The natural valleys of Bangalore

Ask any water expert of geologist and he is more likely to say that Bangalore has four major natural valleys located within the water shed of two principal river basins, the Arkavathy to the west and South Pennar to the East.

The Bangalore plateau is made up of  the four valleys which take off from north and fall gradually towards the south. Of the four valleys, the three main are Vrishabhavathi, Koramangala and Chellaghatta and all of them run in a north to the south direction and divide Bangalore into three distinct and separate drainage zones.

The fourth valley is Hebbal and this runs from north of the ridge and continues in the north easterly direction. These are the four valleys but what is not all that well-known is that there are five other valleys and they too play a vital role in the natural drainage system of Bangalore.

The other lesser known five valleys, which  are minor in nature, are Marathalli to the East, Arkavathy and Kethamaranahalli to the North West and Kathriguppa and Tavarekere to the south.

All these five minor valleys lie outside the tributary area of the  major valleys-Hebbal, Chellaghatta, Koramangala and Vrishabhavati and and they drain independently.

The nine valleys together form a unique and natural drainage system and both excess rain water and sewage flow down the city.

However, almost all the natural channels-feeder, storm water, drains- have either been encroached upon or blocked in places and this had led to the reverse flow of water into the city and not outwards, leading to flooding of roads, footpaths and localities.

What has compounded the inability of the natural valleys to drain off the water is the almost century old underground drainage system of  the City. It was way back in 1922 that Bangalore got underground drainage and this commenced from the pete areas of Bangalore.

The underground drainage system received a massive support when the then Bangalore City Corporation (BCC) in 1950 began an extensive and comprehensive programme. Till 1964, it was the BCC that took care of water supply and sewerage. That year, the State Government decided to set up a separate agency to handle water supply, sanitation and sewerage and formed the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB).

Since then, the BWSSB has been in charge of water and sewerage for Bangalore City.

The BWSSB has set up three main sewage treatment plants- Vrishabavati, Koramangala-Chellaghatta and Hebbal- to deal with recycling of water. Two additional mini-plants have been built near Madiwala and Kempambudi

As far as water goes, the BWSSB supplies approximately 900 million litres (238 million gallons) of water to Bangalore every day. The is as against a demand of 1.3 billion litres.

Coming back to the drainage system, the lakes and tanks in the four main valleys of  Hebbal, Koramangala, Chellaghatta and Vrishabhavati were a vital clog of nature’s  drain. Apart from draining excess water, they also helped in supplying water and keeping the city cool.

These lakes formed the cascading chain system right from Nandi Hills and continued all the way down to Kanakapura, Ramanagar-Chennapatna, Hoskote, Anekal. The interconnectivity of the water bodies within the valleys is really unique in a city which has no major source of water nearby.

The slope of the valleys allowed rain water to drain from the municipal limits of Bangalore within five hours. The percolation into the ground was minimal. All this changed in the 1980s when prolonged drought led to the drying of tanks and lakes and the State Government itself  encouraged the formation of layouts on tanks and lake beds. In all, 43 tanks made way for residential areas and layouts such as HRBR Layout, HSR Layout, Sarakki, Katriguppe.

The valleys too were blocked at several places and the free flow of water ended abruptly, leading to water backing up in Bangalore, leading to urban flooding and massive rain damage to life and property. The sewerage lines here are interconnected by

several tanks.

The first flooding of Bangalore

A sharp spell of rain is all that it takes for Bangalore to turn into a nightmare, leaving road flooded, drains overflowing, houses and apartments water logged and traffic piled up for hours on end.

In the previous post on urban flooding, we had spoken of  how the first recorded flooding of Bangalore took place more than a century ago.

Since then, little has changed. Every rain brings forth the same age old problems, the same assurances and of course the same result. The only thing that seems to have changed is the name of the civic body. It was Bangalore Municipality when it was started in the id 1900s. It then became the City Corporation of Bangalore and now the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).

Though the BBMP has identified five main areas in the city as flood prone, there seems to be a clear lack of focus and commitment in taking remedial action.

The Ejipura-Koramangala area comprising also of National Games village, BTM Layout Ist and 2^nd Stages, parts of Bannerghatta road and Jayanagar-JP Nagar: Shankarappa Garden which embraces Magadi Road and surrounding areas: Brindavan Nagar and Mathikere areas and finally Ambedkar College that straddles across Airport Road area.

