India: 'We have to learn to live with floods': Waterlogged Surat to become latest megacity
By MN Parth
Surat’s geography – it lies at the mouth of the Tapi river, near the Arabian Sea – makes it prone to flooding, and it experiences a major inundation every four years on average.
But that threat does not stop people moving here, drawn by the hope of work in Surat’s textile and diamond industries, and the population has soared from 2.4 million in 2001 to around 6.6 million today. The UN the city will be home to 10 million people by 2032, making it India’s eighth megacity, after Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and newcomers Hyderabad and .
Surat, known as the “diamond city”, faces a triple flooding threat: from the Tapi and the Ukai dam upstream, from the Arabian Sea, and from the 19 miles of creeks that spread through the city. It constructed its first flood wall in 1664, and the battle to hold back water has been raging ever since. Climate change has only exacerbated the situation.
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But Gopalakrishna Bhat [the chair of Taru Leading Edge, a consultancy and think tank] says Surat will only face ever bigger risks. In he predicted the number of days with more than 200mm of rainfall would increase. “This would lead to the need for a greater number of emergency releases from the dam reservoir and increase the frequency and intensity of floods in Surat,” he says.
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