At the end of April this year, as the sun was blazing and summer holidays were in full swing south in Tamil Nadu a tragic, completely avoidable drowning incident took place – a four-year-old girl, while attending a summer camp at a kindergarten, fell into a water tank in the premises, and died. Media reports indicate that the 11-feet deep tank was uncovered. The police and government officials swung into action, detaining teachers and school authorities, and sealing the school. Beyond the immediate police and government action that was taken however, the larger question remains as to how safe urban spaces – schools, roads, public places and homes – are, when it comes to preventing drowning deaths.
When we think of drowning, we think of large waterbodies – rivers, lakes and the ocean – and while research indicates that a majority of drowning deaths occur rurally, not many people realise that a person can drown even in one inch of water, says Jagnoor Jagnoor, a public health researcher and programme lead for injury, The George Institute for Global Health. “Bucket deaths, for instance, are very common,” she says.
Buckets apart, drownings also take place in canals, ditches, drains, construction pits and wells, highlighting the need for better urban design, safety on roads, and child-friendly, safe, public spaces, she adds.
Significantly, research indicates that younger people are more likely to die of drowning in canals, dams, swimming pools, water pits, tanks, wells etc., with one-third of all drowning deaths being in the 0-14 age group, says Rakhi Dandona, Director of Injury Prevention Centre at the Public Health Foundation of India, over email. “Absence of a caretaker, unsafe environments and lack of swimming skills are risk factors for the 0-15 age group, while unsafe environments, lack of toilets and the use of alcohol are risk factors for those above 15. Importantly, most people who died by drowning were alone at the time of the event – this has implications for prevention,” she notes.
The climate change impact
What can make badly-designed or non-maintained urban spaces dangerous, especially in recent times, is that with a rise in climate change events, heavy rains and flooding are beginning to affect an increasing number of cities, turning even small pits, sewers and channels on roadsides into potential hazards. Just last month, an autorickshaw driver in Gurugram fell into a submerged open sewer on the roadside and died, while the city was flooded after heavy rains.
Urban floods have risen in frequency and intensity in India over the past two decades. In the January 2025 paper‘Drowning in Our Progress? Tackling the Growing Menace of Urban Floods in India,’ by Panna Chandra Nath and Aditya K. Josh, the authors state that every year, lakhs of people are affected by urban floods in India, and almost all major cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, and Guwahati face the problem, in addition to smaller cities. “From 2011 to 2020, floods in India claimed approximately 1500 human lives annually,” the paper states. It adds that studies show that single-day intense rainfall and subsequent urban flooding are likely to increase in the country’s future, with a surge in intensity of 19–60% by the year 2050 compared to 2015.
A flooded scene in Bengaluru in October 2024.
| Photo Credit:
MURALI KUMAR K
The World Health Organization in its December 2023 Global Status Report on Drowning Prevention notes, “Human-generated climate change is causing extreme weather events, thereby increasing the likelihood and severity of high-impact floods and droughts. This rise in water-related hazards disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations and makes previously unaffected communities newly vulnerable.” It also underscores that floods accounted for 44% of all disasters between 2000 and 2019, and it is estimated that 75% of fatalities in flood-related disasters are drowning deaths. Along with increased frequency and severity of flood disasters and unplanned urbanisation, the number of people exposed to hazards is rising, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where people live in flood-prone areas with inadequate warning, evacuation and community protection systems,” it points out.
The problem of urban design and maintenance
Why are channels uncovered, pools unfenced, drains unsilted and water tanks not lidded so often in our cities?
The issue, says a senior urban planning expert, lies with both design and maintenance. Channels and drains that form part of a city’s utilities are often not designed well at the street level. Urban engineering is not always prioritised as it should be, leading to badly-designed utilities that do not account for pedestrian space and safety. Even when the design is good and is implemented, it is often patchy and unevenly applied through the city.
The other major issue, he points out, is to do with maintenance. “City administration is essentially a massive housekeeping exercise. Servicing and maintenance of utilities is a large part of this, but how to finance servicing and upkeep is a problem for almost all cities. Larger corporations are still able to fund repairs, but for smaller ones and rural towns, this remains a huge hurdle. What happens then is that the utility is built, but due to a lack of maintenance or repairs, it does not function as it should, or is incomplete for long periods, posing a hazard that is compounded by even small amounts of rain.”
Five domains and 25 subdomains for drowning prevention
| Photo Credit:
World Health Organization Global Status Report on Drowning Prevention, December 2023
Prioritising flood resilience
One critical gap is that ‘Smart’ cities (under the Smart Cities Mission) are not being built with flood resilience in mind, points out Dr. Jagnoor. Even flagship schemes like the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission do not prioritise floods and urban flooding in their strategies, states the research paper. “In 2015, the AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) mission was launched, which addressed the lack of proper drainage in urban planning. However, its functioning has not rigorously been implemented, and only 719 projects costing INR 1.6 thousand crore have been completed in seven years,” the paper noted.
Planning for flooding, designing for it, with, for instance, permeable pavements and other such measures, understanding how lifeguards and signage and SMS alerts can help and increasing awareness among first-responders should all be part of making cities more resilient towards urban floods, she says.
While the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) now takes cognisance of urban flooding, with the Management of Urban Flooding guidelines released in 2010, the WHO notes that policies for disaster risk management in India do not specify drowning. Nor is drowning in urban floods considered in the National Strategy for Prevention of Unintentional Injury, which focuses on drowning prevention as one of its goals, both critical gaps that need addressing, says Dr. Jagnoor.
“This is no longer a scattered problem,” says the urban planning expert. “Every city has to address urban flooding in some form of the other – it is no longer a choice. The question is how to scale this up, within a short time, and what capacity the city has to do so.”
Everyone’s role in drowning prevention
Where, ultimately, does the responsibility lie? While the government has a major responsibility, in formulating regulations – which are constantly catching up — and their implementation, for instance, India has no regulations around fencing of private and public swimming pools as yet the WHO says, communities and the private sector have a role to play as well, in ensuring flood resilience, safety and preventing drowning deaths.
Cities develop piece by piece, the urban planning expert points out, and not all of the pieces are developed by the State. “The private sector is responsible for a large chunk of constructions and while more regulations need to be formulated and implemented here, some responsibility has to be taken,” says the urban planning expert. For instance, how much can a private apartment complex manage its own water during a flooding event? How much can it soak up, or does it just offload all of the water on to public streets, creating hazards for passers-by? These are areas that need to be looked into while planning flood resilience measures.”
At smaller levels too, at home and outside, upkeep of facilities, regular monitoring, ensuring that safety equipment works and that safety laws are implemented in practice are crucial. This includes identification of potential hazards and measures to mitigate them. “We, as the community, have a major role in this – to ensure that we do not use facilities (swimming pool, pond, boat, etc) which lack safety, and also that we follow what is required for safety (floaters, belts, life jackets, etc). If we do not use unsafe facilities and equipment, we reduce the chance of drowning and we also then force the facilities for upkeep,” says Dr. Dandona.
As the WHO says anyone can drown; no one should.
