Northeast Monsoon 2022: Round 1 to Chennai Corporation 

The Greater Chennai Corporation was engaged in a massive exercise pre-monsoon, to ensure that the horror stories of flooding in Chennai are not repeated. As far as this goes, it seems to have pulled a rabbit out of its hat, with the traditional areas that are flooded remaining stagnation-free so far. While no doubt there are still issues to be resolved in some areas in the city, there is now faith that they too, will be done

After the 2015 deluge, Chennai has come to fear the fury of the northeast monsoon. Last year’s rains only exacerbated apprehensions of the city’s residents, as even core parts of the city were inundated for days, despite relatively lower amounts of rainfall. Chennai Corporation officials say that this year, the total rainfall in many areas was nearly 33 cm in a three-day period, whereas last year, the city was inundated during a three-day rain period in November, with only 17 cm of rainfall. 

Some intense showers over a 24-hour period in north Chennai this time around, resulted in over 30 cm of rainwater. Though the rainfall itself came in bursts, thanks to staggered showers, the Greater Chennai Corporation, with its extensive stormwater drain work this year, might have just yet won the first round.

It had to. The flooding and failure of the last monsoon, could be laid at the door of the AIADMK government that had just been voted out. But no longer, and certainly not this year, when Corporation Councillors had been elected after a gap of a decade, and were directly answerable to the residents of Chennai.

The DMK has a reputation of enhancing city infrastructure in Chennai every time it is in power. The city got a veteran bureaucrat in Gagandeep Singh Bedi as Corporation Commissioner, and work towards flood prevention was set in motion with Chief Minister M.K. Stalin holding meetings and inspecting ground work, as the drain infrastructure was found to be in shambles.

After the first spells, the efforts of the government seem to have paid off, as traditional flooding hotspots remained drained, and flooding was restricted mainly to parts of North Chennai. This year, the Corporation focussed on engineering, bringing technology including precast causeways, modern machinery for cementing walls and top slabs, increasing the number of manholes for better flow and to facilitate better desilting, and reducing the distance between manholes from 5 metres to 2.5 metres. 

“Immediately after the 2021 December rains, we noted down the main areas [of flooding]. In January the feedback from the Thiruppugazh committee [an advisory panel on mitigation and management of flood risks in the city] was available. In the next two months, we prepared the estimates, got it vetted by the committee, called for tenders and issued the work orders in April,” Mr. Bedi explained. 

“Smaller projects usually take about 12 months and bigger projects in north and south Chennai will take three to four years to set right. But in this case, we have finished most of the smaller projects in six months, having started in April. This was possible because of political will, a series of coordination meetings with line departments, close inspections and technical follow-up of the quality of the work thrice a week. We also got the feedback from a technical team led by IIT Madras,” he said.