After what seemed like a mild beginning, this year’s monsoon showers are proving to be just as deadly as they get, insofar as Lahore is concerned. Karachi, Pakistan’s fabled ‘city of lights,’ has already been reduced to a city of rainwaters, and things aren’t looking good for Punjab’s capital too. This past week saw episodes of downpour that varied in strength and volume from place to place. Predictably, the low-lying areas in the city were submerged, disrupting life and activity. Scenes on the streets have been routinely about people wading through ponds of storm-water, vehicles stuck in the middle or half-drowned, cable lines fallen to the ground, and so on. All of which screams ‘poor planning’ on the part of the city administration and the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), for that matter.

As the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) predicts more rains in the city in the next few days, is Lahore prepared for another round of urban flooding? Far from it.