Eliza Dolittle and Prof. Henry Higgins were wrong!

 

Eliza Dolittle and Prof. Henry Higgins were wrong!

Visual reports on the effects of monsoon in urban and peri-urban areas

I just looked at the topographic map of Spain and the title of this blog post–in the aftermath of flash floods in the Valencia region–automatically popped out. The region is almost like stretches of the Indian Western Ghats – steep mountains and narrow strips of land between the slopes and the sea, Arabian in India and Mediterranean in Spain.

Higgins and Dolittle sang their way into my heart when I learned to understand spoken English. And, I can now say they were totally wrong. More than 200 people perished in the flash floods caused by rain in the mountainous region of Valencia, the fabled home of Valencia orange. Speculating, the natural paths of flood waters were blocked off by real estate development. People died. Just Google, “Real Estate Development in Valencia,” to check this bold statement of mine.

It is now monsoon season up and down the eastern coastal areas of India, where it does rain copiously.

“I am helpless. My (rented) house has been inundated. What can I do?” is what you would hear from anyone ensconced in his/her home in a normally non-flooded area and having recently purchased a property in a flood-prone area.

Well, not much now; yet, there was something they could have done prior to purchasing the area. Leave the path of drainage of floodwaters untouched. You restrict the right of way of flood waters and they take revenge.

On top of that, vast institutional areas, both public and private, drain rain waters on to public roads. In developed countries, there is a penalty for such uncivil actions. Not in India. Again, the bogey man is corruption in government and not on the part of the public (both individual and corporate) that promotes this corruption.

Do I ever see a visual of how the recently (over the past 50 years, say) built-up area was a conduit for flood waters prior to that period? No. The past is never treated as a fount of relevant knowledge, except in religion.

When a built-up and populated area is under a deluge, TV reporting–the “visual reports” in the strap line–is focused on the flooded living rooms, bed rooms and kitchens, toilets backing-up in private homes, and such and how the governments, from the local to state, is unresponsive. But, not a word about the landlords; if they are the owners, so be it.

When there is encroachment in the flood plains of rivers, there is a huge cry about how people on the bottom most rung of the populace are treated as vote-banks. It is never acknowledged that propertied people do the same, in multiples, to gain a voice in the government – treat the natural storm water drain course as unadulterated real estate bounty.

Yes, the pressures of giving the ever increasing population a place to live do tell on everyone, most significantly on the local governments and their minions. You, then, a have cocktail of palms to be greased.

So then, what is the list? Start from civil society and climb gradually, not missing a step, up to the government authorities. Am I saying that if everyone is corrupt we should just avoid looking at everyone? No, not in the least.

Look at oneself, first.

My cousin, now dead, did this. He is in Heaven, I presume.

Raghuram Ekambaram