FLOODS IN CHENNAI - ANOTHER WAKE UP CALL
By Ruma Dubey
People swimming through streets. Men and women harried due to rains, no drinking water and power. Rats scurrying away. Submerged runways at airports. Cars and other vehicles submerged. Water and water everywhere. Ola running boat services. A very telling image – a cow sitting in an ATM, away from all the devastation, ruminating on what exactly went wrong.
More than the cow, isn’t it really time for us to sit and introspect – where are we really heading? Tall talks at the Paris Climate Change summit when a metropolis city in your very own country is drowning; are we learning anything or are we going to blame all this on developed nations and the consequential climate change and move on?
Chennai has had incessant rains, the highest recorded over 114 years. What the city was to receive in 3 months, it has received in one single month. Thus politicians say that Chennai is a victim of circumstances, nothing could have prevented this; after all who can control Nature and Rain Gods?
But is that so easy an explanation? Yes, the rain has never fallen so heavily in Chennai but is the damage that is caused justifiable? Mindless development, every open plot of land, be it even marshy land, all getting converted into commercial and residential properties; who is to blame for this? Improper drainage, toxic garbage, a mad race to urbanization – all these have added to the deluge becoming a national disaster.
Urbanisation is the need of the hour but is this how all our cities are going to become. Mumbai, this year, had very less rains which is why we did not really see floods. But we have seen how the city submerged a few years ago. The very same has today happened in Chennai and there is no guarantee that it will not happen in other cities. Therein lay our problem – we never seem to learn from our mistakes. Mangroves and wetlands are there for a purpose. Nature made them as a natural drainage for all the flood water. But we do not understand Nature and thus go about filling these wetlands with garbage, to build tall residential and office complexes, with prices touching the sky. Aren’t we paying a very high price today – not just for realty but in terms of our life?
A report from the National Institute of Disaster Management stated that about 650 water bodies, including big lakes, ponds and storage tanks, have been destroyed in Chennai – they stands at a pitiable 27 today. More damaging data – as against 2847 kms of urban roads, there is only 855 kms of storm water drains.
Two areas in Chennai - Velacherry and Taramani are literally submerged today. This does not come as a surprise because even in normal monsoon, when there are two days of rains, these two areas get flooded. There it is pretty routine; almost every year to see people travel by boats during monsoon. This was bound to happen as these areas had lakes but today most lakes are landfilled and tall buildings or malls stand.
Today the dirt of politics threatens to take over the slush and mud that the rivers have washed down in full fury. Visuals of the large walls of water in a bustling city, shows the fury of Nature, infuriated with this plundering by man. The deluge, slush and mud piling up are seemingly pushing back all the muck which man has slathered on this fragile nature. Hell hath no fury when a woman scorned…. we are seeing today what happens when Mother Nature gets angry.
There is a now a raging debate about whether the disaster was man-made, whether the weather department failed to predict correctly, whether the Chief Minister showed apathy, whether mindless pursuit of economic development led to this, whether the construction mafia dons raped Nature… well, the blame game has begun. But the fact remains that today parts of the state lay in shambles.
The sad part – we never seem to learn from these experiences. The pursuit of money and greed has overtaken all senses. But one day Mother Nature will hit back very hard – are we ready for that?