The arterial Changanassery-Alappuzha Road, known across Kerala simply as the AC Road, has once again exposed how expensive it can be when engineering fails to understand ecology.
The road has returned to the headlines during the current spell of heavy monsoon rains. Long stretches have remained waterlogged while motorists complain of dangerous depressions near bridge approaches where the road has sunk, but the bridges have remained stable.
Residents have repeatedly pointed to blocked drainage openings, poorly functioning culverts and embankments that prevent rainwater from flowing into adjoining paddy fields and canals.
What appears on the surface as a maintenance problem is, in fact, a symptom of a much deeper ecological disorder. The AC Road has become a mirror reflecting Kerala’s changing relationship with its wetlands and floodplains.
Kuttanad is unlike any other agricultural landscape in India. Spread across Alappuzha, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta districts, much of the region lies below mean sea level.
Generations of farmers transformed this floodplain into one of the country’s most productive rice-growing regions through an extraordinary system of polders, earthen bunds, canals, spill channels and pumping stations.
But the success of this engineering depended on one basic principle. Water had to keep moving. The paddy fields were never merely agricultural land. They functioned as enormous seasonal reservoirs capable of storing floodwater before releasing it gradually into the Vembanad Lake.
During the southwest monsoon, floodwaters from the Pampa, Meenachil, Achankovil and Manimala rivers spread across these low-lying fields, slowing the flow, reducing flood peaks and recharging wetlands. The landscape behaved like a giant sponge, absorbing excess water before letting it drain away.
Over the last five decades, that sponge has steadily shrunk. Thousands of hectares of wetlands have disappeared under roads, housing colonies, commercial establishments, tourism infrastructure and indiscriminate land reclamation. Traditional canals have narrowed or been encroached upon. Many natural streams that once carried floodwaters have either vanished or survive only on old survey maps.
Every new reclamation may appear insignificant in isolation, but together they have altered the hydrology of Kuttanad. Water that once spread harmlessly across wetlands is now forced into narrower channels, increasing both the speed and the intensity of flooding. Instead of storing water, the landscape increasingly pushes it towards settlements and roads.
The reconstruction of the AC Road must be seen against this larger transformation. The original road, built during the princely state of Travancore and improved over several decades, was by no means environmentally perfect. Yet it evolved with the landscape. Numerous culverts and low-lying openings allowed water to cross beneath it.
The recent widening project fundamentally changed that relationship. Wider embankments, continuous concrete structures, raised footpaths and redesigned drainage systems have, in several locations, interrupted natural water movement. Residents say that rainwater, which earlier flowed effortlessly into neighbouring fields, now remains trapped on one side of the road. During this year’s rains, several stretches resembled shallow reservoirs rather than a state highway.
The reconstruction of the AC Road was among the flagship infrastructure projects launched by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in the aftermath of the 2018 floods under the World Bank-supported Rebuild Kerala Initiative, which promised to create infrastructure capable of withstanding a changing climate. The 24.14-km highway was redesigned as a modern semi-elevated corridor at an initial sanctioned cost of Rs 624.48 crore in June 2020. Barely two months later, the estimate was revised to Rs 671.66 crore. In October that year, the government awarded the construction contract, valued at nearly Rs 679 crore, to the ULCCS-Evrascon joint venture led by the Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS), one of Kerala’s largest public contractors.
The project was projected as a model of post-flood reconstruction and climate-resilient infrastructure. Yet, within a short period of its completion, the road has become the subject of growing criticism over waterlogging, disrupted natural drainage, differential settlement and recurring safety concerns, raising uncomfortable questions about whether one of Kerala’s costliest road projects adequately understood the fragile hydrology of Kuttanad before nearly Rs 700 crore of public money was committed.
