Six sins that make drought invincible

It’s drought time again. Nothing new in this announcement. Each year, first we have crippling droughts between December and June, and then devastating floods in the next few months. It’s a cycle of despair, which is more or less predictable. But this is not an inevitable cycle of nature we must live with.

A monsoon warning

As I write this my city Delhi is drowning. It started raining early this morning and within a few hours the city has come to a standstill. The television is showing scenes of traffic snarled up for hours, roads waterlogged and people and vehicles sunk deep in water and muck.

Ignorance and arrogance make for good floods

This year, for once, the devastating floods of Bihar seem to have touched us. Last year, when the same region was reeling under what was said to be the worst floods in living history, we simply did not know. Media had flashed a few images, but it was more of the same: rivers flood this region every year, so what's new? What's there to say?

Floods blacked out but real

I read newspapers and I watch the news unfold on scores of television channels. But in spite of these sources that keep me informed about current affairs, I would not know that floods are still ravaging vast parts of India. I would not know that over 2,800 people have died in these disasters, which have been termed as the worst ever in living memory. I would not know what is happening in the villages that drowned under the fury of nature or how millions are coping with the water that has swept away crops, livestock, worldly belongings, homes, roads, schools and what not.

Science after the tsunami

Four years ago, this magazine's editor, environmentalist Anil Agarwal, wrote a scathing comment after the Bhuj earthquake: "Disasters come and go but our government has become a permanent disaster". While we are vulnerable to natural disasters -- cyclones, earthquakes, floods or droughts, and now the tsunami -- these temporary and preventable disasters turn into massive calamities because of the "perpetual disaster that this country's governance system has come to represent".

2 sides of an unnatural coin

Last fortnight, I wrote of an impending drought. 15 days on, I stand corrected. Now devastating floods are drowning parts of the recently parched country. So much so that Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who last fortnight sought Rs 2,500 crore as drought relief, has now asked the Centre for flood relief, saying his state should be treated at par with flood-devastated Bihar.