in the near
future. One factor that always comes up
is the fact that there is the absence of adequate drainage
altogether. How much of a factor do you see
this as being for these cities to almost completely flood in
some ways? We have to take a slightly
longer term view of the drainage pattern and dynamics of a
cityscape. There are what used to be called
nullahs in northern India. We have logical ways and many
other types of stormwater drains in Bengaluru and other cities.
And there was some form of hydrologic connectivity from 1
area to the next. And over a period of time we
have encroached on many of the drainage networks, both legally
and illegally. We have basically not allowing
for water to move freely and then whatever reduced number of
drains are are active in those. We have further added to the
problem by disposing of our solid waste because these often
occupy with huge volumes and they cause, you know, choking of
the drains whenever we have even moderate rates.
And then when we have a very intense train, it can create a
lot of problems. So we have actually seen a much,
slightly bigger version of the problem in the last few days in
Bengaluru. But this is something that we
have to be prepared for. Large areas in Bengaluru, which
used to be able to absorb rainfall because they were
permeable, have been built over. So we'll have to rethink the way
in which we build pavements, the way in which we build roads,
other infrastructure. It has to allow for rainwater to
be able to be absorbed. There aren't designs available
so that Bengaluru can move from a choking city to a soaking city
so that we are able to cope with the effect of climate change and
the higher intensity of rains that many of our cities are
being pounded by. This is now something that's
being spoken of with multiple cities, where we have to rethink
how these cities are. But the big crisis is also the
fact that these cities are built.
How do cities adapt with that situation where they have things
that exist and are big and immovable?
So for example at a finer scale apartment complexes,
neighbourhoods, wards, they all have to think about OK, how can
we maximize the absorption of rainwater, the infiltration of
rainwater and also promote local connectivity in terms of the of
the storm water to water bodies. So that's at the local scale and
and we have to ensure that that that this scaling up can occur
from that scale. And then at a larger scale of
both in terms of the cityscape itself or the catchments that
exist in Bengaluru. We really need to think about
the major hydrologic pathways that need to be maintained so
that the we will have greater ability to deal with and reduce
the risk of flooding in the future.
There are many places, for example, many water bodies which
you know, may actually gather a lot of water only in once in
five or six years or seven years or 10 years maybe.
Now those types of spaces often get encroached upon because for
some years at a stretch, it looks as if nothing is
happening, that land is available and the people make
use of it, both legally and illegally.
Now that has to stop. We have to think about which are
the depressions and natural areas that can actually be a
buffer for us in the future. Which means that the land use of
these areas has to be changed and they have to be protected
and considered as part of what is known as the natural
infrastructure, the green and blue infrastructure of Bengaluru
to cope with with these types of of extreme regiments which are
going to become more common in the future.
There are many parts of cities that are already built into
former lake beds or catchment areas.
What do we do with those areas now?
That is going to be tough, but we'll, I think there are still
opportunities for doing modifications in some of these
areas. Whatever pathways, hydrologic
pathways and drains can be restored through civil
engineering, through acquisition of land, we may have to take
some hard decisions in some parts of the city.
It's not that we have to live with all the mistakes that we
have made in the past. I think some of them will have
to rectify and who pays for it and and should the burden fall
on which group of citizens and and so on, that is something
that needs to be negotiated and worked upon.
I I mean to say that if there are going to be modifications in
existing places just to so that that the risk of trading is
reduced in the future, there will be some issues of land and
buildings that need to be modified, they need to be
redone. Some encroachments will have to
be removed. You can start with illegal
encroachments, but then also we have to realize that that there
are some people who are much more particularly vulnerable
informal settlements, people who don't have that many ways of of
coping with the threats. These have to be protected.
I mean, these are vulnerable citizens, marginalized citizens,
and as in the recent recent case that we saw water from an
apartment complex was let out into an informal settlement,
only some types of citizens seem to be able to have the
wherewithal and the access to power and to be able to do such
actions. And clearly it was not solving
the problem, it was just transferring it elsewhere.
So we definitely need much more coordination at the local scale
to ensure that all citizens are protected from Friday.
With climate change itself, one major factor is, like you said,
heavier rains, more intense rains over shorter periods.
How prepared do you see Indian cities as presently to deal with
this? If you recall, we had more than
950mm of rainfall in a single day in Mumbai some years back.
