Thursday, September 19, 2019

Rain Rain Go Away?

The rains this year in Maharashtra resulted in floods, in short chaos.

I have always maintained that social media is a bullshit place where a small thing is blown out of proportion for no reasons. Take e.g a death of a politician or a film star. Condolences flow in as if the person posting it knew the dead person so well that it affects his/her life. The sincerity in such posts compels most of the other people reading it to follow the same.... why?? because then they feel left out. They feel they probably will be labelled 'insensitive'. The same way condolences or posts on FLOOD related topics were ridiculing nature and rain for being cruel.

Floods in Maharashtra were bad no doubt. They left many homeless and quite many dead. The amount of rainfall was totally unexpected because IMD ( Indian Meteorological Department or rather read as 95% wrong forecast company) had predicted rains below average this year. Instead, the rains this year surpassed records of highest rainfalls for a period as big as 90 years or some media sources claim 'highest ever'. Rains were more than usual no doubt.... we surely not as ever seen in last 10-15 years.

Why was the destruction rate of the floods so high? Were the floods really to blame?? 

I personally don't believe that data we have on rains of a few decades is enough to predict the natural rainfall of this area. This is too small of a timespan to judge that. We have no records of rainfall in terms of measurement apart from a hundred years or more, maybe we have some accounts of floods/famines from history, but that is all. It cannot explain how the rainfall was over last thousands of years since the existence of this landmass.

The water clogging of Mumbai is not just BMC's fault but the fault of everyone living there over the years, add to it the high tides. Mumbai doesn't need much of explanation for man made damage. What people don't understand while blabbering on social media is that no matter which is the ruling party, BMC cannot clean Mumbai's shit so soon. It will take at least a decade or more even if people get conscious enough about planet earth, else it will take longer.

In other parts of Maharashtra people blamed river levels. The fact is that people got used to the canalized structured of the river they got used to over the years, they never imagined a river flowing in its natural capacity. With corrupt government and municipal corporations receding floodlines to accomodate more money in their pockets and more residential zones in a dangerous territory. As intellectuals have always said, humans have encroached nature like leeches or viruses disregarding not just nature but the dangers to their own life. 

In Pune, media makes a news of Bhide Bridge going under water. If rains are normal it is supposed to go underwater, it should go under water every year it is a good sign. The river flowing at an optimum level in monsoon shouldn't be a sign of rarity but rather something that is normal in every monsoon. There shouldn't be news about it unless its needed. The news happened because all the damage mainly happened to illegal settlements and legal settlements which were legalized due to rampant corruption in government offices. 

Extreme weather might be due to human caused global warming or maybe a natural cycle on earth, but whatever it is we need to be prepared for the unexpected as the frequency of natural disasters is increasing. We are fortunate that we yet don't face hurricanes, but we have famine. By the time we are helping farmers c omitting suicide due to famine, we are having farmers doing the same or naturally dying due to the floods in the same year.

PMC not keeping alternate day water supply for keeping their votebanks happy is another misery. We don't know how to make the right use of water and it won't come unless we get limited supply. Even when the dam waters were at their lowest and the rains were to start I used to see a lot of wastage of water in rich people's houses. Their servants daily washed not just their their cars and garden but also the road infront of it with a lot of water. Such people are shameless and the public should learn to shame them without fear because this is going to be a fight for survival for future generations. For car wash only 1 bucket is enough, a lot of car washers use only that much every morning with perfect cleaning.

This can be an another topic about managing resources or even waste but since this was about water I took the liberty to squeeze the above topic in. I feel the rains are perfectly normal in nature's cycle but probably abnormal in our life-cycle but its our own doing. 

Let me know your thoughts on this.

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