Much ado over a day’s rain

-- by Sriram V.

Last month saw a major scare which, fortunately for the city, was mild in its real impact. We are referring to the Great Depression that was threatening the coast and therefore also promising to bring heavy rain. While the deluge did not happen, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief it also exposed as to how ill-prepared we were as a city to face such a possibility. It is high time that the administration realizes that there is more to environmental challenges than just crisis management. There are long term measures that need to be in place and in these we seem to be woefully inadequate.

Chennai has of late become a city where the monsoon is more feared than looked forward to. People conveniently forget that ours is a metropolis that depends on rainfall for its water supply and that there is no purpose served in wishing the annual monsoon away. And yet that seems to be the most popular reaction. Accompanying this is a full-fledged fear psychosis – hoarding of food items, parking of vehicles at elevated places including flyovers, declaring mass holidays, and posting panic messages on social media.

The city administration too is not very different. Declaring school holidays and requesting organizations to consider working from home for their staff have become matters of routine. Gone are the days when the mayor or the commissioner was the person who would make all announcements as regards monsoon preparedness and crisis management measures. This is now seen as an opportunity for making political hay. Those in power convert it into a photo opportunity – the most important functionaries in government standing anxiously looking at computer screens while newspapers report on them having made a survey and an intense study of all that is required to prepare ourselves for the monsoons. Ironically the opposition too makes it a photo opportunity. They make sure that every pothole and every puddle is made a massive issue out of. While this is not entirely wrong it also exposes a lack of maturity in sifting and identifying what are major issues.

Where are the long-term measures? When will the city’s administration wake up to the fact that it desperately needs a master plan for flood mitigation? This plan needs coordination between multiple agencies. We will not be able to continue for long to claim to be a world class metropolis or at least journeying towards that goal if our civic agencies work at cross purposes. It has become commonplace for the water supply authorities, the electricity agency, the metro rail and those in charge of sewers to demolish everyone else’s amenities in order to make way for their own. People have become resigned to the fact that each time their road is dug up by one of the civic authorities other amenities are bound to become casualties leading to a plethora of complaints and applications before action is taken.

It has also become very clear that there is something seriously wrong with the manner in which we lay our roads. Continuously raising road levels and expecting those who live by the side to somehow cope with ingress of water during floods is hardly a solution. The problem is in the process of road laying itself. It is an open fact that contractors cut corners while laying roads because they need to accommodate other expenses within their budget and it is this overhead, unaccounted for, which results in road work being compromised. The government has to wake up to the elephant of corruption that is in the room. It also needs to squarely face the shoddy quality of public works that has become a hallmark of the city. If this is not addressed, each day of the monsoon is going to be a challenge and each year is going to bring its share of disasters. How then can we talk of becoming a world class city?

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