SUBMERGED 2 - THE DAY CHENNAI SANK AGAIN

 

SUBMERGED 2 - THE DAY CHENNAI SANK AGAIN

It was in the first week of December 2015 eight years ago that Chennai was submerged by incessant rainfall, the flooding in the city was described as the worst in a century due to the North East monsoon which hits the East Coast of India during November and December. I was in Chennai, marooned along with so many others, without power, and water (which had to be lugged from the sump on the ground floor to my first-floor apartment, one of the lucky few). One had to grab whatever was available in the surrounding provision stores. Luckily there was no flooding within the apartment perimeter or the surrounding area. In that sense we were lucky.

When the power was restored after three days and the wifi turned on, I sat that night to write ‘Submerged - The Day Chennai Sank’ in my blog. That was my way of venting my frustration at what had happened and why the city was reduced to shambles. 

This year it was the cyclone Michaung which battered the city and dumped as much water or maybe more to leave thousands homeless and most of the population without food, drinking water, and power. The signs had been ominous at least a week before 4th December when it finally hit Chennai. All along the Met department was doing their job, tracking the course of the cyclone, and the others(?), were just watching without any perceptible movement on their part to take stock of the situation, and initiate measures to safeguard the city and the population. After all, they had eight years to implement these measures from the lessons learned during the last disaster. We were told that Rs. 4000 crores had been spent in implementing the infrastructure and stormwater drainage systems to prevent such an eventuality. Looking at what happened and how badly the city was affected it is obvious that all that money had literally gone down the drain or into —----(?). The lessons hadn’t been learned because there were more important priorities.

This time around I was away in Hyderabad. Should I say that I was lucky I was not in Chennai? Though it is a fact, I still feel a sense of having run away from the scene. I have been busy listening to the coverage in the media and seeing the visuals and first-hand reports from my friends and relatives. The situation has been grave and as I write this I am told that there are still some areas where normalcy is yet to be restored. The scenes were very familiar, and 2015 was repeated with increased intensity. I thought that the best way to express my anguish was to repeat what I had written in my earlier blog. Though eight years old, it is still very much relevant, for nothing has changed, nothing constructive has happened. 

Although the monsoon is an annual occurrence and cyclones can be expected during this period, this year also the city was in no state of preparedness. The lessons of 2015 had not been learned. At that time I had raised several questions and made observations as to who is to be held responsible for these recurring mishaps. 

Reproduced below is a portion of my earlier post, for like everything my views remain the same -

‘Today when we look at what has happened by way of development, we find – 

1) unauthorized, unplanned, and illegal structures have sprouted all along the banks of the rivers and elsewhere 

2) there is only a very small fraction of the large number of water bodies that existed in and around the hinterland of Chennai still left, and encroachments have happened at such places hindering the natural course of water flow

 3) the real estate boom has given rise to the proliferation of housing societies built in low-lying areas where once a lake existed and (today most of them are flooded). This has been made possible due to the dangerous nexus between the unscrupulous elements in the construction sector, the land grabbing quick buck-making politicians, and the respective departments in the government who do not appear to have made a sincere and serious study of the feasibility and safety of such projects before giving clearances. The result is that a majority of the people aspiring to own a house have taken a huge risk investing in these projects. 

4) If a mapping of the entire region indicating the low-lying areas and lake beds has been done, it does not appear to have been made public, and the ordinary citizen is not aware, nor have the builders been transparent enough to reveal the hazards. Ultimately, one should lay the blame on the agencies involved for giving clearances. Who knows (or rather everyone knows) what considerations are involved.  

I could list out any number of failures and shortcomings of the administration. But have we ever asked ourselves the question why this is so? To what extent have we ourselves contributed to this sorry state of affairs? Isn’t it fair to admit that we also have a major share in allowing this to happen?

Hopefully, this disaster should open the eyes of the ordinary man to the game being played. Though stormwater drains have been planned and implemented, they have not been fully completed and where completed, periodic maintenance is not evident. Roads are dug up by different departments like the electricity board for laying cables and again dug up by the water and sewage department for laying pipelines without any proper resurfacing of the road. The pathetic state of the roads is evidence enough. We already have large potholes and caving-in roads in some places, aggravated by this present spell of rains and I am sure some patchwork will be done immediately, which within a few months will once again revert to their pathetic state. No one is held accountable for carrying out such substandard and shoddy work. One hears that there was opposition to the proposal for relaying the roads with concrete. One can only surmise that if that is done the need for maintenance will drastically reduce and with it, the annual contracts for relaying the roads would diminish, and with it …… (No elaboration required I guess). It's ‘consideration’ and not 'necessity', that appears to be the rule for awarding work contracts.

This disaster has brought to the fore the fact, that it is the ordinary man on the street, our armed forces, NDRF, and other voluntary agencies that emerge as the heroes of the day; whether it is rescuing marooned people and ensuring that supplies are delivered to the affected. People have thrown open their homes to house the affected. For the first time, I have seen Chennai rise as a single united force without relying on the unreliable support of the political class to battle the forces of nature and ensure the city's survival. Well, the politicians whichever party they belong to have engaged themselves in blame games, trying to garner credit for the rescue efforts that have been undertaken. 

What can one say except that the Elections are imminent and this ‘Disaster’ is an ‘Opportunity’!