E xtraordinary scenes of deluge and devastation in Chennai this week, as the capital of Tamil Nadu is completely paralyzed by floods that have killed hundreds, and disrupted supply of utilities and food to millions of residents. It is an epic disaster of global significance – Chennai is a major cultural, economic and educational centre, the home of much of India’s automobile industry, and the country’s second-largest exporter of information technology and business process outsourcing services. The trauma and wreckage could have been even costlier had the crisis not steadily built up over several weeks. Many people had time to flee, to seek higher ground, as floodwaters steadily rose throughout November. In those 30 days, Chennai recorded 1,218.6mm of rain – three times what is expected. On December 1, another 374mm fell on the city (and the forecasters say even more is on the way). But by now almost everyone who can has already taken refuge. Weather specialists at the India meteorological department say “a rare coincidence of various factors” came together to produce the unprecedented rainfall. But everyone can see these “rare coincidences” now occur on a regular basis all over the world, and with particularly devastating effect in India. Flood-ravaged Chennai immediately brought to mind similar “once in a lifetime” catastrophes that struck New Orleans in 2005, New York in 2012, and Srinagar just last year. And so, everyone who lives on a coastline (or next to a river) anywhere in the world cannot afford to ignore the basic lesson being repeated and played out again in Tamil Nadu just now. Climate change is real. Its effects will strike your home much sooner than you think. By savage coincidence, award-winning author (and part-time Goa resident) Amitav Ghosh made headlines around India just a couple of days ago when he insisted “climate change and human-made change are catastrophically converging” and “these impacts are going to powerfully destabilize our society”. He said, “no human crisis has found people so unprepared”, that it is the responsibility of the government and of the media to “prepare us for what’s coming”. Climate change, and its immense risks and challenges for everyone - without exception - is literally never spoken about by any Indian government officials, or city authorities, and only covered in the media when someone like Ghosh speaks up. As he said, “People don’t want to engage with climate change because it’s not sexy. The effect is felt in out-of-the-way places, on unseen people. But when the impact is really felt, people like us…will be hit the worst. We are absolutely not climate-resilient. Take away our electricity and we’re dead.” It gives this writer no pleasure to note the first column in this space in 2015 was entitled ‘Welcome to the Age of Climate Change,’ which described Goa state authorities merrily concocting “a recipe for manifold disasters” with a tsunami of construction by the sea (much of it in contravention of coastal regulation zone laws) and in low-lying converted rice paddies. Previous generations planned very well for tidal surges, and appropriate drainage, but that age-old wisdom has been ignored in the new real estate frenzy. Nature will have its say. Carzanzalem and Colva (besides many other places in Goa) will pay a high price for heedless concretization. This happened to Chennai, where the Cooum and Adyar rivers canal were encroached upon, and countless lakes, ponds and drainage channels were built over, as the city revved up the fourth-largest economy in India. Now floods have already wreaked permanent havoc, the Chennai metropolitan development authority is finally halting all existing construction activity, pending a review. Goa has India’s best educated population, but few lessons are ever learned by its stubborn, venal political and economic elite. Instead of preparing for a Chennai-type calamity in the state, chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar seeks relaxations of CRZ norms so that more ill-fated construction can be planted on the coast. Meanwhile, the real estate industry has encroached everywhere: low-lying fields, vulnerable hillsides, river banks. All this leaves the state extremely vulnerable to an entirely predictable cataclysmic tragedy. The Arabian Sea is churning with more cyclones than any time in recorded history – in 1998, one killed 10,000 in Gujarat, and just a few days ago Yemen was hit by two successively, including the strongest ever in the country’s history. The sea is rising (due to global warming). The storms are intensifying. Chennai is submerged today, but make no mistake it could be Goa tomorrow. The writer is a well-published author and photographer

