The month of May this year has seemed less like a summer and more like a monsoon month. New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and other cities have experienced heavy showers, thunderstorms and incessant rain, and Mumbai has been warned of a cyclone too. Not surprisingly, the rain-related stories followed: people died, homes and shops were flooded, transport systems were disrupted, flights were delayed, road traffic came to a standstill, streets overflowed with rainwater and garbage, and so on. The actual monsoon months might bring more of the misery. The question is why the daily rhythms of life in Indian cities come apart at lightning speed when it rains, whether in May or later. It is simply because cities are not prepared for monsoon.
On the face of it, city governments, even chief ministers, go through the motions of monsoon preparedness, instruct officials (whether the officials wait for instructions to do a routine task is another question) and ensure that their photos, overseeing cleaning of clogged drains, are splashed all over. This is not monsoon preparedness. If a city puts up with the same set of rain-related issues one monsoon after another, it demonstrates not monsoon preparedness but the lack of it. Neither information systems to keep people tuned to the latest data nor flood prevention measures to prevent deaths and minimise disruptions have kept pace with the change in India’s monsoon trends. In fact, they have fallen woefully short in addressing the June-to-September monsoon, as has been the case over decades.
Monsoon preparedness is, or should be, a basic element of urban governance but has become an annual joke. It should ideally cover the entire gamut from cleaning storm water drains to allow rainwater to flow out to listing safe houses or safe sites in case of a once-in-a-century rainfall and include everything in between, such as maintaining a 24x7 tab on transport systems, sending out regular alerts and warnings, marshalling private resources to keep people safe, ensuring proper waste management, making work-from-home mandatory when total rainfall exceeds a certain level in six hours and so on.
The larger and long-term issues of climate mitigation and adaptation are important too, such as the prevention of cutting trees and hacking green areas, which can absorb rainwater and reduce the runoff, and the restoration of rivers and lakes in cities to their original condition to increase their carrying capacity. Climate-related monsoon preparedness is not only necessary but critical now because studies, including by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, have shown that rainfall intensity, patterns, and deficits have changed in more than half of tehsils all over India. Data and trends now demand watertight monsoon preparedness at the local level too. There’s no excuse for any part of India, any city, to be less than fully prepared for the annual monsoon.
