World’s greatest cities were founded on the banks of rivers (or other water sources such as lakes) to provide for not only drinking water but other basic amenities such as sanitation and transportation. What worked as a boon for our first urban dwellers has become a bane for our present cities.
While rivers flood due to natural causes from time to time, what has made this natural phenomenon a disaster is its increasing frequency and intensity due to interference by man.
Indian cities are growing at an unprecedented speed. Every day thousands migrate to urban areas in search for a better life creating pressure on the existing resources.
In the absence of an adequate infrastructure of drainage, sanitation and roads, there has been an increasing trend of urban flood disasters in India over the past several years. The most notable amongst them are Hyderabad in the year 2000, Mumbai in 2005, Kolkata in 2007, Srinagar in 2014 and Chennai in 2015. The issue is now once again making headlines due to last week’s floods in Mumbai.
While floods in a city indirectly affect almost every resident as communication and transportation are disturbed, low and middle-income groups are likely to be affected more. These groups are more vulnerable due to their limited capabilities to deal with a disaster because of poor quality and insecure housing; inadequate infrastructure; and lack of provision for health care, emergency services, and disaster risk reduction.
Impact Of Climate Change
Urban flood usually starts with very heavy and localised downpour which the existing infrastructure cannot manage. This severely disrupts public transport, electricity and communications and also plays havoc with the urban economy.
Heavy rainfall is always a complex geographical phenomenon and cannot be attributed to a single cause. For example, the 2015 flood in Chennai was explained associated the El Niño effect on the North East monsoon. The flooding of Mumbai in 2005 involved an interplay of four geographical factors, mainly the development of a low-pressure area over the northwest Bay of Bengal, intensification of the monsoon, strengthening of the Arabian Sea current of the monsoon, and the super positioning of a meso-scale off-shore vortex over northeast Arabian Sea (localised heavy clouds over the sea).
Global climatic changes have a profound and long term impact on natural phenomenon such as those mentioned above, thus disturbing their intensity, duration, frequency and spatial distribution. Climate scientists have long warned about changing monsoon rainfall patterns in India.
A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nation’s climate change body has argued an increased risk of flooding and alterations in rainfall patterns due to global warming. As opposed to the situation a few decades back, there are now more incidences of high-intensity rainfall concentrated over a short span of time and area instead of a steady monsoon season.
Is Unplanned Growth The Real Culprit?
What makes the effects of global climatic changes even more severe is the inability of our cities to cope up with the changing situation. Most of the sewerage and drainage network is old and unable to deal with the new challenges faced by our cities. They cannot handle the volume of water and are often blocked due to structural faults or pollution due to unwanted materials (plastic and other non-biodegradable).
As new constructions come up on hitherto permeable land, the runoff into drains increases. With the land hunger increasing, most of the cities also see real estate development encroach upon floodplains, thus obstructing floodways and disturbing the natural flow the water body.
Urbanisation thus has five major hydrological effects:
(1) increased water demand, often exceeding the available natural resources
(2) increased wastewater, burdening rivers and lakes and endangering the ecology
(3) increased peak flow
(4) reduced infiltration and
(5) reduced groundwater recharge, increased use of groundwater, and diminishing base flow of streams.
Planning For Resilient Cities For Future
The Government of India is a signatory to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015.
We are thus committed to mainstream disaster risk reduction by investing in resilient infrastructure, urban planning, land use, etc. to not only reduce the risk of flooding but reduce the losses of lives and livelihoods in case it occurs. While India has adopted this voluntary framework almost two years back, changes on the ground regarding civic planning, infrastructure and disaster mitigation is yet to be seen.
Much of the blame for unpreparedness of Indian cities to deal with natural hazards is put on municipal corporations. While most of the municipalities have been shamefully negligent of their duties, they alone cannot be blamed. The planning and development authorities are under the state governments (urban planning is a state subject). As a result, those who plan the cities have no accountability and those who are elected have no authority. While globally, cities are driving responses to deal with climate change, devolution of power to the city mayor and municipalities remain a mere formality.
Thus what is needed is a locally driven strategy to combat climate change and disaster management. It’s time that environment and disaster management are mainstreamed into the urban planning process in acknowledgement of the reality of climate change. Currently, the response of our city governments is ad hoc, and responsive, i.e. steps are taken to fix the damage caused by a calamity rather than planning in advance.
Complex challenges like this require a multi sectoral approach which should be ideally designed with inputs from multiple stakeholders. There must be an integration of climate sensitive sectors such as water, roads, sewerage, housing and so on rather than the current fractured approach of various departments. Local level planning would also make the process more flexible to deal with on ground challenges.
