A repeat of 2000 floods: The four days Hyderabad stood still

From 21st September onwards, a heavy downpour - 23 times the daily average rainfall in monsoon - caused by a depression over the Bay of Bengal led to Hyderabad coming to a standstill for four days. This scenario would have been one of déjà vu for Hyderabadis, who witnessed similar flooding in 2000.

As life was paralysed with waterlogged roads and housing colonies in the country’s much touted IT hub, the two-year-old Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) government squarely blamed the chaos on encroachments on nalas, or storm water drains. “There are 28,000 encroachments on nalas in Hyderabad and some of them even in government complexes and we need a huge Rs 11,000 crore and 3-4 years time to rectify and remove them,” said Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (referred to as KCR), speaking to the media on 24th September. “There has been no innovative reorientation of the drain system since it was first done by Sir M Visvesvaraya in 1930 and for the last 60 years, subsequent governments have only made additions but not overhauled or redesigned it,” he said.

The north east monsoon rains under the influence of the low pressure in the Bay of Bengal last week came as a double shock to residents of Telangana’s capital. Having gone through harrowing days in the first week of September with heavy rain and flooding shutting schools for five days, the second shock was worse than expected. “We were just returning to normalcy but these four days of thundershowers have been real mean,” said Alex Smith, an American consultant of an IT giant. Smith had come to Hyderabad to conduct a seminar for Java professionals last week.

KCR said that the illegal buildings on drains and tank beds needed to be cleared immediately to improve the brand image of Hyderabad as a global city. “We will relocate all the poor living in such encroached land free of cost with double bedroom flats, but every illegal construction on nalas, tank beds etc will be demolished, come what may, and whoever it belongs to, whether politician, Minister or MLA,” said KCR, urging the media to back this campaign. “Citizens who provide information on violations will be suitably rewarded upto Rs 10,000,” he added.

Four platoons of the army and over 200 National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel with boats and choppers have been deployed for rescue and relief operations. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and police are now identifying old buildings - there are an estimated 2,200 or so of them - and vacating them anticipating their collapse after days of waterlogging.