Then we had 2225mm of rainfall in Chennai in a day and 1/2 and
that created havoc. And now these recent floods in
Bengaluru have have in some sense shown us the mirror we we
need to act fast. We need to change the way we are
looking at Urban Development. And every green space that can
absorb rainfall is now going to be a precious piece of our
natural infrastructure or natural assets that will help us
to cope in the future. And so this whole, this whole
dichotomy that set up of of development versus, you know,
ecology and environment, I think we need to really recast it in a
different way. Because this, this green and
blue infrastructure that's vital for for, for reducing the risk
of flooding and for making Bengaluru safer in the future,
is an integral part of the city's development and not an
impediment to its development. Is there a sort of catch all
solution for all? Or are there certain solutions
that really fit in for all cities and need to be
implemented on a sort of short term basis?
No, there are very different characteristics that we have to
take into and factors that we have to consider.
For example cities that are built in front plates in Assam
or elsewhere. We have to be very careful
because floodplains, they are active, they become activated
during certain types of events and they are cannot be
considered as as a sort of a place for permanent large types
of infrastructure to come up. We'll have to think of of
innovative ways of of using floodplains so that people can
use them safely for livelihoods and jobs and avoid the type of
infrastructure that will obstruct the movement of water
and sediment. Because that is the key to to be
able to cope with the floods and and threading phenomena.
We'll have to in some sense adapt to those.
And we'll have to have new ways of of development and urban
growth and business as usual is unlikely to be successful in the
future under climate change. The big challenge with cities,
he says, is that highland prices make infrastructure changes more
difficult, even after catastrophic events.
And then there are the many smaller cities that are being
developed upgraded as future smart cities.
However, Jagdish Krishnaswamy cautions that they won't be very
smart if they're underwater. I think that even this notion of
smart city, smart cities will only be smart if you if you take
hydrology, ecology and environmental justice into
account. Who are the vulnerable people
living in the city? Where are the informal
settlements that are likely to be exposed to flooding?
Are some some citizens more exposed to flooding and and
environmental disasters and others?
All of these factors have to be taken into account when thinking
about the future of so-called smart city.
In cities like Bengaluru, one thing that struck me was the
fact that these underground ground floor apartments in many
places were very badly flooded. And that's something we see in,
say, north of India as well. Do we have to change how we live
in some ways also? Are we looking at that sort of
death knell for those kinds of structures altogether?
I think that we have to rethink the these types of of building
designs and and also we have to realize that you know
deceptively for many years we might be thinking that we have
built on very firm ground. But these are often our areas
which in the past were part of depressions or or valleys that
would get flooded or would get higher moisture accumulation.
At some point in time, you have to take a very longer term view
of of the catchment and its dynamics.
And it may not be apparent that, you know, a basement which might
look very safe for a few years. Suddenly you're going to get
this interaction between surface and groundwater.
That's going to end up with flooding it.
And also it's going to pose a lot of danger to to citizens at
large and also possibly cause damages to the buildings
themselves. So we may have to rethink the
way in which certain types of buildings are allowed in some of
these vulnerable areas. I also want to ask you in terms
of cities, what is the one thing you look at in Indian cities now
and sort of hold your head one thing why this was done?
I think that the fact that we often did not look at at cities
as a functioning ecosystem because just like other
ecosystems have hydrology, ecology and everything, they all
have to to perform well in order to for that ecosystem to
function. We have to look at cities also
as an ecosystem. There are good things which have
happened in Bengaluru too, like there's much more awareness
about our lakes in the last few years and we do have a good
network of lakes. We some of them are well
connected, some are not. We do have some awareness that
many of our stormwater drains need to be maintained better
than some have been encroached upon.
There is some awareness about that from both on the government
side as well as in civil society, and we just need to
harness this awareness into action.
Jagdish Krishnaswamy says there's no lack of evidence
anymore that climate change and how we use land can cause floods
in cities. And that means cities can't put
off thinking about solutions anymore.
This interaction of this climate change with the land use has
already given us lots of generated lot of evidence that
we need to change at least for the future.
So any new infrastructure that comes up in cities and towns,
clearly we do not have the justification that we didn't
know what to do. And with the existing
infrastructure, yes, adaptation is going to be a little bit more
expensive and difficult, but we have to find ways to do that as
well. Today's episode was produced by
Jayaraj Singh, Sunai Marathi and Anuja Singh.
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