It took barely 30 minutes of heavy rain on Sunday evening to ex pose what many traders say years of Smart City works have failed to fix. A short but intense downpour left parts of Panjim, including the busy 18th June Road and the Kadamba bus stand area, under water once again. Rainwater flooded roads, entered shops and brought traffic to a crawl as pedestrians and motorists struggled through waterlogged streets. For shopkeepers, however, the rain was not the story.
The flooding was. Many said the city has reached a point where water logging is no longer an unexpected consequence of extreme weather but a predictable outcome of every heavy spell of rain, despite crores being spent on Smart City infrastructure and repeated assurances that drainage bottlenecks had been addressed. Reacting with biting sarcasm, one shopkeeper remarked, “There will be water logging because it is the BJP govern ment. It is called ‘Har Ghar Jal’.” Near the Kadamba bus stand, another vendor said the administration had failed to learn from years of recurring flooding. “This is not happening for the first time. It has become a routine affair. It happens every year. There is no difference despite the claims of developing Panjim as a Smart City.
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The moment there is heavy rain, water enters our shops,” the vendor said. The experience was no different along 18th June Road, where traders questioned what the much-publicised Smart City project had actually delivered. “This is nothing new. Don’t be surprised. It happens every year. We don’t see any benefit from the money spent on the Smart City project. Whenever there is heavy rainfall, water enters our shops. This happened after just about 30 minutes of rain. Imagine what would have hap pened if it had continued for longer. I have been running this shop here for 30 years, and this problem keeps recur ring,” a trader said. Even where the flooding subsided quickly, traders said the fact that rainwater had entered commercial establish ments at all underscored the city’s continuing drainage failures. “This is the first time water has entered my shop.
Thank fully, it receded quickly and did not remain for long,” anoth er shopkeeper said. For residents and businesses, Sunday’s downpour was more than just a weather event. It was another reminder that Panjim’s long-standing drainage problems remain un resolved despite years of redevelopment and substantial public investment under the Smart City mission.
