NEW DELHI: The water logging that was witnessed in Gurgaon on the night of July 28, 2016 is no ordinary crisis that is witnessed across Indian cities every monsoon. Situated in the foothills of the oldest mountain range in the world—the Aravalis —Gurgaon is battling a flood-like situation as unnaturally high rainfall of over 5.5 cm in just over 2 hours brought the city to a grinding halt.After about 14 hours on the road and getting nowhere, traffic has started crawling out of the logjam that was witnessed overnight. Home guards have been commissioned to assist the Gurgaon Traffic Police The freak rain has brought the various planning oversights of the past two decades into sharp focus. The 5.5 cm of rain in the city in two hours was the first trigger for the crisis. It was aggravated by the fact that the overflow from other unplanned areas such as Ghata, Sainik Farms and the run-off from the Aravalis also flowed into the beleaguered Badshahpur drain that developed a small breach at about 11.30 last night.Could this have been averted?Gurgaon was crisscrossed by a network of drains till two decades ago. As land became more expensive many of these were filled and used to construct real estate, the backbone of the city’s economy.TL Satyaprakash, deputy commissioner of Gurgaon says that for the past few years storm water and sewerage has been flowing into the Badshahpur drain.“To fix this, funds have been sourced under the AMRUT scheme from the Centre. A three-month plan of documentation and finding solutions is currently under way.”In addition, work is on to restore four water bodies and 10 others have been identified in the next phase. This involves identifying its source, cleaning and de-silting the lakes and reducing putrefaction and decay so that they would become healthy water bodies.The problem is severe. Being on the foothills of the Aravalis, water in Gurgaon will always find its own path, unless there are serious efforts to create water channels that can carry the water to designated water bodies. About four months ago, the civic officials had attempted to create water harvesting systems across the Aravalis, only to be stonewalled by the Forest Department.Reviving water systems and respecting water channels have been attempted with great success in cities like Singapore where an impending threat to procurement of water pushed the city government to harvest every drop of rain water and channel them into 17 raw water reservoirs.Gurgaon needs to come up with such a plan in a hurry. If not the topography and natural forces will ensure that the city is forced to learn the lessons the hard way. It is estimated that if the Badshahpur drain breaches, half of Gurgaon can go under.(The author is the editorial head of Magicbricks.com)