Bengaluru under water yet again
The monsoon is yet to hit the western coast of India. However, the pre-monsoon showers this week have brought Bengaluru, the IT capital of the country, to its knees. Major arterial roads were flooded, Hosur Road in the south was closed for traffic, and in several inundated residential localities, including Sri Sai Layout at Horamavu in the northeastern part of the city and S.T. Bed Layout in the southeast, boats were deployed to rescue people.
The scenes were reminiscent of the floods in the city in 2015, 2017, 2020, and 2022, all of which were during the peak monsoon season or in the post-monsoon period. But this time, the pre-monsoon showers have led to floods and mayhem. Four people have lost their lives in tree-fall, compound wall collapse, and electrocution incidents.
It is mostly in April that the civic body, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), wakes up to the monsoon, which usually hits the city in the first or second week of June. On May 5 this year, Additional Chief Secretary Tushar Giri Nath, who also holds the charge as Administrator of the BBMP, and the new Chief Commissioner M. Maheshwar Rao, held a meeting to review 'monsoon preparedness'. Civic officials were directed to pull their socks up and carry out works ahead of the onset of the monsoon. As per a statement issued after this meeting, of the 209 flood-prone spots, interventions were carried out at 166 and zonal officials were asked to visit and attend to 43 other flood-prone spots, dredge drains along 82 road stretches that were flagged as prone to flooding by the traffic police, and finish the annual maintenance work along 175-km-long storm-water drains (SWDs).
The fact that annual maintenance work of the crucial SWDs is still under way, just days ahead of the onset of monsoon, indicates that it is 'business as usual'.
Need for a paradigm shift
As the city prepares for the monsoon, the pre-monsoon showers — often accompanied by squalls and thunderstorms — wreak more damage. In May 2023, a woman died when the car she was travelling in got submerged in the K.R. Circle underpass, a stone's throw away from the Vidhana Soudha in the city centre.
Experts have called for 'a paradigm shift' and said the authorities should focus on preparing for pre-monsoon showers so that by April every year, the city is 'rain-ready'.
Data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Bengaluru, for 1990-2020 shows that rain begins to pick up in the city from April. During this period, while the mean total rainfall for March is 14.7 mm, it increases to 61.7 mm in April. Traditionally, the first rain is expected around Holi festival and later around Ugadi (March-April). These are called the mango showers as well. The first big rain of the year often ends up wreaking big damage as the civic administration has barely taken any measures to dredge drains along the roads and identify dangerous trees for removing or pruning them. The first rain is like a shock to the system.
IMD data shows that Bengaluru receives more rainfall in May (total mean 128.7 mm) than in the monsoon months of June (110.3 mm) and July (116.4 mm). The rainfall further peaks in August, September, and October, the wettest period of the year in Bengaluru. There are two peaks — May and later September.
C.S. Patil, Director of IMD, Bengaluru, says they consider March 1 to May 31 as the pre-monsoon period, June 1 to September 30 as the monsoon period, and October 1 to December 31 as the post-monsoon period. 'Heavy rain begins by May and continues till October in Bengaluru,' he says. The pre-monsoon showers in the April-May period are thunderstorms, accompanied by high-speed winds that can go up to 50 kmph and lightning, he says. 'Many trees fall during the pre-monsoon showers, mainly due to high-speed winds. During monsoon also we may see some tree-falls and thunderstorm events,' he says.
B.L.G. Swamy, Deputy Conservator of Forests, BBMP, says, 'Not just old and brittle trees, even many healthy green trees have also fallen during the recent rain.' The civic body cut down several trees and pruned many as a preventive measure in the last two months, he says. Despite a special drive from April to prune trees, the city has reported over 60 tree-fall incidents and one death in one such incident during the pre-monsoon showers in May.
In the last two years, the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company too has reported damage to over 9,000 electricity poles and around 1,000 transformers during the pre-monsoon months. An official from the power utility says, 'We lose more infrastructure in the pre-monsoon months because of the tree-fall incidents. Our poles can withstand up to 250 kg of weight, but when bigger trees fall, a breakdown is inevitable. Before the monsoon, we also take up pruning of trees and aerial bunching of cables.'
S. Vishwanath, water conservation activist, says, 'Anyone who observes the rain pattern in Bengaluru will realise that we need to be rain-ready before April. But there is a disconnect with this ground reality and the work taken up by the city administration, which wakes up to the monsoon by April, if we are lucky. We need to change the way we look at this and work backwards to the April deadline. What we do in April-May, has to be done in February-March.'
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who visited rain-affected areas in the city on May 21, pulled up officers for not being prepared for the showers.
Citizen activists point out patterns that show that many stretches of roads and certain pockets of the city, despite being flagged by multiple agencies and prior experience, get flooded every time it rains. 'Why does the same set of places get flooded every year? This only shows laxity of the civic administration. Either the civic body is not working towards practical workable interventions at these points, or unplanned development of the city seems to have made it impossible to avoid flooding,' says V. Ramprasad from Friends of Lakes, a citizen collective working to conserve the city's lakes.