“This should never have happened in a region where hydrology is everything. Roads in Kuttanad cannot be designed as though they pass through ordinary terrain. They are built across one of the most flood-sensitive landscapes in South Asia. Every culvert, every bridge opening and every drainage channel determines how efficiently the floodplain performs during heavy rainfall. Blocking even a few traditional drainage routes can produce consequences extending kilometres away. Water has no choice but to accumulate wherever its natural pathways are obstructed. The present flooding along the AC Road is therefore not simply a consequence of heavy rainfall. It reflects the cumulative impact of interrupting the landscape’s natural drainage system,'” explains Bhadran Bhaskaran, a native of Kuttanad who raises livelihood and environmental issues regularly from the region.
The timing is particularly significant because Kerala is once again witnessing severe flooding in several districts. Seven years have passed since the devastating floods of 2018, when nearly the entire Kuttanad region remained submerged for weeks. Those floods were widely described as a turning point in Kerala’s understanding of climate risk. The state’s own Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, along with subsequent expert committee reports, argued that future infrastructure should respect natural drainage, protect wetlands and avoid construction that obstructs floodplains. The message was remarkably clear. Kerala could no longer afford to build as though rivers, wetlands and floodplains were empty spaces waiting for development.
“Unfortunately, much of the reconstruction that followed appears to have retained the old mindset. Climate resilience became a popular slogan, but on the ground the emphasis remained on speed, visibility and concrete. Roads became wider, embankments higher and drainage increasingly dependent on engineered structures rather than natural systems. The AC Road illustrates this contradiction. A highway rebuilt after the state’s worst flood disaster now struggles to cope with ordinary monsoon conditions. Instead of demonstrating climate resilience, it exposes how little our development practices have changed,”' points out hydrology expert and environmentalist Sreedhar Radhakrishnan.
The decline of the Pampa river system adds another layer to this unfolding crisis. For centuries, the Pampa carried monsoon waters through a vast network of distributaries before finally emptying into Vembanad Lake. This river system sustained Kuttanad’s agriculture, replenished wetlands and moderated floods by spreading water across an extensive floodplain. Today, that system is under unprecedented stress. Sand mining, riverbank encroachments, shrinking floodplains, poorly planned check dams, reclamation and large-scale changes in land use across the upper catchments have significantly altered the river’s behaviour. Deforestation and quarrying in the Western Ghats have increased surface runoff, sending enormous volumes of water downstream within a much shorter period. At the same time, the lower floodplain has lost much of its ability to absorb these sudden surges because wetlands and paddy fields have steadily disappeared.
The result is a river that alternates between extremes. During intense rainfall, the Pampa now carries flood peaks that overwhelm downstream settlements. During dry months, large stretches experience reduced flows, affecting drinking water, agriculture and the ecological health of the Vembanad wetland. What has collapsed is not merely the river’s flow but the entire flood moderation system that once linked forests in the Western Ghats to the wetlands of Kuttanad. Roads, buildings and reclaimed land have become part of this collapse because each intervention has further narrowed the space available for floodwaters.
This changing hydrology also explains why infrastructure failures are becoming increasingly common. The recent sinking of sections of the AC Road is not simply an engineering defect. Bridges rest on deep foundations anchored far below the soft alluvial soil, while the adjoining embankments continue to settle over time. Such differential settlement is expected in deltaic landscapes and requires careful design, phased construction and continuous monitoring. The fact that dangerous height differences have emerged so soon after reconstruction raises legitimate questions about whether sufficient attention was paid to the fragile geology and hydrology of Kuttanad.
“There is a larger lesson here. Kerala’s ecological crisis is no longer confined to forests or hill slopes. It is unfolding equally in its floodplains, rivers and wetlands. The state continues to lose paddy fields despite decades of legal protection. Wetlands that once acted as natural buffers are fragmented by roads, tourism projects and urban expansion. Every intervention may seem technically feasible when viewed in isolation. Together they are dismantling the natural systems that protected Kerala from floods long before modern engineering arrived.'”Environmentalist Sreedhar Radhakrishnan
The story of the AC Road is therefore much bigger than one troubled highway. It is about a state still struggling to reconcile development with the ecological realities of a warming climate. Kerala often speaks of learning from the floods of 2018. Yet every monsoon reveals how incomplete those lessons remain.