As the waters rose to dangerous levels in Chennai once again, the focus has justifiably been on the human scale of the disaster; focusing attention on getting help to those stranded across the city. But watching the images of the city drowning, it was impossible to ignore what we had discovered from just a week ago, of how much reckless, unchecked urban planning had aggravated the extent of the crisis. This time, even though the rains seem more intense than earlier, and new records for rainfall are being set, activists and environmentalists say that once the immediate crisis tides over, it is all the more critical to focus once again on the man made dimension of the crisis. And that the images from Chennai should be a warning, not just for that city, but for urban centres across India.