Recent Posts
- In the Large States category (overall), Chhattisgarh ranks 1st, followed by Odisha and Telangana, whereas, towards the bottom are Maharashtra at 16th, Assam at 17th and Gujarat at 18th. Gujarat is one State that has seen startling performance ranking 5th in the PAI 2021 Index outperforming traditionally good performing States like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, but ranks last in terms of Delta
- In the Small States category (overall), Nagaland tops, followed by Mizoram and Tripura. Towards the tail end of the overall Delta ranking is Uttarakhand (9th), Arunachal Pradesh (10th) and Meghalaya (11th). Nagaland despite being a poor performer in the PAI 2021 Index has come out to be the top performer in Delta, similarly, Mizoram’s performance in Delta is also reflected in it’s ranking in the PAI 2021 Index
- In terms of Equity, in the Large States category, Chhattisgarh has the best Delta rate on Equity indicators, this is also reflected in the performance of Chhattisgarh in the Equity Pillar where it ranks 4th. Following Chhattisgarh is Odisha ranking 2nd in Delta-Equity ranking, but ranks 17th in the Equity Pillar of PAI 2021. Telangana ranks 3rd in Delta-Equity ranking even though it is not a top performer in this Pillar in the overall PAI 2021 Index. Jharkhand (16th), Uttar Pradesh (17th) and Assam (18th) rank at the bottom with Uttar Pradesh’s performance in line with the PAI 2021 Index
- Odisha and Nagaland have shown the best year-on-year improvement under 12 Key Development indicators.
- In the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu and, the bottom three performers are Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar.
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers were Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Mizoram; and, the bottom three performers are Manipur, Assam and Meghalaya.
- Among the 60:40 division States, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are the top three performers and Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Delhi appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland; and, the bottom three performers are Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh
- Among the 60:40 division States, Goa, West Bengal and Delhi appear as the top three performers and Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Bihar appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura were the top three performers and Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh were the bottom three performers
- West Bengal, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were the top three States amongst the 60:40 division States; while Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan appeared as the bottom three performers
- In the case of 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Assam and Tripura were the top three performers and Nagaland, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand featured as the bottom three
- Among the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and the bottom three performers are Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Goa
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland and the bottom three performers are Manipur and Assam
In a diverse country like India, where each State is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct, measuring Governance becomes increasingly tricky. The Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021) is a scientifically rigorous, data-based framework that measures the quality of governance at the Sub-national level and ranks the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India on a Composite Index (CI).
States are classified into two categories – Large and Small – using population as the criteria.
In PAI 2021, PAC defined three significant pillars that embody Governance – Growth, Equity, and Sustainability. Each of the three Pillars is circumscribed by five governance praxis Themes.
The themes include – Voice and Accountability, Government Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption.
At the bottom of the pyramid, 43 component indicators are mapped to 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are relevant to the States and UTs.
This forms the foundation of the conceptual framework of PAI 2021. The choice of the 43 indicators that go into the calculation of the CI were dictated by the objective of uncovering the complexity and multidimensional character of development governance
The Equity Principle
The Equity Pillar of the PAI 2021 Index analyses the inclusiveness impact at the Sub-national level in the country; inclusiveness in terms of the welfare of a society that depends primarily on establishing that all people feel that they have a say in the governance and are not excluded from the mainstream policy framework.
This requires all individuals and communities, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have an opportunity to improve or maintain their wellbeing. This chapter of PAI 2021 reflects the performance of States and UTs during the pandemic and questions the governance infrastructure in the country, analysing the effectiveness of schemes and the general livelihood of the people in terms of Equity.
Growth and its Discontents
Growth in its multidimensional form encompasses the essence of access to and the availability and optimal utilisation of resources. By resources, PAI 2021 refer to human resources, infrastructure and the budgetary allocations. Capacity building of an economy cannot take place if all the key players of growth do not drive development. The multiplier effects of better health care, improved educational outcomes, increased capital accumulation and lower unemployment levels contribute magnificently in the growth and development of the States.
The Pursuit Of Sustainability
The Sustainability Pillar analyses the access to and usage of resources that has an impact on environment, economy and humankind. The Pillar subsumes two themes and uses seven indicators to measure the effectiveness of government efforts with regards to Sustainability.
The Curious Case Of The Delta
The Delta Analysis presents the results on the State performance on year-on-year improvement. The rankings are measured as the Delta value over the last five to 10 years of data available for 12 Key Development Indicators (KDI). In PAI 2021, 12 indicators across the three Pillars of Equity (five indicators), Growth (five indicators) and Sustainability (two indicators). These KDIs are the outcome indicators crucial to assess Human Development. The Performance in the Delta Analysis is then compared to the Overall PAI 2021 Index.
Key Findings:-
In the Scheme of Things
The Scheme Analysis adds an additional dimension to ranking of the States on their governance. It attempts to complement the Governance Model by trying to understand the developmental activities undertaken by State Governments in the form of schemes. It also tries to understand whether better performance of States in schemes reflect in better governance.
The Centrally Sponsored schemes that were analysed are National Health Mission (NHM), Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mahatma Gandh National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SmSA) and MidDay Meal Scheme (MDMS).
National Health Mission (NHM)
INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (ICDS)
MID- DAY MEAL SCHEME (MDMS)
SAMAGRA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (SMSA)
MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEME (MGNREGS)