Magan Lal was electrocuted during the Delhi floods of 2013. He lost sensation in one arm and his job as an autorickshaw driver. More than a decade later, sitting in a makeshift shelter with his pug, the 70-year-old is reliving that nightmare; the streets are swollen with water again and his family has had to relocate.
“Our daily life is completely disrupted,” said his son Sanjay. “We’ve been forced to leave our homes and are living in these open tents. Do you think women can stay here?”
With the Yamuna’s water level rising because of Haryana releasing water at the Hathnikund barrage, along with incessant rains, the city’s residents, especially those in low-lying areas, have had to vacate their homes, and are facing electricity disruptions and are finding commuting difficult.
The rains have made the ground slippery for a state government still finding its feet. “The safety and convenience of citizens is our topmost priority, and every possible assistance is being assured,” said Chief Minister Rekha Gupta.
Her government has put up makeshift shelters for people alongside roads, is tracking the water levels round-the-clock and has used sandbags and pumps near the old Yamuna railway bridge to restrict the flow of water further into the city.
While Gupta has assured safety to the people, workers at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) complain of equipment shortage. “It’s most dirty once the floodwater recedes, which we have to clean, but we have no gloves, nothing,” said Naresh Kumar. “What if we fall sick? We don’t have any medical cards or any kind of support.” Added Anita: “We have no uniforms and even the brooms, at times, we have to buy ourselves.”
At the core of the current challenge is Delhi’s dysfunctional drainage system. For decades, many of Delhi’s storm-water drains—which take excess rainwater away from roads—have been used to carry untreated sewage and solid waste. This toxic mixture clogs the drains, making them useless during heavy rainfall and causing water to back up onto the streets. A foul mixture of polluted water and garbage flows into residential areas and critical public spaces.
The storm-water drains are designed to empty into the Yamuna, but when the river’s water level rises, there is backflow into the drains and into the city.
A recent survey by the Delhi Jal Board revealed that the Najafgarh drain was the river’s biggest polluter, pumping untreated sewage into the Yamuna twice as much as expected. A significant chunk of this comes from Gurugram.
Worsening this situation is the rampant encroachment on the Yamuna’s floodplains, which are intended to act as a buffer when the river rises. While the Delhi Development Authority has ordered the removal of these encroachments, on-ground action seems to be lacking.
To her credit, the chief minister has been vocal about her commitment to addressing these challenges. She has set ambitious deadlines for civic improvement, including the complete clearing of Delhi’s three massive landfills. The government has scaled-up biomining capacity and has employed 58 trommel machines—used to separate materials by size—to process the waste. It is also focusing on a massive Yamuna clean-up, which includes upgrading sewage treatment plants and de-silting drains.
The Delhi government had announced a drive to make the capital clean by August 31. “However, due to mismanagement and lack of coordination, the deadline was extended till October 2,” said Delhi Congress spokesperson Sunil Kumar. “Repair of the drainage system to prevent annual flooding was largely invisible. Instead of structural interventions, the drive relied on stopgap measures, leaving citizens unconvinced about the government’s sincerity.”
Senior AAP MLA Sanjeev Jha, in a news conference in July, cited a Delhi Pollution Control Committee report to show that pollution levels in the Yamuna had doubled in areas where the river was previously clean.
BJP leaders, however, claim that the past government left them a defective machinery. Dr Anil Gupta, DPCC board member and BJP spokesperson, said, “We have always maintained that cleaning the Yamuna will take three years. The work is underway, and conditions are far better than before. This is not something that can be achieved in just a few days.”
As Rekha Gupta is finding out now, running the Delhi government has never been easy. During the AAP rule, the power struggle between the three tiers of governance—the Centre, the state government and the MCD (also controlled by the BJP)—was in full play. The lieutenant governor was also part of the power tussle, with then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal criticising him for overriding the AAP government’s policy decisions.
But when the people of Delhi voted the BJP to power in the assembly elections this February, it was meant to increase efficiency of governance—it would be a triple-engine government, with everything under BJP control.
Still, it has not been easy for first-time MLA Gupta, whose government seems to be grappling on two critical fronts—fulfilling pre-poll promises and pushing through key policy decisions. On the first, citizens wait for commitments to materialise; on the second, the administration has already been forced to roll back two crucial decisions in the face of public backlash.
In February, soon after assuming office, the BJP government had launched demolition drives that displaced thousands of residents from juggi-jhopdi (slum) clusters that were encroaching on public spaces. While Gupta clarified that many families had been allotted alternative housing, several were still left homeless. Defending the move, she said, “The court ordered removal of this slum… no one can defy court orders.”
By August, with the Bihar assembly elections drawing close, her stance appeared to soften. She vowed that “no slum will be razed without providing permanent housing” and emphasised that her government was prepared to amend policies or even approach the courts to safeguard residents.
Then there was the second withdrawal. The government had passed an order to deny fuel to vehicles that had crossed a certain age—10 years for diesel cars; 15 for petrol—from July 1. Within two days, the government saw growing public outcry and also sensed operational challenges in implementing the order. It was deferred.
“In Delhi, elections are more than four years away, and so they seem to be experimenting without giving enough thought,” said Satish Jha, associate professor of political science at the Delhi University.
For the BJP government to impress the people, it needs to make visible improvements in their daily lives—uninterrupted power supply, a garbage-free city, better drainage systems and efficient traffic control.
And unlike the AAP, which blamed the multiple power centres in Delhi’s administration, the BJP has no such excuse.
—With inputs from Shubhangi Shah