Naidu caught out

It rained 24 cm in a day and three-fourths of Hyderabad was flooded. And, writes R. J. RAJENDRA PRASAD, there was little Mr. Chandrababu Naidu's IT-savvy administration could do.

`CYBERABAD' WAS nearly reduced to `Cipherabad' in just one day. It rained 24 cm on August 23 and three-fourths of Hyderabad city was flooded. And there was little that Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu's much-vaunted information technology-savvy administration could do.

Thousands of middle-class families, who thought they were safe in posh multi-storeyed apartments, found themselves trapped on the terraces without power or telephones, and their cars and scooters under 10 feet of water.

Hyderabad has an undulating landscape and rainwater used to find its natural course into a dozen lakes. But, the encroachments along the embankments of streams and the way greedy builders created bogus powers of attorney for lands on tankbeds and built multi-storeyed apartments created further havoc. No Muslim noblemen in the old Hyderabad State, who emigrated to Pakistan in 1948, could have ever owned or given powers of attorney to anyone for these lands. Illegal construction created the problem.

Most of Hyderabad remained under water for two to three days, forcing the Chief Minister to admit failure in making officials rise to the challenge. Adding to the problems were the demonstrations against the hike in power tariff, which created huge traffic jams. Walking on the roads became a risky enterprise, what with open manholes and roads cut by the force of water in several localities.

The city had never seen anything like this since 1969. Had the 24 cm of rain been received over two days, it may have coped. The road from Begumpet flyover towards NTR statue in Rasoolpura was closed to traffic, as water flowed waist deep on it and on the roads in Ashoknagar, Gandhinagar and Nallakunta, and the entire stretch between the Golconda tombs and Langar Hauz. Added to this was the rumour, that spread very quickly, that the tank bund holding the Hussain Sagar had breached, while a smaller tank near Jeedimatla sprung a leak.

The Opposition said the crisis in Hyderabad was man-made: that the haphazard development of the city, taken up under the beautification project, obstructed the natural flow of water from streams to the lakes. The objection was to the Necklace Road around Hussain Sagar, the construction of a star hotel just under the tank bund where they developed a lawn and garden, the construction of Maitri Vanam, a shopping complex of the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority, on a dried-up tankbed near Ameerpet, and the development of the Durgam Cheruvu tank as a tourist spot for boating in Jubilee Hills.

The Necklace Road was conceived and work begun by the Congress(I) Government in 1994, and it has at least prevented encroachment on the tankbed by unscrupulous builders. The Maitri Vanam complex was planned much earlier, and the permission granted to a builder to develop an adjacent piece of land resulted in a major controversy in the Assembly last year because of the involvement of some politically influential persons.

The Government has announced that it will create two committees, one to look at the course of surplus water from Hussain Sagar lake to the Musi river, identify all encroachments, and build a retaining wall beyond which no settlement will be allowed. Another committee will map all the tanks in the city and take steps to keep the inflows free from illegal interference.

Hyderabad may have hogged the headlines but some other parts of Andhra Pradesh too faced nature's fury. Heavy rainfall of about 30 cm in two days in Maharashtra's Nanded region, at the confluence of the Pranhita with the Godavari, caused devastation in Andhra Pradesh. The huge discharge of 20 lakh cusecs into the Godavari flooded the temple town of Bhadrachalam and another 50 villages downstream.

The Opposition has criticised the relief operations as tardy. Mr. Bangaru Laxman, new BJP national president, who visited the affected areas, said the Government ought to have taken adequate precautions to minimise the losses. The CPI(M) secretary, Mr. B. V. Raghavulu, said the Government gave coupons to flood victims in Hyderabad but no rice.

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