Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik should be a much worried man. With municipal elections only months away, the state is witnessing a spectacular collapse of its urban areas. A spate of rains over the past week has led to unprecedented disintegration of urban infrastructure with the capital Bhubaneswar standing out as an emblem of maladministration and inefficiency gripping cities and towns across Odisha.
In a week, Bhubaneswar went from being a smart city to a swamp city. The city did enough to wipe out the romanticism of the monsoon from the minds of its denizens and fill them with the dread of rains for all times to come.
Never before had the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force been called in for rescue operations nor had the city seen boats evacuating trapped people. The capital did receive very high rainfall over the week, but the misery it inflicted on its populace cannot be ignored.
The ordeal was brought on by lack of preparedness coupled with unplanned urban growth. Bhubaneswar once boasted of being one of India’s well-planned cities with unmatched natural drainage systems that shielded it from flooding. Over the years, unchecked growth abetted by civic authorities gobbled up the natural channels. The drainage system is now grossly inadequate to deal with flooding, and also in tatters due to lack of maintenance, rampant encroachment and faulty planning.
The situation has fully exposed the hollow proclamations of the state government on Bhubaneswar being India’s top smart city and among top 20 global smart cities. Smart city, in its true sense, means having smart and resilient infrastructure that make daily life safe and secure for the residents. High sounding facilities like City Centre, Bhubaneswar Operation Centre, etc., are secondary. Bhubaneswar exemplifies the malaise that afflicts all urban areas of Odisha. The crumbling urban spheres may extract a high political cost from Naveen as he prepares for 2019, unless there is a visible course correction.