Apart from this, the BBMP has identified 134 low lying and flood prone areas. Such areas have been identified in each zone, including zones under Greater Bangalore like Byatarayanapura, Bommanahalli, Dasarahalli, Mahadevapura and Rajarajeshwarinagar.
BBMP says the east, west and south of Bangalore are more prone to flooding than the other parts.  It has identified Koramangala, Austin Town, Domlur and Jayamahal in the east zone; Rajkumar Road, RMV Layout, and Mahalakshmi Layout in west Zone;  Bhuvaneshwari Nagar, Maruthi Nagar, Bapuji Nagar and Tavarekere in the south zone as regular flood prone.

The east zone was found to be the most vulnerable to urban flooding with 108 areas, while the west zone had 31 such points.
Residential layouts situated within and in the periphery of these areas virtually turn into a sea of water and this is mainly because of the inability of the Koramangala valley to pump out excess rain and drain water.

The Koramangala valley has a fall of just thirty metres for a length of 13 kilometers that it traverses across the city.  Other natural valleys in the city such as Chellaghatta and Hebbal have a fall of 120 metres for 11 kms. Moreover, all the valleys are chocked with debris and encroached and heavily silted. These natural outflows needed to be fully cleared for smooth flow of rain and waste water away from Bangalore. This is the key to prevent flooding and water logging of drains and roads, inundation of low-lying areas and overflow of sewage onto to the streets.

The mean annual rainfall in Bangalore is about 880 millimetres (mm) spread over 60 rainy days in an year. The city has a network of a 180-km- long primary and secondary

storm-water drainage system. The network needs to be harnessed in its entirety and suitably remodelled  to take the monsoon load of the rains. Despite the remodeling taken up under the Jawaharlal Nehru scheme and spent hundreds of crores, nothing seems to have worked and a permanent solution continues to evade Bangalore.

Bangalore has a natural elevation of 920 metres and this means that the water can percolate on its own down the slopes. But why is this not happening. The answer is simple. Encroachment, illegal construction, blockage of storm water drains, breaching of tanks and lakes and deliberately blocking the natural flow of water.

Poor and often short sighted urban planning has resulted in Bangalore rapidly losing its green cover and water bodies, so much so that they have become the prime reason for almost all of the City’s ills. Bangalore is the only city among the big four metropolis of India-Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi ad Chennai-not to be located in or near a water source. If Mumbai has the Arabian Sea, Kolkata the Ganges and Madras the Bay of Bengal, Delhi has the Yamuna but Bangalore has no such water body. The Cauvery, which supplies a major portion of the City’s water is 100 kilometres away.

Yet, Bangalore has seen a massive urban influx over the last five decades and there has been a 637 per cent increase in urban areas in Greater Bangalore area from 1973 to 2009 and it is still growing. The rise in built up area from 16 per cent in 2000 to around 24 in 2009 and almost 30 per cent today has seen a corresponding decrease in wet lands, breaching of lakes and tanks and decrease in green cover, leaving water with no natural course to flow off. This has been exacerbated by the presence of 542

slums with many of the lacking basic facilities in sanitation and hygine and straining the natural resources.

The wetlands in and around Bangalore decreased from 51 in 973 to just 17 now and even the water bodies have fallen sharply from 159 to 93. Besides, a staggering  66 per cent of lakes are sewage-fed, 14 per cent surrounded by slums and 72 per cent showed

loss of catchment areas. More alarmingly, catchment areas were used as dumping yards by all people and organizations ,including the civic agencies.

Between 2002 and 2009, water bodies decreased by almost 60 per cent and on an average 10,000 trees were cut every year. Thus, man interfered with the natural drainage system: destroying natural water channels, blocking natural flow of water, encroaching on water bodies and filling up drains and channels with debris. The  result: flooding and only one example of  how difficult it is to cope up with such events is enough to boggle one’s imagination. In August 2000,  torrential rains wrecked havoc on most parts of Bangalore and the BBMP had to pump out one crore litres of water from City Market area. This operation went on for three weeks. Where did this water go. To the drain and how. What the BBMP failed to ensure naturally, it had to do manually.

(This is the second part of a series of articles on urban flooding.)  

