No laughing matter
Sam Rajappa
| 20 December, 2015
Water is a gift of nature. Nature has been overwhelmingly kind to Chennai and its surrounding districts of Kancheepuram and Thiruvallur in 2015. In the second half of November and the first two days of December there were excessive rains. Instead of treating it as nature’s bounty to the parched people of Chennai, the government of Tamil Nadu declared it a disaster and wanted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare it a national calamity. The Oxford Dictionary describes disaster as “sudden or great misfortune.” Rainfall is anything but misfortune. If a disaster it was, it was entirely the making of the government of Tamil Nadu.
Instead of storing the surplus waters for leaner years, the government opened the flood gates of storage tanks and lakes surrounding Chennai on the night of 1 December when all the three rivers, the Kosasthalayar, the Cooum and the Adayar, meandering through the northern, central and the southern parts of the city respectively, were in spate without any prior warning to the people. Estuaries of the three rivers that open into the Bay of Bengal had not been dredged properly and the free flow of water into the sea was obstructed, causing unprecedented floods in the city and forcing it to close down. Hundreds of people drowned while five million people were affected. Loss to property is estimated at Rs. 840 billion.
Greed and corruption that dominate governance are the root cause of this misfortune. Instead of conserving nature’s gift, the government would rather let the water into the sea, pump it back to giant desalination plants that dot the coastline, and sell it to people as drinking water for a price, unmindful of environmental degradation involved in the entire process and suffering inflicted on the people.
Chennai gets its rain from the north-east monsoon which normally sets in by the middle of October and lasts till the end of December. There was ample warning from the Meteorological Department that the monsoon this year was going to be heavy. There was specific advance warning about very heavy rainfall in the week beginning 29 November. Even the quantum of rain was forecast. The government slept over it.
The Chemarambakkam reservoir, the largest supplying drinking water to Chennai, was filling up fast and the Public Works Department engineers were agitated. They dared not open the sluice gates without the green signal from the Chief Minister who is out of bounds to such mortals. If the bund of the reservoir breached, thousands of people would be washed away into the Bay of Bengal. Out of desperation they wrote to the Chief Secretary on 29 November to obtain the Chief Minister’s permission to release water from the Chembarambakkam reservoir in a regulated manner to avoid flooding of the city. The Chief Secretary can approach the Chief Minister only through a Special Adviser to the CM.
For the safety of the reservoir, maximum water level should be kept two feet below the FTL (full tank level). By the time the maze of bureaucratic red tape was cut, it was past midnight of 1 December and the water level has crossed the threshold by 1.4 ft. The city was caught in incessant rain and the Adayar was already in spate. The surplus waters of Chembarambakkam were let into the swollen Adayar without any warning to the people living downstream and the city of Chennai was deluged, killing in its wake 280 people that night.
Six years ago, a group of experts submitted a detailed report titled “Chennai City Development Plan-2009,” suggesting rehabilitation of the city’s waterways to ward off threat of floods to the Corporation of Chennai. The purpose of the plan was to guide development of the Chennai Metropolitan Area through the year 2026. The origins of this report lie with the establishment of the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission in 2005 by the government of India to provide funding for urban development. Chennai was one of the 63 eligible cities. As part of the funding application process, Chennai prepared a City Development Plan and sought and received assistance from the Asian Development Bank’s City Development Initiative for Asia Programme and jointly supported by the German, Swedish and Spanish governments. The purpose of the document was to make Chennai a prime metropolis which will become more livable, economically vibrant, environmentally sustainable and with better assets for the future generations. It suggested a participatory review of the Chennai Corporation’s City Development Plan and to submit its investment programme to JNNURM funding.
Another suggestion was to strengthen institutional development within the government, non-governmental agencies and civil society to identify, prioritise and plan infrastructure projects. The overall goal was to improve the social, economic and environmental conditions for all the residents of the CMDA. Those involved in preparing the report envisaged with prescience what could befall Chennai if its recommendations were not implemented. Neither the Tamil Nadu government nor the Corporation of Chennai heeded the warning and the people of Chennai suffered the consequences in the first week of December.
The banks of the three rivers that flow through Chennai have been encroached by slums and regularised by either the DMK or the AIADMK government in the last 48 years that Tamil Nadu was ruled by the two parties alternately. Flood plains which give the rivers room to overflow have been converted into real estate. Chennai airport sits on the flood plain of the Adayar and its second runway was built over the river much against opposition from airline crews. What they predicted came true early this month and the airport had to be closed down for five days.
The Cooum, which flows through central Chennai, was blocked by tonnes of garbage, much of it in plastic form, thrown into the river by all and sundry without let or hindrance. The Elevated Expressway from Madras Port to Maduravoil is being constructed over the Cooum. Phoenix Mall, the largest in the metropolis, sits right on the Velachery lake bed. World class, multi-specialty MIOT Hospital is perched on the banks of the Adayar. Chennai’s Mass Rapid System, a concrete monster, runs above the Buckingham Canal, the longest man-made drain.
Major private universities in the city had been allowed to come up on marshes, water bodies or flood plains, mostly on encroached land. The posh high rise MRC Nagar, described as the Manhattan of Chennai, has blossomed in the prohibited Coastal Regulation Zone near the high tide line and the estuary of the Adayar. All this constitutes a recipe for disaster.
Having been Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for three terms with her due share along with Muthuvel Karunanidhi of the DMK in making Chennai a “water-tight city” with no escape route to expel flood waters, J Jayalalitha, cocooned in her Poes Garden residence without getting her feet wet in the floods and facing criticism for the deluge, released an audio message via WhatsApp in an attempt to silence critics.
“This is your dear sister Jayalalitha speaking. I am very distressed at the thought of the troubles you all are facing as a result of unprecedented rains in the past 100 years. Do not worry. This is your government. (The government took a rain holiday when people needed it most!) You have given me the strength to battle any situation and win. I am always for you and I will always be with you. Very soon I will rescue you from this sorrow and will ensure you attain growth and resilience. This is a promise…..I will bear all the burdens that befall you. I do not have a separate life of my own. I do not have relatives. I have absolutely no self-interest. You are everything to me. My home and my heart is Tamil Nadu. I have dedicated my lifetime to serving you all simply due to you all calling me Amma. I have even forgotten the name my parents have given me. I will reiterate that this government is one that has successfully won against natural disasters (sic). Whatever troubles come, trust that this mother’s hands will always wipe them away. Thank you.” In their struggle for survival amidst gathering gloom, Jayalalitha’s message gave the people room for some derisive laughter.
The writer is a veteran journalist and former Director of The Statesman Print Journalism School.
http://www.thestatesman.com/news/opinion/no-laughing-matter/111593.html