Massive post-rain flooding has forced aggrieved residents to hit the streets and demand resolution of systemic town planning issues. While the police case on a flood victim for foul language and wierd stance will add fuel to this political fire..Most of Vadodara was inundated as the water level of the Vishwamitri river rose.
In the summer of 2014, Vadodara city in central Gujarat had its moment in the sun when Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate then, contested from here along with Varanasi. Modi won from Vadodara by a margin of 570,000 votes but relinquished the seat.
A decade later, as rains ravaged the entire state of Gujarat, residents of Vadodara descended on the streets, wearing black outfits and carrying placards warning the BJP of a ‘Ayodhya-like defeat’ if the ruling party did not resolve the town planning issues of the metropolis. These systemic problems are now being blamed for the massive flooding in late August and first week of September.
On August 27-29, Vadodara witnessed its worst-ever floods in decades as the crocodile-infested Vishwamitri river, passing through the heart of the city, rose over 37 feet due to heavy rains—12 feet beyond the danger mark. Almost every part of the city was inundated for over 24 hours and many parts remained under water for almost two days, causing over a dozen deaths and necessitating the evacuation of thousands of people from the low-lying areas.
But the worst impact of the floods emerged days after the water receded. Houses and commercial establishments reported heavy losses of vehicles, valuables and household items. Arterial roads had huge cave-ins, leading to traffic jams and regular movement hampered. Several videos of crocodiles crawling into houses and shops went viral. One particular video showed two men taking a rescued crocodile on a two-wheeler. News agency Press Trust of India reported that at least 24 crocodiles had been rescued from the residential areas after the water receded.
Public ire spilled onto the roads as residents started dumping their household trash on the roads even as routine civic services struggled. BJP leaders and corporators as well as MLAs Manisha Vakil and Balkrishna Shukla faced people’s angst and were asked to leave when they visited residential societies.
A week later, residents carrying placards and threatening an ‘Ayodhya-like loss’ for the BJP went to the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) office and confronted the commissioner Dilip Rana. They demanded the implementation of a long-pending town planning scheme that is supposed to streamline development projects and ease waterlogging.
Just weeks before the flooding, the Union ministry of Jal Shakti had approved the decade-old Vaho Vishwamitri project, a holistic river revival plan with a budget of Rs 1,200 crore. It involves the development and maintenance of water bodies, tributaries, lakes and ponds associated with the Vishwamitri, effluent management, ban on dumping of debris in the ravines and development of organic farming along the river bank. Environmentalists feel that had this project been approved earlier, the flooding could have been avoided.
A letter to the VMC commissioner, signed by 18 activists from the region, highlights unplanned urban development along the Vishwamitri as the root cause of the flooding. “Reasons [for the flooding] being an unprepared city that choked and blocked every natural water drain and reduced absorption and carrying capacity… Mega infrastructure projects like the Vadodara-Ahmedabad Express Highway, the eight-lane Delhi-Mumbai Express Highway, and the Bullet Train project have obstructed and altered the interlinked natural river system through temporary, semi-temporary and permanent interventions, with no or inadequate precautionary measures during their construction,” states the letter.
Environmental activist Rohit Prajapati, who has written multiple letters to the VMC on the subject in the past five years, says the authorities have—as a token measure—removed debris from selected ravines along the banks of the Vishwamitri even as dumping continues. “The ravines and wetlands are being systematically destroyed and filled with debris and municipal solid waste to reclaim land for further ‘development’,” laments the letter as the main reason for the flooding.
