Nagpur: Nagpur is literally digging up its own future. Roads built at huge public expense are being ripped open for sewer and water pipelines, conservancy lanes have been swallowed by encroachments, and agencies continue laying underground infrastructure without a common plan for what comes next.In a city spread over 227 sq km and completing 75 years of municipal existence, development has become a cycle of construction, excavation and reconstruction.“NMC does have a Town Planning Department, but the bigger failure is the absence of an empowered integrated infrastructure-planning mechanism coordinating roads, sewerage, water, stormwater, electricity, telecom, land and encroachments,” admitted mayor Neeta Thakre. “Soon I will be convening a meeting in this regard,” Thakre told TOI.The consequences are visible in AMRUT sewerage works. Pipelines are being laid through existing road corridors, in some stretches through the middle of roads. The next question is critical: how will individual houses be connected? Chambers will have to be built outside properties and residents could eventually be forced to alter compound walls, entrances or structures to connect their homes.There is another risk. Drinking-water pipelines already run along many residential stretches. Laying sewer lines in the same constrained corridors increases the possibility of damage to water pipelines and potential contamination if separation or construction quality fails.The most glaring irony is that cement roads are being dug up after construction to lay sewer and water lines. Public money is spent first on a supposedly durable road and then again on excavation, restoration and repairs.And Nagpur has been warned about this for years.A TOI report in June 2013 had highlighted NMC’s plan to use Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) and underground ducts to reduce road digging. Agencies including NHAI, PWD, NIT, MSEDCL and BSNL were brought together to coordinate utility works. Days later, then standing committee chairman Avinash Thakre said NMC planned to allow telecom companies to use around 1,700 km of existing pipelines, cable ducts and stormwater drains, instead of repeatedly cutting roads. The policy never became the institutional solution envisaged.Thirteen years later, the same city is still struggling with road digging.“Other Maharashtra cities and metros have stronger institutional planning mechanisms. Mumbai’s BMC has a dedicated Chief Engineer (Development Plan) department handling development-plan preparation and implementation, land for roads and public reservations, and development-plan data,” said an official from NMC’s public works department. Even Pune has a dedicated planning department dealing with development plans, town-planning schemes, zoning and infrastructure planning.“Nagpur needs to make the same shift before its unplanned growth becomes irreversible,” pointed out leader of opposition and Congress corporator Sanjay Mahakalkar.The city urgently needs a single GIS-based database of roads, water and sewer lines, stormwater drains, utility ducts, conservancy lanes and NMC land. Every road should be cleared only after future underground utility requirements are mapped.
