After Indore, Gandhinagar: How Waterborne Epidemics Are Exposing a Deeper Urban Planning Crisis

Until recently, scenes of residents protesting outside municipal offices in cities like Ahmedabad, Vadodara, or Surat—holding plastic bottles and buckets filled with murky drinking water—had become increasingly rare. For nearly five years, Gujarat appeared to have moved past its worst water-quality crises. That perception changed abruptly when more than 100 people were admitted to Gandhinagar Civil Hospital with typhoid and related illnesses.

Over the past week, patients from Gandhinagar’s Sectors 24, 26, and 28, as well as the adjoining Adiwada area, reported high fever and severe gastrointestinal symptoms. Health officials soon traced the outbreak to contaminated drinking water. Investigations revealed at least seven leak points in a newly laid water pipeline, which allowed sewage to seep into the potable water supply.

Preliminary field tests and door-to-door surveys suggested that the damage was likely caused during ongoing drainage repairs or cable-laying work. Officials believe workers may have ignored or misread underground engineering maps, puncturing the water line and creating points of contamination.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), typhoid fever is caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi and spreads through the oral-faecal route. Infection occurs when people consume food or water contaminated with human excreta. In urban areas where sewage and drinking water pipelines run dangerously close, even minor leaks can result in large-scale contamination.

Rapid urbanisation, often driven by illegal or poorly regulated construction, has worsened this risk. Fragmented sewage networks are common in expanding cities, where discharge pipelines are frequently and illegally connected to trunk sewer lines. This structural chaos allows sewage to seep into adjacent drinking water pipelines, especially when pressure drops or pipes rupture.

In low-lying pockets of fast-growing cities, such contamination is not an anomaly—it is a recurring pattern. Gandhinagar’s outbreak is part of a broader trend. Across Gujarat, urban centres have repeatedly recorded spikes in waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, and typhoid, particularly during the monsoon season. Ahmedabad, in particular, has seen seasonal surges linked to ageing infrastructure, low-pressure lines, and outdated distribution networks.

In Gandhinagar, however, the state’s response has been swift and focused on immediate containment. Both state and central authorities ordered emergency medical interventions. The Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation deployed 85 survey teams and conducted health surveillance covering more than 1.58 lakh residents.

Hospitals were instructed to run round-the-clock outpatient departments, while dedicated isolation wards were established for affected patients. As a preventive measure, nearly 30,000 chlorine tablets and more than 20,600 ORS packets were distributed across vulnerable areas. Food arrangements were also made for attendants of patients admitted to the civil hospital.

Union Home Minister and Gandhinagar MP Amit Shah personally spoke to Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Harsh Sanghavi, who visited the hospital and met affected families. Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel later stated that the number of new cases was gradually declining, indicating that containment measures were beginning to work.

On the infrastructure front, repairing the damaged pipelines was given top priority. The Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation increased chlorination levels in the water supply as an emergency safeguard. In an official statement, the state government said the chief minister had directed all urban local bodies to conduct daily drinking water sampling, ensure chlorination compliance, and resume water distribution only after quality reports were cleared.

Yet, despite the prompt response, the episode underscores a deeper administrative failure: the inability to institutionalise prevention. The crisis mirrors a similar tragedy in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, where Indore’s Bhagirathpura locality recently declared a waterborne epidemic after contaminated pipeline water claimed 10 lives and left many others ill.

The proximity of the Indore tragedy amplified attention on Gandhinagar’s outbreak. “These incidents will continue to recur until hard engineering solutions are implemented,” said a senior urban designer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Full household sewer connections, continuous and reliable water supply, leak-proof distribution systems, and fully functional sewage treatment plants are non-negotiable.”

The Gandhinagar case highlights the complex hydrological and technical challenges facing urban planners. Gujarat’s low-lying khadis—seasonal waterways—and urban drains receive wastewater from both residential and commercial sources. Due to incomplete underground sewer networks, untreated or partially treated sewage often flows directly into surface drains and rivers.

In older neighbourhoods and rapidly expanding suburbs, contaminated water can enter distribution pipes during repair work, pressure fluctuations, or illegal cross-connections. Under such conditions, every household tap becomes a potential health hazard.

As cities expand and infrastructure ages, Gandhinagar’s outbreak serves as a warning: without sustained investment in preventive urban planning and engineering, waterborne epidemics will remain a recurring threat rather than an exception.