Can India’s poorly planned cities, with their faulty storm water drains, withstand extreme weather?

By Vinita Govindarajan

Chennai’s storm water drains suffer from faulty construction and lack of planning, as a result of which many of them are of inadequate size and do not flow into natural water bodies, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has said in a report that throws light on the city’s struggles with flooding. These design flaws necessitated the reconstruction of 51 drains in 2014 at an additional expense of Rs 54.3 crores, the Local Bodies Audit Report, which was tabled in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on July 19, added.

No hydrological, meteorological or topographical study was conducted and thus, the storm water drains were built with little understanding of the course of water flow, rainfall patterns and surface terrain, according to the document.

These findings, city planners say, is yet more proof that urban infrastructure is rarely based on detailed and concerted studies and does little to improve the resilience of cities in the face of extreme weather conditions. Such as the deluge of December 2015, when what was termed the heaviest rainfall in 100 years left Chennai reeling for days – while 347 flood-related deaths were reported across Tamil Nadu since the onset of the North-East Monsoon in October that year. Then too, urban planners and activists had blamed the flooding of Chennai on poorly designed city infrastructure along with rampant conversion of wetlands for other uses.

This is the case with many Indian cities, not just Chennai.

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