The recent flooding in Bengaluru has highlighted the plight of our cities in the face of heavy rain. If we want more instruction we only need to look towards our western borders — one third of Pakistan is flooded.
Gurugram had its own cataclysmic flooding event on July 28, 2016 when only moderately high rain led to extensive flooding and traffic jams and a name for the event – Gurujam. This focused policy attention and several steps were taken thereafter, primarily focusing on releasing chokepoints in the Badshahpur nullah, the main arterial seasonal river of the city. In 2020, flooding of roads, underpasses, and parking basements along the Golf Course Road re-focussed attention of our civic agencies and civil society on the upstream areas of the Aravallis. Simple steps such as creating checkdams in stream beds in the Aravallis, and speed-cum-runoff breakers on upstream roads to divert rainwater runoff into the nullahs have helped reduce the runoff reaching the city. Still, waterlogging and floods have become a recurring feature every monsoon. What should we learn from our experience and from others’ ?
Gurugram has two primary local water problems – declining groundwater levels, and extensive waterlogging and flooding in the city. The solutions for both these problems are largely the same – protecting the spaces such as the waterbodies, wetlands and nullahs that can hold and recharge the water, and protecting and especially lowering the green spaces such as home gardens, parks, and green belts so that their capacity to temporarily hold some of this rainwater and recharge the same is increased.
Unfortunately, the tendency to seek engineering solutions by squeezing and concretizing nullahs, paving green belts and gardens, and even parts of parks is pervasive and deeply entrenched. Even a basic breathing space of a radius of 3 feet around tree trunks, that would also recharge water and sustain our trees is rarely left while making pavements, despite orders from the NGT. The appreciation of nature-based green and blue solutions is still at a nascent and exploratory stage.
With climate change, rainfall events will increase in intensity and frequency, leading to more downpours in the city. In that scenario, the city needs to evaluate colony and sector wise rain-water holding capacity and enhance the same. Secondly, our civic agencies need to be assisted to prepare Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to protect and de-concretize the green and blue natural infrastructure. Third, our town and country planning departments need to be sensitized to review our city zonal plans and master plans for their capacity to deal with extreme rainfall events and to protect green belts and large open spacess. Finally, at a regional level — the Natural Conservation Zone in the NCR Regional Plan 2021— which provides zoning protection from construction for the Aravallis, forest areas and waterbodies and floodplains in the NCR, and have been deleted in the new draft Regional Plan 2041, needs to be restored.
Chetan Agarwal is an independent environment and forest analyst based in Gurugram.
