Hyderabad Drowns… in Excuses and Rainwater!

Whenever it rains Hyderabad a city that boasts of being home to many global companies, ends up reeling under chaos. The Met Department predicted heavy to very heavy rain from this evening until tomorrow evening, with GHMC warning of 80 to 150 mm of rainfall in 36 hours.

The government advised IT companies to allow employees to work from home and instructed all schools and colleges under GHMC limits to operate only for half a day today and tomorrow. Citizens were urged not to step out unless necessary.

It is almost certain that stories will soon emerge about people stuck in traffic for hours, homes flooded with rainwater, roads submerged, and pedestrians falling into open manholes. Just a week ago, national media reported how a flyover was flooded like never before. In another recent incident, a Zomato delivery boy narrowly escaped when his phone and bike were swept away in floodwaters.

When a government tells people to stay indoors during rain, it reflects the city’s poor infrastructure, weak disaster management, lack of preparedness, and governance failures. This is happening in a place that promotes itself as a global tourism and investment destination.

The current government blames the previous administration, while the BRS points fingers at  CM Revanth Reddy, who also handles the Municipal Administration and Urban Development portfolios. Citizens, however, see this as a collective failure of all governments to plan for the city’s growing population and urbanisation.

The most troubling part is that this is neither the first nor the last time such events will occur. These incidents repeat every monsoon, and the stories remain the same. The common man struggles to get through each day, and when the rainwater refuses to sink into the ground, people end up chasing water tankers. Rapid concretisation is depleting groundwater, making the crisis worse year after year.