As water leakage during the monsoon goes, it was not a big deal because homes and offices across India not only drip with rainwater but get flooded too. However, this was not just any building but the new Parliament of India, the construction of which had begun in December 2020 and which was inaugurated in September last year. It cost the nation Rs 971 crore. The heavy rainfall in New Delhi had also led to waterlogging in the Parliament complex, most notably in the area around Makar Dwar. The water leakage in the lobby of the new building and the waterlogging, logically and rightly, raised grave concerns about the resilience of the structure itself and the planning of the Parliament complex.
The drip in the lobby, collected in a blue plastic bucket that’s ubiquitous across India, went viral and made for hilarious memes. The Opposition, especially Congress party’s Manickam Tagore and Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, posted sarcastic comments on their social media handles which too went viral. Once the dark comicality of it all ebbs, the questions will surface and, hopefully, refuse to slip away from the public consciousness. How did this building, designed and constructed to be modern and earthquake-resistant, with a lifespan of more than 150 years, show commonplace leakage in the first monsoon itself? What does this imply about other aspects of the building and the entire complex to withstand extreme rain events, heat, and other weather setbacks that are now associated with climate change? Was the impending climate crisis factored into the design and construction — or not? If not, why not when scientific reports every month, if not every week, point to climate impacts becoming more intense soon?
Any leakage or compromise in the Parliament building, in itself, is an important event to take note of but this coming on the back of several rain-related collapses of roofs of airports, collapse of bridges and mega-sized billboards, cracks in newly-constructed high-cost roads, flooding of the Pragati Maidan tunnel, potholes on national highways, and so on has sown legitimate doubts about the durability and rain-resilience of the infrastructure created in recent years. The push to infrastructure in every government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2014 has been well-documented; so is the push for speed and scale. While these are undoubtedly important, it is time to ask if pursuit of these in the mega-sized and expensive infrastructure has compromised their quality and longevity.
