Opinion The plight of India’s flooded tech capital is striking. But Bengaluru’s predicament is unfortunately not unique

As Bengaluru reels under floods, schools are shut and tech firms have urged employees to work from home. Power and water supply have been hit in many areas. Residents in expensive enclaves have had to be evacuated from their flats and villas and CEOs of MNCs reportedly had to wade through water and even travel on tractors to work. There is flooding in the Outer Ring Road area, which hosts tech firms that bring in revenue of billions of dollars annually. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMK) Chief Commissioner has blamed the extreme weather conditions — this is reportedly the city’s second wettest rainy season in 50 years. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai attributed it to the “maladministration” and “unplanned” development under previous governments. There is truth in that explanation but the CM did not reveal what his government has done to break from the past, or correct it. The unfortunate fact is that the Bommai administration has been busy with polarising issues such as hijab in educational institutions, or in stoking spectres of conversion, rather than attending to Bengaluru’s crumbling infrastructure.

Of course, the current predicament in Bengaluru is not an exception. The scenes seen in India’s Silicon Valley this week have been witnessed earlier in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Guwahati, Kochi and several other cities and towns in India. Each town/city may cite local factors for the collapse of infrastructure in the face of extreme events, but a common thread runs through all the stories. A large number of urban wetlands that soak up rainwater have been built upon, including in Bengaluru. Corrupt civic bodies are guilty of treating cities as pieces of lifeless real estate to be sliced up for the benefit of the highest bidders. Stormwater drains remain locked in decades-old networks, whose deficits are aggravated by the inefficiency of municipal bodies. Last year, for instance, the Comptroller and Auditor General pulled up the BBMK for “its inability to manage stormwater drains in the city.” It raised questions about Bengaluru’s sewerage plan, especially the municipality’s failure to map the city’s tertiary drains, which have a critical role in managing run-off.

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Urban bodies complain — and mostly, they have a point — that they lack adequate resources. Municipal tax rates are far too low for local administrations to build, manage and renew public services and utilities efficiently. But the truth also is that civic bodies are often guilty of impropriety in the use of resources. The CAG, for instance, also found that the Bengaluru municipality did not maintain proper records of the stormwater management funds allotted to it under the JNNURM. It also noted the lack of coordination between the municipality and the Bangalore Development Authority on drainage-related matters. The net result of all these omissions is on show in Bengaluru, where, as an IT czar put it, technology professionals are forced to be on the road for hours to design apps that promise to deliver groceries in 10 minutes.