The monsoon broke over Goa quite late this year, though some pre-monsoon showers did drench the State for a few days earlier in the month. The rains have not been heavy, and the Met Department has said that the rain received is below the normal for this period. Yet, along with the sparse rain came the usual problems and complaints. While there was not a shower of complaints of incessant rains, there was instead a deluge of complaints of unmotorable streets and roads due to water logging. The complaints came from across the State, be it the municipal areas of Panjim, Margao, Vasco, Mapusa or the panchayat areas, the complaints were the same – water-logging that disrupted normal life of the residents.
The problem of water logging, however, is not restricted to Goa, but arises across cities in the country. On the same day that towns in Goa faced problems of flooded streets, water-logging in Mumbai led to trains running late and vehicles caught in rain-related traffic jams. Delhi faces a similar problem and this will surface when the monsoon reaches northern India in the coming weeks. Yet, unlike a city corporation like Mumbai or Delhi, the local government bodies in the State – municipalities and panchayats – play a limited role in governance. Besides licensing, their main functions are actually limited to garbage collection, keeping the area under their jurisdiction clean and overall maintenance of the town or village, unlike municipal corporations in bigger cities that even supply power, water and run educational institutes. Despite having such a limited role to play, the municipalities and the panchayats in the State have failed to meet the most reasonable of expectations of the people.
To a large section of the people, the flooded streets could only mean one thing – that the local government bodies had not undertaken the required pre-monsoon works, or if they did, had done it badly. While residents will blame the civic bodies for shoddy pre-monsoon work, water-logging during the monsoon is not just the result of clogged drains and a high tide in the river that sends back the water to the city. What towns and villages lack in Goa is a properly-engineered drainage system that will allow the water to flow into the ground replenishing the ground water table.
Take Panjim for instance. All the rainwater flows through the drains and is let out into the River Mandovi. When the tide is high, there is no outlet for the water and it remains on the streets, giving the authorities the opportunity to blame the flooded streets on the tide. That should not be the case. None of the rainwater that Goa receives is properly harvested so as to replenish the groundwater table. With the number of constructions in the urban areas of the State, where every available space is either a tarred road or concretised pavement preventing the seepage of water into the soil, there is need to have a properly engineered drainage system that will allow the rain water to naturally drain into the ground rather than flow into the rivers or creeks.
Rainwater harvesting is important for the State that depends on the rivers for its water requirements. While every drop that is harvested adds to the ground water table, allowing gallons of water to go waste is almost a crime. Parts of the country were parched this year as drought conditions prevailed over much of central and northern India. Water trains were dispatched to Maharashtra’s Latur district to meet the requirements there. Goa receives over 100 inches of rain every year, if only this could be properly harvested the water requirements of the State for an entire year could be met.
