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Vol. XXV No. 17, December 16-31, 2015
Monsoon madness
An occasional column by a British freelance writer on her eight years in Madras.
As a rule when there is a crowd standing on the bridge over the River Adyar it means there has been a suicide because this is apparently a ‘prime location’. In the week before the deluge big crowds have gathered, and are watching the river day and night, not to mawkishly follow the despair of some poor fellow, but to observe the water level of the river. The Adyar has swollen to three times its regular size and the banks have burst. Shuddering with anticipation the crowds watch as the floodgates of Chembarambakkam reservoir are thrown open and the River Adyar tries and fails to carry the surplus water to the sea.
These spectators have a genuine interest in the progress of the river: they are trying to gauge when they will be able to return to their homes near the bridge that are now engulfed by water and have become uninhabitable. At the foot of the bridge hundreds of bikes are abandoned and the crowds stare balefully at a lake, which was once the road and the access to their homes. These old houses look virtually derelict, and in Chennai’s property boom they seem to have been forgotten. Why have these shoddily constructed buildings not been demolished to make way for slick high-rises, like so many other properties in this fast-expanding city?
A few months ago we started importing expensive tankers of water for domestic use at home. For the first time in ten years, the well in the garden had run dry. This was mainly due to drought, but also the excessive demand for water from new building projects in the area. Now, on a Sunday morning I was wading through a foot of water in the kitchen. I put on my swimsuit and battled through the overhead thunder and lightning to try and reconnect a shoddily built drainpipe that had come away from the wall. This is little to complain about; many hundreds of people around the city are homeless while we still have a roof over our head. My husband has had to relocate his workforce to a nearby hotel and their canteen has flooded, but they are the lucky ones who can still get to work.
In many areas, particularly southern Chennai, the city was literally drowning. Roads vanished and rivers rose as an unprecedented 23.5cm of rain fell in twenty-four hours. An entire season’s rainfall occurred in just a few days, but even before the rains came Chennai was looking extremely weather-beaten. High winds had battered the city, and trees and rubbish were scattered across the roads, but now it is a scene of utter devastation.
There are fire engines and police cars all over the place, as people are rescued from waterlogged buildings and resettled in emergency accommodation such as schools and wedding halls. Small boats sail through the city picking up stranded families and animals; most of the slum huts have been swept away. Even the walls of the zoo have collapsed, and it would not be surprising to see a crocodile in the lake that was once our street.
The death toll is high and so far two hundred people have died. This is two hundred too many, and as usual it is the poor who pay for the laziness and corruption of the city’s authorities.
Government has sanctioned five hundred crore for flood relief measures. It also assures the people that officials took all precautionary measures. But flood avoidance projects were not taken up, drains were not desilted and the warning from the met office was not taken seriously. This last is scandalous.
Every year the city faces water related problems: during the summer it runs short of drinking water and during the monsoon it floods. The irony is not lost on the population, but what is being done about it?
In the past five years, ten thousand crore has been spent on building stormwater drains, but this was another bungled job that was never properly based on hydrological calculations, if indeed the money designated reached its destination. Proper measures need to be taken and drains need to be self-cleaning and de-silted regularly.
Singapore is a major city and even lower lying than Chennai. It also receives more rainfall than Chennai, yet it does not flood. City planners and hydrological experts should pay them a visit and find out what they are doing right and what Chennai is doing wrong, and then perhaps we could stop Chennai from drowning every monsoon.
What is even more demoralising is that unscrupulous individuals have taken advantage of the heavy rain and ensuing chaos. There have been spates of burglaries, acidic effluents and sewage have been dumped in the surplus water channels, and prices have shot up unconscionably.
Is the aim of the city corporation really to build a new and vibrant Madras with thriving public amenities, taking it into the first world and leaving the third world behind? If so, then somebody needs to pull their finger out and tackle this problem root and branch, looking at the whole body of the city holistically. The knock-on effect of the Monsoon is not just the emergency that Chennai has faced in the last few weeks; it is the disease and cost of repair and the loss of earnings for many people that will follow the drying-out process.
In a month or so, the sun will come out, the rain will abate, and human nature being what it is people will try to forget this disaster and move on with their lives. But in the case of the monsoon it would be better for everyone if memories were not so short, and precautions were taken to protect life in the future, and build a better, safer, more beautiful and sustainable Chennai for the generations to come.
