This column often sounds like a broken record playing on loop, writing on the same topics time and again, but as the last edition of this very column noted, ours is a city that continues to keep giving. After an anxious month of waiting, with the last meaningful rains sometime in mid-October, the skies finally opened in the first week of December. It was not without drama, as the cyclone Ditwah kept everyone on tenterhooks as to its expected path and the damage it would cause. Just as everybody had given up on any meaningful rains for the city, it poured and poured. Stationed near the coast of Chennai for almost three days, the remnants of the cyclone which had ravaged Sri Lanka gave bountiful showers, assuaging fears of a water scarcity come the next summer. So how did the city fare this time?
Thanks to the fact that cyclone Ditwah did not bring about heavy gusts of wind, massive disruption to public and communications infrastructure (electricity, internet) that the city has witnessed in the recent past were largely absent. There was one high-profile incident though which caused some nervy moments to the people involved. The newly-opened Wonderla Chennai amusement park’s first day of operations saw several rides, including the coaster ride being impacted midway due to power outages. Thankfully these were localized outages (though one cannot help but wonder if it would have made better sense to wait until the storm had passed, literally speaking, for the amusement park to start operations). Many of the arterial roads in the city, including the ones notorious for it year after year, were largely free from waterlogging and most of the subways too functioned without any major disruptions, though the same could not be said of inner streets in areas where work to fix broken links in stormwater drains is yet to be completed. The Greater Chennai Corporation’s activity of digging new ponds inside the newly-reclaimed land from the Madras Race Club in Guindy too seems to have paid dividends going by media reports, as they filled to the brim and helped prevent runoff and flooding in the area.
However, it was the northern parts of the city that bore the severe brunt of the rains. With several stations such as Ennore, Manali New Town, Parrys Corner, Perambur and Basin Bridge recording readings much higher than other areas of the city, the rainfall yet again exposed the infrastructural deficiencies plaguing them. Inundation was reported in several localities in Perambur, Vyasarpadi and MKB Nagar, with water entering houses in a few streets as well. The Ganesapuram subway in Vyasarpadi, notorious for its flooding was yet again in the spotlight, with neck-deep water inundating it. It is worth noting that the work on a proposed flyover in the locality has been long delayed, leading to a pause in the stormwater drain activity. As always, the reason for the delay remains shrouded in mystery, with reports in the media seeming to suggest that there has been no request so far from the GCC through the State Government to the Government of India seeking clearance or a NOC for the construction of the flyover across the railway tracks.
That North Chennai continues to get the short end of the stick year after year is a sad commentary on how infrastructural progress remains tardy in the localities that make it up. Disgruntled residents complain that work on stormwater drains in some areas have been initiated only recently and remain incomplete. Surely, it must be a frustrating experience for them to watch other parts of the city spring back to normalcy quicker, when they themselves are busy bailing out water from their homes and assessing damages. That older parts of a city get left behind over a period, as development gets skewed in favour of newer parts due to various reasons is almost inevitable. But should that be an excuse for their continued lack of infrastructural progress? It is time to fast-track every aspect of work related to infrastructure upgradation in the northern parts of the city to ensure its citizens get better quality of life.