Please Go Down the Drain

Editorial:-

The weather forecasts are predictable – showers and thunderstorms in some areas, every evening. Sikkim’s response to the weather patterns is also predictably routine – slips, slides and slush. What is surprising though, is the fact that the inept drainage system remains consistently failed despite the hordes of engineers that the capital is home to. How is it that roadside drains refuse to, well, drain? Gangtokians might think that this is a condition unique to them, but as today’s edition bears out, the problem plagues the rural roads of Dikchu as much, as it does the recently urbanized spread of Namchi. The price that poorly engineered storm water drains can exact was deeply felt by Gangtok in 1997 when several lives were lost and building toppled when the rain water ran on the road and then into buildings instead of getting carried away by the drains. Sixteen years since, and the situation has only worsened. New trouble-spots have cropped up and it is not just the drains to blame; also contributing to this madness every time it rains is the insensitivity with which people construct [buildings], store their building material and how Gangtok disposes it garbage. It’s the still abject lack of civic responsibility in the Gangtok way of life that is causing as much harm as the corruption and ineptness which delivered drainage systems too ineffectual for its topography, road alignments and settlements. There is as much household [and hotel] waste flowing down the highway during the squalls as there are mud and rocks that the rain carved out of the hill. These are not unrelated constituents of a ‘landslide’. A pile of garbage in an out-of-sight spot in a too cramped for a garbage truck to reach spot is as effective in triggering a slide as recklessly disposed building excavation mud in an out-of-sight spot. Both are imposed on the slopes and both slip with a heavy shower and scratch out a larger landslip as they roll down and gather strength. The drains, already dodgy in their effectiveness, are denied even a face-saving carriage capacity due to the quickness with which carelessly left-behind garbage of construction leftover drains into drains and clogs them. While this is reasonably harmless in the drier winter months, it adds to everyone’s woes when the nights receive rainfall. The downpour washes these piles of garbage off their heaps and spreads them across the road, pours them into nearby homes and squeezes them into drains and blocks them.