A day after Delhi was brought to a standstill by 2 hours of rain, traffic police blamed faulty infrastructure

Designed for disaster

A day afteru00a0Delhi was brought to a standstill by 2 hours of rain, traffic police blamed faulty infrastructure

Go with the flow: An obsolete drainage system is the culprit behind the
Capital's civic woes, experts have said. file photo

"There are problems with the infrastructure created by the government. You have constructed so many flyovers, underpasses etc but did not make adequate arrangements for pumping water out of these places in case of rains," special commissioner, traffic police, Ajay Chadda told MiD DAY.

The major problem of water-logging and traffic chaos ensued. The city government has constructed over a hundred flyovers, underpasses and railway bridges in recent years in the wake of the Commonwealth Games.

"There are low lying areas in the city. For instance Tilak Bridge till a few years back used to be a big bottleneck. After the number of pumps was increased the water-logging issue has been addressed to a great level," the commissioner said, adding that the same should have been done in the case of other bridges and flyovers.u00a0

But interestingly, while everyone is blaming shoddy work done in the case of desilting and construction of Commonwealth Games related projects, the Chadda had a different take on the matter. "I do not think there is problem due to desilting and CWG work. Whenever there is a heavy downpour, water accumulates but in a matter of few minutes it gets drained out. The major bottlenecks have been these underpasses and the areas where no measures have been taken to solve water-logging problems," he said.

Elaborating on the traffic police's arrangements, Chadda said, " In the wake of the monsoons, traffic police will be there on roads till 11 pm every day. There have been some cases of traffic signals failing but we have formed special teams and such signals are being manned by traffic cops."

Expert speak

Country Director, Initiative for Transportation and Developemnt Policy Nalin Sinha, said, "The low lying areas face such problems in every part of the world. But their response system is very quick above all, they take remedial measures," he said.
"The problem here is the infrastructure we have created in isolation. People have to move about with their cars so the number of cars is increasing and public transport has proved ineffective; that is the fundamental flaw in our system," he explained.
"Apart from that there is multiplicity of agencies. So, if some remedial measures are initiated. It can not be completed on time. Also we lack political will in enforcing right policies," Sinha added.