Chennai Rains: Helpless, Hapless or Hopeless? - 20 Feb 2024

Chennai Rains:

Helpless, Hapless or Hopeless?

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Prof S Janakarajan, PhD President, SaciWATERs

S R Ramanan Former Director Cyclone Warning Centre

T Kanthimathinathan WRM (Hydrology & Flood Control) Expert, TNSDMA

Synopsis For years and decades now, the average Chennaiite has got used to seasonal cyclones during the north-east monsoon, October-December. It does not however occur every year. There have been years when copious rains filled the city’s reservoirs and recharged the ever-depleting and excessively extracted ground water. Cyclones, even while doing all this, leaves behind a trail of destruction.

The irony is that greater the official preparations for meeting the challenges that Mother Nature imposes on Man, more unpredictable has been the ways and waywardness of the Rain Gods. Cyclone Michaung in December 2023 is only the latest, as a slow-moving cyclone unburdening its core on the city without causing additional destruction through highspeed winds was a new phenomenon.

Issues about weather predictions apart, Michaung brought more than anticipated rains. There are those who argue no amount of short-term relief measures would have helped after a point. Others claim that official preparations simply did not exist, or collapsed under its weight, owing also to the unpredictability of the rainfall in this season.

The question is how much preparation is enough preparation? The question remains even when through the past several years, the governments’ efforts have ensured that there are very few human fatalities, rescuers are at hand and people lying in predictably low-lying areas by the sea-side and the like are shifted to safety beforehand.

Southern Sorrow If Michaung left behind a trail of destruction across four northern districts, starting with capital Chennai, there soon followed unprecedented rains that were also unseasonal in a way for its volume and time-frame, inundating vast areas in the four southern-most districts. Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli were the worst hit.

Unlike in Chennai and coastal districts upwards of Nagapattinam in southcentral Tamil Nadu, the district administrations in the south were unprepared for the eventuality, as it was not an anticipated occurrence.

This is so even after the advent of Cyclone Ockhi that hit southern-most Kanyakumari hard that took a high human toll. Even there, most deaths occurred in the seas as fishermen from the coastal villages had inadequate information and time to return home, safely.

Synopsis (Contd...)

There are other years and seasons when heavy rains and/or cyclonic winds affect normal life and agriculture activities in many parts of Tamil Nadu.

People complain, at times wildly, and pass on until the next disaster strikes in a near-similar form or worse. Suffice is to point out that when television news channels and the social media turned their attention away from Chennai and towards the plight in Thoothukudi and elsewhere in the South, the capital’s citizenry were sort of relieved of their pain and anguish. They forgot to ask themselves, as always, where they as citizens, went wrong.

Blame-game The end result was a blame-game, if the weather predictions were not accurate enough for the state authorities, who otherwise claimed to have done their homework well for more-than-an-average downpour of the season. Chennai was the worst-hit, where the authorities also came in for the worst criticism after 2015 as the city municipal corporation in particular had been tom-tomming its readiness to face the monsoon for weeks and months ahead.

Where does it all leave the city and the state? If it owes to climate-change and such other causes that used to be considered distant and esoteric but not so anymore, whose effects are unpredictable still, that too by the season and the year, where does it leave the people and authorities?

Again the question is what preparedness is adequate.

There is still the adequately unaddressed issue of illegal constructions across Chennai in particular, inadequacy of storm water drains and the unwillingness of the increasing number of urban middle class population to accept the reality, which dawns on them only after the event and not when it is still upon them.

For instance, how many Chennaiites read, this time, the state government’s early warning about impending power-cuts and disturbances in milk supply, and appeal for storing essentials, from food to medicine, candles to match-boxes, issued a few days ahead of Cyclone Michaung?

How many victims of the 2015 floods did their homework this time and moved away from their homes in low-lying areas to safety, when they could afford to do it, time and money-wise? Even now, how many home-buyers, whether apartments or independent houses, have checked the topography and legality of construction and ensured that their buildings are not feet below the main street and/or road?

Programme 5:15 PM

Registration & High Tea

6:00 PM Welcome Address Gp Capt R Vijayakumar (Retd), VSM Executive Director Madras Management Association Opening Remarks Mr N Sathiya Moorthy Convenor, Policy Matters - Chennai Address by the Speakers Mr S R Ramanan Former Director Cyclone Warning Centre, Chennai Prof S Janakarajan, Ph.D President, South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs), Hyderabad Mr T Kanthimathinathan Water Resource Management (Hydrology & Flood Control) Expert Tamil Nadu State Disaster Risk Reduction Agency Q&A Concluding Remarks 7:30 PM Vote of Thanks Gp Capt R Vijayakumar (Retd), VSM

Profile

Dr S Janakarajan President SaciWATERs, Hyderabad Dr Janakarajan is currently the President of South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs), Hyderabad, He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Madras, obtained through MDS, where he was a past Director. He did a post-doctoral at Cornell University and was a Visiting Professor, International Development Centre, QEH, Oxford University.

