A longish spell of rains leaves civic life in a gigantic mess, from Delhi-NCR to Mumbai to Bangalore to Chennai.

It takes one good monsoon shower to show us what we are, the shallowness we all are steeped in and the collective hypocrisy that drives our lives as citizens.

A longish spell of rain leaves civic life in a gigantic mess, from Delhi-NCR to Mumbai to Bangalore to Chennai. Roads and areas get inundated, residents in localities keep scrambling for higher safe ground, traffic comes to a grinding halt; in short normal life gets choked in every possible way. We are leaving out remote places such as Assam or Odisha which face the fury of rain and floods every year because the cities mentioned above are the loci of India’s political, financial and technological power, the show pieces of India’s urbanisation story. If things can go so bad at these places then the condition of the rest of India is only left to one's imagination.

Every time s normal life gets thrown out of gear due to rains we get the usual drivel as the dominating narrative. Ruling parties point to legacy issues and the opposition to the incompetence of the incumbent government. Organisations pass the buck and officials concerned cook up alibis and seek to make them palatable. The tribe of experts point to the flaws in town-planning, the same ones they had mentioned last year and the year before. All we get are grand excuses and explanations and the impression that everyone is biding for time, waiting for the trouble to pass. After that all would be back to the world of wonderful illusion which gets different names under different governments. Smart City is the one is circulation now.

The country loves to be on the beautiful rocking horse, seriously believing things are moving forward, making our lives incredibly better. No one would ask the question why things are the way they are, why spells of heavy rainfall have been causing urban chaos year after year after year. Mumbai’s infamous potholes have been making big news for long. Governments have changed. How come the problem remains where it is? Poor civic planning is cited as the major lacunae behind all that have been going wrong – by now we know every other single reason, thanks to extensive media coverage – but why haven’t we seen corrective action?

The biggest reason perhaps is citizens’ indifference. Political apathy rides easy piggyback on that. Here’s an example: Women’s safety in Delhi, the National Capital, became a national concern after the December 16, 2012, gang rape of a paramedical student. There was unending television outrage, street protests, candle light marches, political rant and what not. More than three years on, Delhi continues to be as unsafe as before. As reports in newspapers suggest nothing has changed on the ground. Citizens demanded a tough anti-rape law, the political class was happy to provide that. It knew making a law is the easiest part, the real challenge is to improve the quality of policing. Since there has been no demand for that things remain where they were. One wonders when the next such crime against women hit the headlines what will be the demand from the citizenry.

The matter is the same with the disruption of life due to monsoon showers. The citizenry has no idea what or how to demand or it’s just too indifferent to its own woes. Like other stakeholders it just wants the trouble to go away. A bit of sunshine and dry roads, things are back to normal for him. It’s also possible that he is too powerless to keep on fighting the official machinery. But whatever the case, what we finally get is empty talk, inaction and a repeat of the past.

Next monsoon, stay prepared to hear more of the same, maybe in better prose or with an added dash of political guile. Rains will never stop showing us our reality in all its nakedness but it’s for us to choose whether we learn any lessons.