For many, Delhi is a city of flyovers, underpasses and tunnels where traffic crawls. Exasperating traffic jams, potholed and waterlogged roads, bad air and the stink that rises from open nullahs have become too common for Delhi residents who now seem resigned to deteriorating civic conditions. They are so busy trying to run their everyday lives amid Delhi’s perennial chaos that they don’t ponder how the city once on the move has come to a grinding halt.
New Delhi, India - July 9, 2024: NDMC worker trying to open the choked drains on a water-logged street after heavy rains at Rafi Marg in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday, July 9, 2024. Heavy rains caused major waterlogging in many areas, leaving residents and commuters stranded, and causing a huge traffic gridlock. Waterlogging in many areas has led to divert bus routes. (Photo by Raj K Raj/ Hindustan Times) (Hindustan Times)
If one calculates the imputed cost in man-hours of time lost in stalled traffic, it would be mind-boggling. People have to wait for hours on water-clogged roads in the national capital with no government department taking responsibility to resolve the daily chaos faced by residents. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the two parties that run the city, appear to be interested only in blaming each other for the mess.
The city’s inability to address its flood management was shockingly revealed after the recent tragedy in Old Rajendra Nagar where three students lost their lives. Students poured onto the streets in protest, and the incident reverberated in Parliament. Yet, the city remained indifferent, perpetuating a cycle of disaster and inaction that left Delhi on the brink of a catastrophe. In all, at least eight people have died due to rains and flooding in Delhi this season.
Delhi has seen unprecedented flooding in the past few years. This year, the area in Lutyens’ Delhi was impacted including the homes of senior legislators; posh localities like Golf Links and Defence Colony were flooded too.
Ingress of this magnitude has never occurred in the worst of monsoons since these localities were inhabited over five to seven decades ago. Additionally, low-density upscale localities like Friends Colony West, a stone’s throw from the river, now experience damaging floods.
Experts believe that large-scale destruction of the underground natural water channels, especially because of the construction of Pragati Maidan tunnels, the Bharat Mandapam underground parking spread over 40 acres, the Central Vista project and the redevelopment of government accommodation in many parts of Lutyens Delhi, is causing flooding in Delhi’s heart.
The Central Vista project, which attempts to gather nearly 60,000 government employees into the heart of this beleaguered capital, has caused 1,838 magnificent water-sequestering trees to be removed in just the first phase. These trees, on the erstwhile IGNCA campus, that now houses three of 10 proposed office buildings, were part of an inviolable deemed forest. One-third of Rajpath’s water-percolating lawns have been replaced with concrete pavements. All these works plus the underground Delhi metro network have damaged the natural groundwater flow systems and disturbed natural water tables.
Delhi’s natural water drainage system allowed water to flow into the Yamuna river. The Delhi Ridge arcs around the central and southern parts of the city – from the Northern Ridge near Delhi University to Rashtrapati Bhavan and the diplomatic area in the West, through Vasant Kunj in the Southwest, and all the way to Asola Bhatti and Tughlakabad in the East — and ensuring the flow of rainwater into Yamuna.
As with surface water, there is possibly a massive subterranean water flow throughout this region towards the Yamuna. Rajendra Nagar, where three young IAS aspirants died due to flooding of the basement in July, falls on the other side of a Ridge and gets heavy water flow, which was managed by the subterranean system taking water to Najafgarh drain. However, heavy construction including the building of basements has impacted the groundwater flow system, experts like Dunu Roy of Hazard Centre believe.
The neglect of the drains such as Barapullah Nallah and Kushak Nahar and very little desilting of drains before the monsoon by authorities have added to the flooding.
The Yamuna floodplains, in particular, have suffered due to arbitrary changes in land use patterns. Once serving as natural buffers to absorb excess water and mitigate flooding, with urban sprawl and the expansionist view of development, large portions of the floodplains have been converted into residential and commercial areas, drastically reducing their natural capacity to manage water.
“They evicted the slum residents on the grounds of unauthorised occupation and reclaimed the land as legal development,” said Roy. “In the first master plan, the floodplain was marked to remain free of any encroachments. With the second master plan, it became available to be used for development. The DDA is responsible for damaging the floodplain, having built the Commonwealth Games Village, structures for the Asian Games, and a CRPF camp. They avoid responsibility and instead blame the poor,” Roy said.
If the damage to natural water flows was not enough, the governance in Delhi appears to have taken a backseat because of an incessant jurisdictional fight between the Delhi government and Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena, a representative of the Union government in the national capital, who manages land and law and order.
The Delhi Jal Board, which manages the sewage system, and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, whose job is to ensure the cleaning of colony sewer lines and drains, are two primary bodies responsible for managing the sewer systems. The Delhi Development Authority and Public Works Department (PWD) also have a role to play.
Urban experts believe that coordination problems arising due to the multiplicity of authorities have been further compounded by the “intense” tussle between the Delhi government and Saxena over jurisdiction and authority, pushing governance into limbo. “We are caught in the devil and deep sea. Nobody wants to decide on anything as it invites umbrage of ministers or the LG,” said a senior Delhi government official, summarising the state of mind of the capital’s bureaucracy.
Amid this power struggle, with Delhi assembly polls less than six months away in February 2025, the public is bearing the brunt, facing persistent infrastructure problems without any constructive resolution of their problems.
Chetan Chauhan, national affairs editor, analyses the most important environment and political story in the country this week
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India.
A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital.
Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures.
As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories.
His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali.
He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues.
He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities.
Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power.
He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More
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