Why do the same points get flooded every year?
For the past many years, Sri Sai Layout and S.T. Bed Layout, both developed by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), get flooded with even light rains, exposing not only the BBMP's laxity, but also the government's own skewed development model.
The May 18 downpour resulted in houses at Sri Sai Layout getting submerged in 4-5 ft of water. Residents, including children and the elderly, were rescued by boats and tractor trolleys deployed by the State Disaster Response Force. Neelufur Ahmed, a 45-year-old resident, expressed the community's growing anxiety: 'Rain, typically seen as beneficial, has become a source of fear.' The flooding disrupts daily life and causes significant property damage, making each rainstorm increasingly perilous for those living in the neighbourhood.
Despite the recurring nature of these floods, residents report a lack of effective drainage solutions and inadequate infrastructure. The BBMP Chief Commissioner, who visited the flooded locality in a tractor, promised a 'permanent solution', something the residents have been hearing from the authorities for years. Since 2020, the BBMP has been promising to drill two big vents at a railway bridge in the locality to drain out water. Rao also promised to speed up the process. During the recent city rounds of the Chief Minister, residents vented their ire at local MLA and former Urban Development Minister Byrathi Basavaraj for alleged 'apathy'.
The story is no different at S.T. Bed Layout, which has been developed on a tank bed, and Trinity Fortune Layout at Geddalahalli in north Bengaluru, the two other flood-prone areas. Sandra Noel, a resident of Trinity Fortune, says, 'We were scared until the BBMP authorities arrived, as the water level kept rising after the nearby drains were flooded. This was one of the worst floods the layout has seen and if the drain problem is not fixed, it will continue for years'.
The story is no different with flood-prone road stretches. Motorists, citing this week's rain, say the flood-prone roads identified by the civic body have not seen any transformation. 'The roads under the Hebbal flyover and Veerannapalya stretch on the adjoining Outer Ring Road have been flooding with every rain for years. Water gets stagnated even on the flyover. Multiple delegations of heads of all civic agencies have visited the flyover and these areas and carried out some interventions. But why does the area still flood during the rains?,' Sandeep Kumar, who takes the road to work every day, sought to know.
In the May 5 monsoon preparedness review meeting, Giri Nath and Rao said the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) had flagged 82 road stretches that often get flooded during the rains.
Sources say the BTP has flagged a total of 137 stretches that get inundated, of which they have also reportedly pointed out 14 stretches that are worse off and result in traffic disruptions. Problems with most of these 14 stretches have been persistent for over two years. For instance, the Veerannapalya stretch of the Outer Ring Road, the service road under the Hebbal flyover, Panathur underpass, Silk Board junction, Hosur Road, Electronics City flyover, Marathahalli, Agara 14th Main Road, and HSR Layout have been flooding with every rain for years. The same stretches were the worst affected during the recent rain.
'The primary problem at most of these stretches is clogged drains, which need regular maintenance. Most of these drains are clogged with garbage, plastic bottles, dry leaves, and such materials. But in some of these places, there is also a need for engineering interventions,' says a senior traffic police official.
B.S. Prahlad, Engineer-in-Chief of the BBMP, says that the civic body had carried out interventions at most of these places. 'There will always be a run-off on the road surface during the rain. We cannot avoid that altogether. What we are working on is to reduce the time it takes for the water to drain out,' he says.
What has worsened the situation this year is the many ongoing roadworks across the city, including white-topping of roads being taken up even in the central business district ahead of the rains. Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. has also dug up several key roads to push electricity cables underground, but the work is yet to be completed.
Are drains and lakes prepared to mitigate floods?
Meanwhile, activists point out that neither the city's drains nor the lakes are prepared for flood mitigation.
'By now, we should have ensured our lakes are only half full so that they can take in rainwater. But there seems to be no coordination between the BBMP, the agency with custody of these lakes, and the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board , which is filling the lakes with treated water. If the lakes are filled with treated water and are not desilted, their carrying capacity will be severely compromised. Our lakes are wonderful flood-mitigation barriers if used properly, but they are not,' says Ramprasad.
The carrying capacity of our SWDs is also severely compromised, he says. 'The carrying capacity of our drains has been reduced by at least 50%, due to the build-up of silt and flow of sewage, which is never accounted for. Naturally, they will overflow,' he says.
Kathyayini Chamaraj of CIVIC, a citizen collective, says the civic body is concretising all drains and not building enough percolation pits. 'There is no way the water will seep in. It stands there, taking away the drain's carrying capacity and also becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes,' she says. Not just the SWDs, but even the shoulder drains and culverts are not being desilted regularly, leading to flooding. We need to redesign our drain system to manage our kind of monsoon, she says.
Prahlad, who also holds charge as Chief Engineer, SWD, BBMP, says they are removing silt and carrying out maintenance work of SWDs at a war pace by deploying excavators, tractors, and tippers, and the drains will be ready by the onset of monsoon.
(With inputs from Jahnavi T.R.)
(Edited by Giridhar Narayan)
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