A woman electrocuted in Naid Kadal, and roads turned into ponds, showing how drainage failure and official apathy are putting lives on the line
When a city is brought to its knees by an hour of rain, it is not the weather that stands accused, but governance. Monday’s cloudburst over Srinagar, lasting barely an hour, was enough to turn key stretches of the summer capital into grim, flood-like corridors. At Naid Kadal’s Ranger Stop, that failure turned fatal. A 60-year-old woman was electrocuted as she tried to steady herself on a metal electric pole while wading through an inundated road. She died on the spot. The tragedy is being called an “accident.” In truth, it is the predictable outcome of years of neglect. From Bagh-e-Mehtab to Khanyar, Safa Kadal and other city pockets, the script was the same: roads vanishing under sheets of water within minutes of the downpour; pedestrians trapped under shopfronts and rooftops, forced to wait out the deluge; commuters inching through pothole-riddled, waterlogged stretches, unsure where the tarmac ended, and a crater began. This was not a prolonged spell of extreme weather. It was a one-hour shower in June, yet it exposed, yet again, how fragile Srinagar’s drainage and road infrastructure really is. People did not mince words. They pointed to the absurdity of a city that talks of ‘smart city’, better infrastructure, but cannot cope with a brief spell of rain. They asked the Srinagar Municipal Corporation and the concerned departments a basic question: why does water stand on roads almost as soon as the first heavy drops fall? What does this say about the design, maintenance and desilting of drains; about encroachments allowed to choke natural outlets; about the quality of roadworks that cannot withstand routine weather? There are no convincing answers, only stock phrases and routine assurances. Officials insist that “men and machinery” were immediately pressed into service for dewatering and that teams are “on their toes.” But such fire-fighting, however prompt, does not compensate for systemic failure. It does not bring back a life lost to a live electric pole standing in the middle of a flooded street. It does not reassure a citizenry that watches the same scenes replay every season: knee-deep water, chaotic traffic, exposed wires, and a governance apparatus that wakes up only after disaster strikes. Srinagar deserves better than this cycle of apathy, outrage and temporary pumping. What is needed is a time-bound overhaul of drainage networks, strict action against encroachments, rigorous pre-monsoon inspections of electric infrastructure, and accountability for every department whose negligence turns rain into a public hazard. A city that cannot guarantee safe passage during an hour of rain has no business speaking of modernity. Time will tell whether the administration is willing to move from comforting words to uncomfortable action.