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The incessant rainfall and the subsequent floods have disrupted the people staying in Bengaluru. Not just the poor and middle class facing the brunt, but the affluent business tycoons have also not been spared.
Over the last few days, Bengaluru’s most high-end residential properties and well-known tech parks have been the worst hit by the overflow of the Bellandur and Yemalur lakes (in southeast Bengaluru).
Epsilon--home to corporate and business elite including Wipro chairman Rishad Premji, Britannia CEO Varun Berry, Big Basket co-founder Abhinay Choudhari, BigBasket co-founder Abhinay Choudhari, Page Industries (Jockey) MD Ashok Genomal and Byju's co-founder Byju Raveendran--has been flooded.
Industrialist Harsh Goenka shared a video of Elipson where plush cars and posh bungalows were submerged in water. Goenka wrote, "Scenes from the finest housing society Epsilon in #Bangalore where the rich and famous stay. If the city wants to continue the moniker of ‘IT capital of the world' we have to improve the infrastructure of the city".
On Tuesday, Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal was seen on a tractor in Bengaluru. Munjal wrote that his family and dog were evacuated from his society. "Family and my Pet Albus have been evacuated on a Tractor from our society that’s now submerged. Things are bad. Please take care. DM me if you need any help, I’ll try my best to help".
Biotechnology industry veteran Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has termed the rain havoc in Bengaluru as "devastating". She said the government and developers need to take collective responsibility to address water logging.
Mazumdar-Shaw said building codes need to be redrawn and called for a corrective and preventive action plan after a "post-hoc analysis" of root causes.
"No point in a blame game but an action plan that can be expeditiously implemented (is needed)", she stressed.
Bangalore has faced consecutive nights of relentless monsoon rains that have crippled transport and business operations on the city’s key Outer Ring Road (ORR), an area where big-name international firms such as Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Morgan Stanley have offices. It’s also caused tens of millions in productivity losses locally, according to an industry group.
Companies had to trigger emergency business continuity plans, allow work from home or pass on critical work to locations outside of Bangalore, causing reputational damage and economic losses.
Weather officials are predicting further bouts of severe weather in Bengaluru in the next two days. Heavy to very heavy rainfall is predicted over a few places in coastal and south interior Karnataka on September 8-9 and interior Karnataka on September 9-10.
According to the IMD data, Bengaluru Urban received 168 percent surplus rainfall -- 840.2mm of precipitation against a normal of 313.2mm between September 1 and September 7. While Bengaluru Rural gauged 752.3mm of rainfall against a normal of 303.5mm during the same period.