On July 20, as Hyderabad grappled with a blinding downpour and concomitant woes of inundation and two-hour traffic gridlocks, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) kept itself busy elsewhere.
The urban planning behemoth with a mandate for development of 7,257 sq. km. terrain covering seven districts, 70 mandals and 1,032 villages, around the State capital as Hyderabad Urban Agglomeration, was occupied with a pre-bid meeting for online auction of seven land parcels at what would become the most expensive location in the State in terms of realty.
Hub of exponential growth
Special chief secretary and Metropolitan Commissioner heading HMDA, Arvind Kumar, explained to the prospective bidders how Neopolis Layout, developed at Kokapet village on the western periphery of the city, would become the hub of exponential growth over the next year and a half.
Government would spend ₹450 crore merely on the infrastructure in the 500-acre layout where 41 acres will be allotted for amenities. Every land parcel out for the auction is designed to have a north face to ensure compliance with people’s beliefs, Mr. Kumar assured.
There was one more aspect he had not said explicitly, but was the unique selling point for the prized location abutting the outer periphery of Outer Ring Road and 23 km from the zero mile of the city. Hardly a kilometre from Kokapet, which was declared a Special Economic Zone, is the oasis that, for decades, provided drinking water to the city— the Osmansagar reservoir.
Names such as ‘Lake Ridge’ and ‘Lake View’ are popping up at the properties that went under the hammer during the previous auction at Kokapet by the HMDA. Ironically, the land where the SEZ has come up is a hill ridge directly sloping towards the tank, and could have been one of the reasons why the location was chosen by the legendary engineer, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, for construction of the flood control reservoir.
Highest land price
Now, the hillock is the site for massive destruction. Yet, it is also the place where HMDA has recently bagged more than ₹100 crore per acre during the auction, the highest land price ever in Telangana. Huge boulders now lay smashed all around on the hillock. Earth moving machinery look like small caterpillars at work in the enormity of the cavities carved into the heart of the mountainous region. Thick plumes of rock dust rise into the air and fill the lungs at every breath.
“I was witness to the destruction in the past couple of years during my commute to work. Earlier, we could see the top of the hillock, and I even went up there to view the lake,” says Mohammed Abdul Nayeem who works at the Indian School of Business. “They first began dismantling it for construction of a road up to Movie Towers housing complex, which meets the ORR service road. Earlier, there were no constructions in this area, except for the one housing Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology. We could see farmers cultivating paddy. Now, there is destruction everywhere, and I even saw debris being dumped into the lake,” he says.
Lining both edges of the road laid through the hillock are two copious stormwater drains fashioned in concrete. On one slope, the structure could be seen running towards the lake, but on the opposite side where the construction is still on, it is not decipherable where the drains are directed. Either way, it is an undeniable fact that the stormwater run off will not only multiply in quantity due to flattening of the hill, but will also acquire speed.
“Hillocks act as watershed by absorbing rainwater and releasing them through small springs that empty into the lakes. Deforestation and excessive concretisation have led to enormous increase in the quantities of surface runoff, which is the cause of urban flooding in most cases. This is the reason why we have been seeing the reservoirs flood every year since 2020. It does not take even a day now for stormwater from heavy rain at Kondurg to reach the reservoir,” says Donthi Narasimha Reddy, an environmentalist and campaigner for sustainable development.
Kondurg is a mandal of Ranga Reddy district, nearly 70 km upstream of the Osmansagar.
Stormwater runoff
Stormwater runoff has increased by several times inside the city too, wherever construction activity has gone up by leaps and bounds. One example is Krishna Nagar at Yousufguda, which is part of the central zone, where roads transform into swirling streams every time it rains even moderately in Jubilee Hills area.
“This phenomenon was not seen earlier. For the past three to four years, our colony gets flooded with every rain. The speed of the water is so high that even vehicles and pushcarts get washed away. When we inquired with the engineering officials, they said the runoff was coming from Jubilee Hills checkpost, and would clear off on its own,” said M. Satyanarayana, a colony resident.
Park shrinks
A similar situation prevails at the Biodiversity Junction in Raidurg where a hillock was razed by the civic authorities to lay a road, and a park under the Forest Department’s purview has shrunk by half in size. Now, every time it rains, this upmarket junction of the city experiences flooding and severe traffic jams.
“Concrete roads are the culprit. They do not allow percolation into the ground, thereby increasing the flood. BT roads would get damaged with rain, but in the process, they allow infiltration. But the corporation is favouring concrete for internal roads for their longevity,” said an engineering official of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) on condition of anonymity.
