• share
• share
• share

Is the IT City rain-ready?

Is Bengaluru really rain-ready after a scorching summer? It seems pretty ironical to ask this question after all that city residents went through in the last one month while facing a crippling water shortage and the searing summer heat in the afternoons.

On Monday, the skies opened up over the IT City and left many parts flooded with traffic in the main thoroughfares reduced to a crawl.

Trees, most of them past their prime, collapsed in the gusty winds severely impeding traffic flow in the busy evening hours.

Most underpasses were also flooded with the water just refusing to drain away raising confounding doubts about whether drain outlets and the rainwater drains themselves had been adequately cleaned to allow water to flow away.

Memories of the incident last year when a young woman drowned to death in her car in a city underpass are still fresh in people’s minds.

So the nagging question which is begging for an answer is whether enough has been done to make sure Bengaluru is equipped to deal with the monsoon rain which should be here in a month from now?

With the meteorological department predicting above normal rains for the country as a whole, there is obviously a need for the city to take enough precautions to reduce the inconvenience to the travelling public.

And this is all the more needed when kids will be setting out for school early June.

The state government no doubt is running short of funds having spent massive amounts for implementing the five guarantee schemes.

Going by what one sees on the streets, not much seems to have been done to set right the potholes or repair broken drains; or trim the branches of trees which could come crashing down in the monsoon winds.

The work pertaining to getting the city monsoonready usually begins in the months of April-May when water and power officials swing into action to make sure that dangling electric lines are cleared and the drainage system is made as perfect as possible.

Open drains are usually covered up to prevent gullible citizens from falling into the swirling water in these drains.

Power connections are tightened to make sure they do not get faulty once the rain hits them; Rajakaluves are cleaned so that the huge volumes of rainwater drain away as fast as possible.

The potholes are filled so that motorist and twowheeler riders do not drive into them risking an accident which could leave people grievously injured.

Smooth power and water supply are essentials which a big city like Bengaluru just cannot do without whether it be the summer months or the rainy season.

We just cannot have power failing when the first rains are here and that is something which seems to be increasingly happening in the IT City.

While people can now start forgetting the traumatic water shortage which haunted them for so many weeks, one hopes the many lakes the city has, have been cleaned so that they can serve as storage points for the rainwater.

There is no doubting the fact that the guarantee schemes have brought huge relief to the people of the state, groaning under the weight of spiralling prices, joblessness and transport and power costs.

Their saving have been considerably enhanced after the Siddaramaiah government implemented the schemes and the saved amount can now be channelized into other productive avenues.

But then substantial work needs to be done to improve city infrastructure not only in Bengaluru but also in other cities across the state.

That obviously calls for financial wizardry that does not seem to be an impossible task for someone like Chief Minister Siddaramaiah who has crafted many an ingenious Budget in the years he has handled the finance portfolio.