Firstpost Investigation: How Chennai, hungry for growth, devoured itself

Reporting by Tarique Anwar, a****nalysis by AK Roy

The preceding segment of Firstpost’s reporting from Chennai examined lapses in the Corporation of Chennai’s (CoC) response to flood warnings and disregard for the damage unfettered construction would inflict on the city. The second part of the investigation draws attention to the CoC’s handling of the city’s drainage system, and concludes with an examination of the Chennai City Development Plan-2009, by AK Roy, senior fellow, Centre for Public Affairs and Critical Theory, Shiv Nadar University.

Part I

Chennai has had a history of heavy rain. Every few years, heavy cyclones and the monsoon unleash massive quantities of water on the city.

In 1969, 1976, 1985, 1996, 1998 and 2005, heavy rains pounded Chennai but the city coped with relative ease.

In 2004, Chennai’s response to tsunami was considered adequate and among the best in India, a year later, the city coped well with 270 mm of rain in a single day.

This year was different, though. Two days of rainfall at the beginning of December inundated the city, killing 300 persons, rendering thousands homeless and turning the Adyar river into a furious tormentor.

What went wrong?

Experts argue the disaster was entirely man-made; a result of flawed urban planning, violation of laws and lethargic administration that allowed the gradual disappearance and encroachment of water bodies and drains that could have absorbed the nature’s fury.

“Urban development has been reduced to chaotic construction. Every available plot of land is being used for construction to make a huge amount of money. In the course of construction, the needs of nature are being blatantly ignored,” former IAS officer MG Devasahayam, who is national consultant for the preparation of revised city plan, Chennai, told Firstpost.

December’s flood, he says, establishes a clear link between “corruption, disaster, destruction and deaths”.

Environmentalist Satyarupa Shekhar, director – government outreach and advisory services, Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group, agrees.

“It is wrong to attribute the flood to climate change. It is a result of our inability to adhere to building norms and blatant violation of master plan," she told Firstpost.

Chennai has four river basins — Adyar, Cooum, Kosasthalayar and Kovalam. “We are increasingly constructing buildings on rivers. Adyar and Cooum have several infrastructural projects. The government is allocating land to slum tenements, which are also on water bodies and their catchment area. So along the OMR (Old Mahabalipuram Road; now known as Rajiv Gandhi Salai), we find Semmancheri and Perumbakkam, huge slum tenements, which accommodate 30,000-40,000 families," she said.

As pointed out by Firstpost, the city lacks an efficient underground drainage system . More important, there exists no data on the location of Chennai’s drains and the years they have been in service. “If we do not have the lifecycle of the drains, we do not know when it is supposed to be maintained. When should we be repairing, where should we be creating the new ones and how are these connected to the canals and oceans?” Shekhar said.

The bad news is that if the government doesn’t act now, such calamities could recur.

Experts believe the government must focus on the sub-surface infrastructure and revive the drains and water bodies. Since it is located on the coast, cyclones, heavy rains and copious monsoon can’t be ruled out.

They argue that to come up with a proper drainage plan the government first needs to map the existing infrastructure–both over and below ground. There is lot of knowledge about the city but it is scattered and most of it is not in the government domain.

The city is served by 2,847 km of roads; 1,660 km of these are supported by storm water drains. This network was to be strengthened with funds allocated as part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Reports prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General in 2013 and 2014 charge that the city corporation either underutilised these funds or did not employ them at all. According to the report, the state was to provide 15 percent of funds required to repair drains and the city corporation 50 percent (with the Centre accounting up for the rest). By this arithmetic, the civic body was to set aside Rs 290.71 crore for the purpose. The CAG report states that it had spent Rs 13.77 crore till March 31, 2012.

Part II

Problems demand solutions. Solutions depend on how the problem is viewed. The moment the Chennai floods become a ‘problem’, the ‘solutions’ depend on the problem’s definition.

One of the chief causes of the floods, many observers agree, is that far too much reservoir water was released, far too late, and without any warning, hence “management” was faulty. But Chembarambakkam tank was originally constructed as a source of irrigation and, as agriculture diminished, the maximising logic of the market took over the tank for supply of water to Chennai. Now an irrigation tank is designed such that the exit is as high as possible to maximise the irrigated land, but low enough to maximise the water available.

Urban water supply, however, requires an exit as low as possible to provide maximum water. Thus, management follows different patterns for irrigation, urban supply, and flood control. The priority for agriculture is to keep the exit closed during the rains so that water is available for the next six months. For urban water supply, it is to hold water for a year. But for flood management, the priority is to keep the exit open as late as possible to provide maximum space to absorb the excess water.

Even if the gates had been opened earlier, the Adyar was anyway flooded for the previous two weeks. In all cases, the overarching priority is that the dam should not fail. Which management priority will prevail depends on which ‘value’ is maximised.

Now for the second solution of removing “illegal encroachments”: The imagery is of scruffy low-bred rascals who grab little plots of land along the river. But what about the larger (and more inexorable) market-friendly economy? Chennai airport, already situated next to the Adyar, had one long primary runaway until 2005. But the process of urban renewal and the dream of a “world-class” image drove the airport to expand and elongate a little-used secondary runway that pointed straight at the Adyar.

In 2006, the foundation for a new terminal building was laid and the shorter runaway shot across the Adyar over a concrete platform with a passage under it. However, by 2008 itself it became obvious that the passage was too narrow as swirling waters from heavy rains piled up against the concrete, entering homes of Manapakkam and Kolapakkam residents to the north. On the south, the airport authorities built a wall to prevent the water from entering their ground – which further compounded the problem in the north.

Former pilots and airport officers had warned then that the wall would not solve the problem but their voices remained unheeded. Consequently the entire airport was so badly flooded this time that planes were grounded for almost a week.

That leads us to the third solution of “better planning”. An examination of the 2009 City Development Plan (CDP) prepared by GHK uncovers that it is an update of the 2006 CDP and the 2008 Second Master Plan, based “on a participatory review of the investment program to be submitted under the JNNURM funding”.

Did this participatory review take into account the views of the 70 percent of workers in the informal sector and the 23 percent of the residents who live in the slums? We don’t know but the CDP does begin with a quote from Plato: “Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.” How does GHK mediate this “war”?

A critical question, since GHK is “a private, Oklahoma City-based natural gas and oil company”, which has diversified into work on “social, economic, and environmental issues to help organisations … reduce costs, maximise benefits, and do more with less”. Their grand declaration that “planning and development must consider the environment as the fundamental base layer for sustainable social and economic development”, then falls victim to this dream of maximising benefits.

Why a dream? Because the prioritised investments in waterways and drainage are projected to total Rs 53,359 million, while only Rs 5,068 million (nine percent) are actually available. The same percentage rules for water supply, sewerage, and transportation. So, under the curious heading of “Environment, Climate Change and the GDP”, the recommendation that balances this deficit is “Optimisation of developed lands and infrastructure is put forward as the priority investment to maximise existing and limit the need for new ‘greenfield’ developments”.

In other words morbid money, maximum returns, and miserly greed are the basis for planning.

Problems demand solutions. But solutions that do not recognise what is the problem will only breed more problems. The post-1990s vision of the city as an engine for maximising growth and return on investments is at the heart of the dehumanising model of development that plagues not only Chennai, but cities all over India, and perhaps the globe.