The memorial that has been forgotten

Koramangala in Bangalore is one of the most happening localities of Bangalore. It is also the nucleus of the IT and BT industry and its proximity to Electronics City and Hosur Road have made it a favourite hub for professionals.

Koramangala has also one of the best malls of Bangalore-Forum-which is a huge draw for the youth. The many malls, pubs, restaurants, business and shopping complexes give Koramangala an urban look.

 However, what many do not know is that the locality has a long forgotten link with the City’s founding and that this link goes back to the time when Kempe Gowda was busy in the early years of the 16^th century founding Bangalore.

It was more than 485years ago that a pregnant woman gave up her life so that Kempe Gowda could construct the mud fort of Bangalore.

One of the gates the mud fort never held and it kept falling away every time it was constructed. The year was 1537 and Kempe Gowda had been permitted by the Vijayanagar Emperor, Achuta Deve Raya to construct a fort in Bangalore.

The area around Bangalore was under the control of the Vijayanagar Kingdom and Kempe Gowda was a local feudatory of the Vijayanagars. He had been granted permission to build a mud fort.

Kempe Gowda had chosen his spot well. The mud fort was coming up at what is today called City Market. He had seen a hound chasing a hare at the spot. After some running, the hare turned back and stood its ground. The hound stopped in its tracks. Encouraged by this, the hare ran towards the hound which then bolted.

Kempe Gowda then though this was the appropriate place to build a fort. He set about constructing the fort. Much of the structure had completed and only the Anekal Gate at the southern point of the structure remained to be completed. However, as many times as the Gate was constructed, they were washed away the next day.

The founder of Bangalore, called in soothsayers and astrologers, they told him that the fort desired a human sacrifice.

They then shocked Kempe Gowda out of his wits when they said the human sacrifice would have to be voluntary and that it would have to be of a pregnant woman.

A pensive Kempe Gowda walked back to his palace. He did not want to ask anybody to sacrifice their lives. He returned to the gates the next morning and was surprised to see that the gate had held up.

He was later told that his pregnant daughter-in-law, Lakshmamma, had killed herself before the gate. She had obviously overheard the soothasayers talking to her father-in-law and she had decided to sacrifice her life for the good of the kingdom.

She had made her way to the Anekal Gate during the dead of night when everyone was asleep. She had prayed at a nearby temple and then sacrificed her life. A grateful Kempe Gowda constructed a memorial for his daughter-in-law in the midst of a beautiful green lawn, which later along with surrounding areas came to be called the locality of Koramangala.

Kempe Gowda died and his dynasty folded up after a few years. The Adil Shahi Emperors of Bijapur took Bangalore and later gave it as a Jagir to Shahji, the father of Shiaji. Bangalore later passed into the hands of the Mughals before being sold to the Wodeyars.

It was then the turn of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan to rule over Bangalore and from 1799 it was the British. However, all through these events, the memorial to Lakshmamma seems to have been forgotten.

It was only after India gained Independence that the first few voice were raised to protect the memorial. The chorus was heard only a few years ago when the city corporation took charge of the memorial and the park surrounding it.

By the time the corporation had woken up form its slumber, the park around the memorial had long been gone and buildings had come up on all sides of the memorial. Only a small patch of green had remained and the area around the memorial was being used to bury bodies.

Today, the structure can be approached through the small  bylanes amidst a cluster of concrete. Locals say that the structure has undergone some modifications. A stone tablet here says the memorial belongs to the wife of Immadi Kempe Gowda.

The memorial is now located in a small park called Lakshmama Park.

There are practically no sings to lead a visitor to the memorial. The surroundings today need to be spruced up. There are heaps of garbage and debris nearby which deter a visitor from coming here.

There is a temple nearby which is called the Lakshmamam Temple. This structure has undergone many modifications and extensive renovations. A gopura was added to the memorial in 1970.  It opens only on Friday mornings.

However, historians such as S,K Aruni, the head of the Southern Regional Centre for the Indian Council of Historical Research and Dr. Suryanath Kamath do not believe the story of Lakshmamam to be true. Dr. Aruni, in his book Yelehanka Nada Prabhus, says there is no historical basis to support the story of  Lakshmamma and her memorial.

Whatever it may be, there is no denying that the memorial goes back to several centuries. The garage around it is perhaps a reflection of the garbage city that Bangalore has today become