His key areas of research include urban and rural water, watermarkets, water-conflicts, trans-boundary water disputes, climate changes and adaptation, among others. He is also the Convenor of the ‘Cauvery Family’, which he started in 2003, for farmer-tofarmer dialogue, to address the river water dispute, especially between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Dr Janakarajan has written several books and presented scores of papers on these and other related subjects. At present, he is a Member of the Chennai Metro Flood Management Committee, appointed by the Government of Tamil Nadu, in 2021.

Profile

Mr S R Ramanan Former Director Cyclone Warning Centre, Chennai S R Ramanan is an Indian meteorologist. He worked as the Director of Cyclone warning centre in Chennai, Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He serves on the advisory committee of the centre for climate change and adoption research, Anna University, Chennai.He became popular in social media. Ramanan retired in July 2016 after 36 years as a weatherman. He is most often called by "Rain Man Ramanan", "Word of Rain", "God of Students", "Mazhayin Mahathma", "Kadalora Maavata Kadavul" "90's Kids in Kavalan" and "Minnalin Jannal".

Ramanan is a post graduate in physics from Annamalai University. He got his PhD from the Madras University in the field of Agricultural Climatology. Ramanan is a HSC from Aruna Higher secondary school, Eraiyur Village.

He joined the Meteorological Department of India in 1980. He worked as a forecaster in the Northern Hemisphere Analysis centre in New Delhi and at Aviation Meteorological Office of Chennai Airport. He was actively involved during the installation of Automatic Message Switching System in 1995 and was promoted to Director in the 2002.

He joined the Area Cyclone Warning Centre at the Regional Meteorological centre at Chennai. He is a recipient of the "For the sake of Honour Award" from Rotary International in 2006. He represented India in 1998 in Japan regarding preparation of inventory for greenhouse gases. He represented the country regarding Synergised Standard Operating Procedures for coastal hazards in Bangkok during May 2013.

Ramanan retired from Regional Meteorological Centre on 31 March 2016.

Profile

Mr T Kanthimathinathan Water Resource Management (Hydrology & Flood Control) Expert Tamil Nadu Disaster Risk Reduction Agency Passed out under graduate degree in Civil Engineering from Alagappa Chettiar College of Engineering and Technology, Karaikudi in 1981 and post graduate degree in Water Resources Management from Centre for Water Resources, College of Engineering, Guindy in 1990.

Joined Tamil Nadu PWD as Assistant Engineer in 1981, worked across the state of Tamil Nadu in various capacities in the fields of water supply to irrigation, industrial & domestic water needs, operation & maintenance of infrastructures for Irrigation & Chennai City Water Supply (Krishna Water Supply Project / Telugu Ganga Project) for more than 35 years.

Retired as Chief Engineer & Director, Institute of Water studies, TNPWD, Tharamani, Chennai in June, 2017.

Visited USA & Singapore to study the River Restoration projects for San Antonio, Singapore and Kallang rivers From September 2017, as Water Resources Management (Hydrology & Flood Control) Expert in TNSDMA, taking active role in all the four phases of Disaster Management viz., Preparedness, Response & Relief, Recovery & Reconstruction and Mitigation during Okhi, Gaja, Burevi cyclones and floods during the years 2018 (Cauveri basin), 2021 (Cauveri, Pennaiyar, Palar & Chennai basins).

Have Fellowships in Institution of Engineers and Institution of Valuers (FIE & FIV) Also a member of the Advisory Committee constituted by Government of Tamil Nadu in Dec 2021 for the Management and Mitigation of Urban Floods in Chennai Metro.

Profile

Mr N Sathiya Moorthy Convenor, Policy Matters - Chennai N Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst & political commentator, specialising in the study of India’s southern neighbours, namely, Maldives and Sri Lanka, and also on Indian politics and political systems, with particular reference to native Tamil Nadu. He has written extensively on these subjects, both as books and newspaper columns and commissioned articles.

Sathiya Moorthy is associated with major newspapers and TV channels, both in India and Sri Lanka and also headed the Chennai Initiative of the Observer Research Foundation since inception in 2001.

A veteran journalist and author, he is the convenor of ‘Policy Matters-Chennai’.

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