Chennai will flood again thanks to govt indifference
How encroachments on the Ennore Creek are dealt with will decide whether the city will survives the next deluge
M umbai went under water last week; Chandigarh the week before, and Agartala, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad earlier on during this southwest monsoon. The jury is out on whether the extreme rain events were caused by climate change. But there is little doubt that detrimental land-use change played a big part in turning the rains to floods. Heavy, erratic and extreme rainfall is now unavoidable. But what are we doing to protect ourselves and make our cities less flood prone?
Exactly one year ago, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs submitted its report on the 2015 Chennai floods. The report concluded that “encroachment of lakes and river beds played a major role in causing massive flood in Chennai.” Noting that the lessons from Chennai floods are “an eye-opener and other cities must also learn from it,” the committee urged the state government to “check mafia involved in illegal construction for business and usurping water bodies for their real estate business.”
The Tamil Nadu government has been quick to use the floods as an excuse to evict the poor from their dwellings on the margins of Chennai’s stinking rivers. But, it has done nothing to check the “mafia.” The largest conversion of wetlands into real estate in Chennai is happening on the sprawling Ennore Creek to the north of the city. The crime of encroaching is being committed by an organised body of offenders led by Public Sector Units, and facilitated by the very agencies that were set up to protect the environment.
Kosasthalaiyar, Chennai’s lesser known river is also its biggest. Kosasthalaiyar exits to sea through the 8,000 acre backwaters of the Ennore Creek. Seen solely from a flood mitigation perspective, what Chennai does to the Kosasthalaiyar and the Ennore Creek will decide whether the city will survive or succumb with the next above-average rains.
In his submission to the parliamentary committee, former home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi defended the lapses of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) by claiming that it is not possible to prepare for a once-in-a-century disaster. This was echoed by the then chief minister of TN Ms. Jayalalithaa who declared that “swift rescue and relief alone are indicators of a good government.” Both responses are attempts to normalise a man-made disaster and gloss over the pathology of urban development .
When the Kosasthalaiyar floods – and flood it will – and the lives of Chennai residents are imperilled, it should be remembered that those in power could have, but did nothing to avert certain disaster. Like the 2015 floods, the next Chennai floods too will be man-made.