Forget 'smart' new cities; India needs old ones to be less dumb
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has grand designs to build 100 futuristic 'smart' cities in India, but as this week's devastating flooding in Chennai shows, fixing today's accident-prone metropolises appears to be the more pressing task.
Locals are in no doubt as to why a mix of flood waters and sewage is swilling neck-deep around parts of the southern city of 6 million people after weeks of monsoon rains culminated in a 345 mm (14-inch) cloudburst in 24 hours.
"There is nowhere for the water to go because of unchecked building activity," said VR Devika, who fled her ground-floor apartment to seek refuge with her upstairs neighbours.
"All the lake areas have been converted into housing colonies," added the 61-year-old, who runs an arts charity.
What started out as a natural disaster in Chennai soon became a more serious man-made one, with experts blaming bad urban planning and rampant "encroachment" by fly-by-night property developers for making the situation worse.
Similar floods struck Mumbai in 2005 and in Srinagar in 2014. There, as in Chennai, construction blocked storm water channels and reduced the capacity of reservoirs designed to soak up unseasonal rains.
"As cities grow, with a nod and a wink, unauthorised construction along these channels and lakes chokes water flow," said Shailesh Pathak, executive director at Bhartiya Group, which has its own smart city project in Bengaluru, runs a special economic zone and is expanding into low-cost housing
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