Hyderabad-MCH during Rainy Season

The Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (http://www.ourmch.com), the much coveted organization which otherwise seems to be doing a good job of maintaining & beautifying the city during the year, seems to be in shackles at the time of monsoon.

A few downpours and you can see the whole city getting flooded. There is an obvious lack of planning:

1. The city roads are not planned properly and this has led to water logging in most of the places. Water
logging leads to erosion of the top surface and most of the road have now become pot holes.

2. The drainage system is not geared to face the extra volume of water the flows during the season...leading to
most of the sewers overflowing and making un-hygenic conditions.

3. Different agencies have dug up the roads at many places and left them unfilled properly i.e. used only earth to fill the same instead of concrete or Tar roads. This has led to big & deep cuts across most of the places add to the woo of the motorists and the pedestrians

The remedy lies in proper planning of the above is as follows:

1. Design the roads in such a manner that they slope inward out to facilitate the water to move off the road and on both sides of the road make concrete drainage system and connect to the main drainage system. This will help in the water moving off the roads and also.

2. Build a network of Drainage system across each lane, locality etc. The drainage should be big enough to solve two purpose. First, the bottom part of it would serve as the drainage pipe and the top part could be used by different vendors like BSNL, Reliance, Tata Telecom, HWSSB etc. to lay their lines, pipes etc. This will facilitate the moving of water efficiently across the city and also will avoid the unnecessary digging up of the roads. This plan was proposed by the then MCH commissioner Mr. Mohanty which did not see the light of the day.

Both of these need investment and the govt need to plan for these to avoid recurring costs in the future and also losses to the citizens due to poor road conditions leading to higher fuel consumption.

MCH has been doing a good job and if it address the above it could be termed as better.