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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