View: Cyclone Michaung and its disruptive lesson
Chennai's flood has been startling. Large parts of the city are still inundated and without electricity. Loss of life has been less than in past years, but displacement and loss of property has been massive.
But everyone outside Chennai seems to have shaken their heads at videos of cars tossed in floodwaters and crocodiles crossing roads, and then moved on to other stories. Its Chennai, right — if they don't have floods, they have droughts. They're efficient, right, so things will soon be back on track? Aamir Khan got out safely and Apple has confirmed that supplies from its factories won't be disrupted.
Contributing to this lack of interest is the fact that there are no obvious villains. In 2015 extreme flooding was linked to poor decisions over release of water from overflowing reservoirs. This time round the authorities seemed to have learned lessons and prevented sudden water release.
There were clearly localised problems over poor maintenance of stormwater drains.
The larger issues of 2015, which was uncontrolled building on wetlands — the viral video of cars being swept away was taken near the Pallanikarai marshland, visible in the back — and the ways in which the Cooum River and Buckingham canal have been built over, particularly for metro construction, have been brushed aside.
What has helped in this is the fact that cyclone Michaung came so close. While Chennai often gets cyclonic storms, they usually veer away from city, making landfall on the Andhra coast.
