Satyam and Madhavi were having their morning tea as it began to rain on September 12. As it intensified, water began to swirl around the Himaja Apartment at Gudimalkapur where Satyam works as a watchman. “Even as we were talking, slush and sand started flowing in and by the time I reached the rear of the building, it was like a wave. I ran back to take care of our belongings,” says Madhavi. Then, parts of the wall collapsed as water with slush and refuse roared inside the small apartment complex. “It took us four days to restore a semblance of normalcy. Nine tractor loads of sand was carted from here. We have to clear about 10 more tractor loads of sand,” says Lakshman Kumar, who stays on the second floor of the apartment. “If we spot a cloud or dark sky, we get scared now,” says Harathi Vageeshan, a tenant, who plans to vacate the apartment owing to the problem.
Built in 2007, the apartment at the foothills of Bojjagutta near Gudimalkapur is part of the residential area with a school, a park, and places of worship. Between the apartment and the HMWSSB water tank atop the hillock was a shanty town. But over the last few months, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation cleared the town for constructing 2BHK apartments promised to the poor by the Telangana government in 2014. As the civic body cleared different plots, it began work by sinking pillars into the rock. “They resorted to cut-and-fill technique to flatten the land without bothering about the natural gradient,” says Ravi Kawre, an urban planner who visited the site to understand the urban flooding.
The civic body is in a race to finish the construction of 2BHK houses. “We are on course to construct 430 houses. There was some resistance from the squatters, but they have been promised transit accommodation at Ameenpur area. Once the project is completed, we will work on a retaining wall so that the surrounding areas are not affected,” said a senior GHMC official.
“Water finds its natural course. What the officials did was to invert the water path leading to stagnation and sudden flooding. How sustainable is this kind of construction on the environment is a big question,” says Anant Maringanti of Hyderabad Urban Labs.
It is not just the 2BHK project that has led to destruction of the topography of Bojjagutta. A number of function halls and building projects have come up. One of the builders has shaved off the hillock to create a flat space on the road connecting the Inner Ring Road to Gudimalkapur. The flash flooding of an apartment and a colony gives a hint of nature’s fury.
