A video that went viral last week, with one version having around 9 lakh views, was of a train rushing past Nallasopara station on the outskirts of Mumbai, and splashing the commuters at the station with water that had accumulated on the tracks. The video shows the train entering the station and the tracks covered with water, moments later you see the first splash and then the train zips past the station, splashing all the waiting passengers. Nobody got spared the shower, as there was not enough time to escape the dirty water splash. And then the video shows just that the water had covered the tracks.
This is just one of the many videos of the Mumbai rains, of the last week and those that came earlier in the season, that has been passed around via social media. There are others that are more evocative of the disaster, and the experience of past cloud bursts has created a fear. The panic last week, that accompanied the forecast of heavy rainfall in Mumbai, leading to schools being shut and warnings sounded out in the metro, were because earlier this month, the city had been drowned with sudden rain, that disrupted rail services, had the airport shut for a few hours, and low-lying areas completely flooded.
Closer home, a little rain and the streets gets waterlogged and people splashed with water. But, there is an increasing fear among a section of the people that the panic that played out in Mumbai could one day be repeated in Goa. It is a simple hypothesis that is presented, especially in relation to Panjim and the flooding that the city goes through every monsoon, whenever there are some heavy showers that last just a few hours. Given that the Corporation of the City of Panaji undertakes the cleaning of the gutters in the city every summer in preparation for the monsoon, there has to be some other reason for the delay in the rain water draining out.
The hypothesis therefore is that the underground drains are either blocked at some places or not wide enough to allow the rain water to flow past quickly enough. This is a matter of engineering, rather than passing the buck by finding fault with other departments or resorting to blaming the high tide. The monsoon preparedness that all municipal councils and panchayats get involved in may need to be upped a few notches, as weather conditions are altering quite quickly. It not therefore just monsoon preparations, but preparations to meet the changing weather conditions have to be accelerated and intensified, whether it is in Mumbai or in Goa.
Mumbai was spared this month, and so too Goa, which has received less than normal rainfall this season. But the panic in Mumbai is a lesson to remember. The rain didn’t lead to a major disaster in the country, which has in the past seen some extremely terrible floods and droughts, extremes in weather conditions that are often glossed over when they occur in rural India, but when they happen in the financial hub of the country, raise fears, even leading to slight tremors in the financial markets. But India, needs to get used to natural disasters that are increasing in number.
Just last week, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that India is the third worst affected country by natural disasters since 1995, appealing to world leaders to implement the Paris climate deal. Addressing the high-level debate at the UN General Assembly, Guterres referred to Hurricane Irma, that hit the Caribbean islands claiming 102 lives, before reaching the Florida coast in the United States this month, saying that these are becoming ‘the new normal of a warming world’. The precise words he used were, “We should not link any single weather event with climate change. But scientists are clear that such extreme weather is precisely what their models predict will be the new normal of a warming world,” he said.
According to the UN Secretary General, the United States has experienced the most disasters since 1995, followed by China, India, the Philippines and Indonesia, and he provided statistics of there being more than 1600 disasters, or once every five days. A point to note is that other than the United States, the other four countries in the top five are in Asia.
The number of natural disasters in the world has quadrupled since 1970. In the space of a month, Mexico was hit by two earthquakes, and North Korea with tremors at their nuclear test site, which raised questions, whether it was manmade or natural. It is perhaps best to keep in mind The UN Secretary General’s words to remember climate change. “We have had to update our language to describe what is happening: we now talk of mega-hurricanes, superstorms and rain bombs. It is time to get off the path of suicidal emissions. We know enough today to act. The science is unassailable,” he said.
The Paris Climate Agreement is the key towards pulling in the reins on nature’s galloping weather changes. It aims to keep the rise in global temperatures in this century to below 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels, with the possibility of limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This cannot happen unless all 190 nations that signed the agreement, begin processes to reduce emission levels of fossil fuels. With US President Donald Trump deciding to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and renegotiate it, as the agreement would hit US industry and jobs, there are already fears that it may get derailed even before it gets implemented.
It’s not just the varying weather patterns in relation to the monsoon that indicate climate change in here. To keep in mind what climate change is all about, all the world has to remember, and it’s quite easy to remember at least here in India, where everybody complains that it is hot. The last decade was the hottest and the last year was the hottest ever. That should be the growing concern the world – the Earth is getting hotter, and there is no other planet to replace it with.
(Alexandre Moniz Barbosa is Executive Editor, Herald)
