Chennai Catastrophe and India’s Urban Mess
Tathagata Chatterji
The recent flood havoc in Chennai
again bring to the fore the lackadaisical way our cities are planned, built,
managed and governed. It could be argued that the deluge that Chennai had to
endure for over a week was unprecedented – swept away meteorological records
held over the past hundred years and thus could not have been predicted. It
could also be argued that better managed cities in developed countries too
occasionally get inundated – as Brisbane was in 2011. It is of course easy to
take recourse of statistical data and dismiss the entire episode as a freak accident
– an occasional sad scene in a romantic comedy - to be forgotten and swept away
from the public memory as the streets are spruced-up and shambles of everyday
ordinariness returns.
While the above arguments allow
our civic officials, administrative bureaucracy and political decision makers
live in their delusionary world of short-termism, the floods in big cities are
to large extent due to the monstrous, uncontrolled way our cities are shaping
up – gobbling up flood plains, wet lands, swamps and marshes in their outer
peripheries, chocking drains, dumping wastes and turning rivers into sewers. The
Population of the extended Chennai Metropolitan Area has almost doubled over
the past thirty years, from 4.6 million in 1981 to 8.65 million in 2011. While population
increase had been rather modest within the municipal limits of Chennai city,
much of the growth has come about at the rural areas and satellite towns at the
peri-urban fringe of the city, often disregarding the fragile eco system of the
region, filling lakes, salt pens, and drainage aquifers. The most dynamic
developments could be seen along the southern fringe, which includes the OMR
(Old Mahabalipuram Road) – the famed IT hub of the city. The economic boom of
Chennai, powered by growth in IT services and the automobile industry has
contributed to astronomical rise in real estate rates and has put great
pressure on land supply. Needless to say, most of these developments have come
about by circumventing the Master Plan, Coastal Regulatory Zone, Environment
Act and other development control guidelines, through the unholy nexus between
the contractors-builders-civic officials and politicians. The environmental
implications are here for all of us to see.
Chennai however is not alone in
facing the nature's fury for man’s folly. Mumbai gets submerged with tiresome
regularity, year after year, so do Kolkata, Dhaka, Bangkok, Jakarta, Ho Chi
Minh City and Manila. Cyclone Hud-hud ravaged Vishakhapatnam a few months back,
as did Cyclone Alia batter the coasts of Bengal in 2009. Connect the dots and risk
pattern of floods, tropical cyclones and storm surges facing the dense coastal
settlements of Asia emerge. Recent inundation of Chennai is part of this dismal
scenario that the Climate scientists and international agencies like the World
Bank and the United Nations had been warning since 2007. In India, the National Disaster Management Authority has framed Urban
Flood Guidelines which however are yet to be integrated with the Master Plans
and City Development Plans in Chennai and most other cities confronting the
risks. We have a plethora of plans but no clear cut integrated approach towards
their implementation.
The
extended metropolitan belt of Chennai, spans across three districts, covers
1189 square km area, includes the metropolitan corporation of Chennai city and
seven other municipalities and several village panchayets. There are proposals
to expand the boundary of the metropolitan region to a giant megalopolis of
8878 sq.km – to match those of its regional rivals Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Currently it is the fourth largest urban-economy of India and has a population
of over 8.65 million – that is larger than many smaller European countries like
Austria or Switzerland. But the question is, who is really responsible for
managing and governing this mega-urban region; is it the Chief Minister of Tami
Nadu or the Mayor of Chennai? And then there is a plethora of agencies which
provide the piped services or run the transportation networks.
In the
best managed cities in the world, it is usually the Mayors, who call the shots.
But overlapping jurisdictions and tangled interfaces has made the job of
managing the big cities particularly messy in India. Unless we address these
structural deficiencies in our planning and governance system, the chances of
building resilience of our cities against natural disasters will continue to
remain problematic.
Professor, School of Planning & Architecture, Vijayawada
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