Concrete box drains, which are the ‘in-thing’ now for facilitating stormwater drainage, especially post the 2020 floods, would further reduce percolation into the ground.
A recent study by research scholars from BITS-Pilani’s Hyderabad campus has noted that within the GHMC limits, the impervious land with water resistant structures has gone up from 55% in 1995 to 73% in 2016. The study postulates that it would rise to 85% by 2050, which would result in more stormwater runoff and more flooding.
Another ongoing study under the Civil Engineering Department of Osmania University has noted that compactly built up area in 650 sq. km of GHMC’s purview has gone up from 155.17 sq. km in 1997 to 276.68 sq. km in 2016. The total extent of water bodies has reduced by close to 18% during the same time, while land use for activities permitting percolation such as cropping, vegetation, and rocky barren land, has reduced from 278.71 sq. km to 182.32 sq. km.
Senior professor M. Gopal Naik, who is guiding the study, says that the city is growing haphazardly without any planning or coordination among various stake holding departments, which has led to the crisis situation.
“There is no coordination among GHMC, Irrigation, Revenue, Lakes, Roads & Buildings and other departments. Here, the terrain is such that a multi-directional drainage system is needed. Slopes should be created every 10 kilometres to ensure hindrance-free drainage into Musi river. Especially, when they give building permissions, they should pay attention to where the water will go,” Mr. Naik says.
In GHMC, the Town Planning wing, which engages in issuing building permissions, does not even have a Hydrology or Irrigation expert.
Ideally, storm water drains should have bare earth as the base supported by concrete embankments to allow percolation, Mr. Naik adds. However, it is not possible in the city, as stormwater is highly polluted, and carries chemical contaminants, which, if allowed to percolate, will pollute the ground water.
“The twin reservoirs of Osmansagar and Himayatsagar, if allowed to survive and fill to the brim, are capable of recharging the ground water in the entire city. But they are not allowed to reach the Full Tank Level (FTL) and are being drained,” he says.
The reservoirs were built in 1920 and 1927 respectively, for controlling floods in the Musi. In the last three to four years, the area surrounding the reservoirs has become highly constructed. Stupendous towers looking like giant Brachiosaurs dot the landscape, presenting an ugly picture of what earlier had been farmlands and orchards.
Ban on order
Recently, the government has scrapped a 27-year-old order banning heavy construction in the catchment area of the reservoirs. Farmers’ discontent is put forth as the reason, as the order restricted realty prices of the lands here.
Activist Lubna Sarwat, who has been fighting for protecting lakes of the city, alleges that both Osmansagar and Himayatsagar are encroached, and government authorities are aware of every illegal construction.
“I have information obtained under the RTI which confirms that there are encroachments in the lake and buffer zone including a sports village. Officials are protecting the encroachers by draining the lake before it reaches the FTL. Besides, they have built a fresh BT road right into the Himayatsagar lake. They are culverting Musi river. This is an extraordinarily vandalising government. They have vandalism as their policy to benefit realtors,” Ms. Sarwat fumes.
With an increased urban run-off from the surrounding areas, the shrunk lakes may swell up every season, and flood the Musi, causing serious damage every now and then.
Recent assertions by MA&UD Minister K.T. Rama Rao that Godavari river water will be brought from Konda Pochammasagar reservoir, 50 km from the city, to fill up Osmansagar, if put into practice, will only worsen the situation. Such a measure, coupled with increased run off, will only increase the frequency of flooding.
The State government, however, considers real estate growth an indication of development and economic growth, as averred by none other than K.T. Rama Rao in multiple instances.
Most recent reports citing 38% growth in unsold residential properties in Hyderabad make no dent in this belief, nor does the fact that for a large number of property buyers, who are just a minuscule portion in total population, it is just an investment.
The government, in cahoots with realtors, is complicit in promoting the myth of real estate as development, allege activists Ms. Sarwat and Mr. Narasimha Reddy.
Within four days after achieving the highest realty price for the rocky terrain in Kokapet, the HMDA went to town again with another land auction near Mokila, around 20 km further from Kokapet and 36 km from the city, where the highest price was more than ₹1 lakh per square yard! Many areas in the core city do not have such prices.
It may not be out of the context to mention that all these online auctions were preceded by an announcement by K.T. Rama Rao that the State cabinet has approved construction of Metro Rail along ORR, and to locations as far as Shadnagar, 56 km away from core Hyderabad.
Whether the Metro Rail would connect all these areas is just a conjecture, considering the financial doldrums the government is in, but the effect of the announcement was immediate and as bountiful as ₹100 crore-plus per acre, and as devastating as the heap of blasted boulders in the Kokapet hills.
