Coping with urban flooding: A community portrayal of Bardhhaman Town, West Bengal, India

Abstract

The majority of flooding in cities occurs while raining because of the cities' uncontrolled growth of population and their pattern of settlements, haphazardly sprawling urbanization, their inadequate and faulty drainage, and also due to absence of scientific waste management. A proper example of these factors playing together might be in the town of Bardhhaman, the only Class-I town in the District of East Bardhhaman, living with both the River Banka in the North-Central section and the River Damodar in the Southern part. But the town gets often partially water stagnated not due to these rivers flooding, rather turning one of the rivers (Banka) in to a dump yard along with other drainage networks. And this scenario is being continuously worsened by the citizens who were supposed to things make better. The methodology chosen for the study includes semi-structured interviews, focused group discussions (FGD), and observational analyses during the field with respondents. The nine groups of citizens and two groups of Municipal workers from varied parts of the Municipality were selected based on certain demographic and socio-economic criteria but the incidents of water inundation of the citizens played an important role while sorting the groups. These outcomes of the interactions have been put for a thematic analysis using QDA Miner Lite 4.0 (14 day trial version) and plotted in PAST 4.03(shareware) and MS- Excel (2017) for graphical representations. This article seeks an improved comprehension of the flooding scenario from the perspective of individuals, and so argues for a shift in the Municipal Authority's and citizens' conceptions. During the survey, the discrepancy between the municipality's policy framework and the actual reality became clear--this is where a decentralized method of policies thought to appear as essential. So, this paper would portray the scenario of urban flooding keeping community in the center of discussion.