Articles by Nina Varghese

It had been raining in Chennai since the beginning of November 2021, which culminated in a heavy spell on November 7th, when the city recorded over 200 mm of rain. The news of a cyclone hovering over the Andaman and Nicobar islands pushed the panic buttons of the otherwise pragmatic Chennai residents and the social media pages of weather bloggers were full of queries on flooding. The distress of the residents was justified, as Chennai is only 6.7 metres above sea level and more often than not, large areas of the city are quickly flooded after a shower. Memories of the…

The long suffering residents of Chennai have been living with two dead rivers, the Adyar and the Cooum, flowing through the heart of their city. These two rivers meander sluggishly through the city carrying sewage and dangerous pollutants. Besides these two rivers, there is the third one – the Kosasthalaiyar, which flows in the northern end of the city and not as polluted as the other two. These three rivers flow east towards the Bay of Bengal. A river is considered dead when it is incapable of sustaining any form of life – fish or aquatic plants, in it. This…

Twenty-seven-year-old Chandra, a house help in Chennai, does not know much about deficient rainfall, rainwater harvesting or the city’s degraded water bodies. All she knows is that once in two days, a lorry supplies the 20 pots of water that her household requires, and that she has to carry those pots to the first floor of her small flat in Vardapuram, a locality in Kotturpuram, Chennai.  A vast majority of the people in the city are like Chandra, ignorant of the harsh reality of water supply and its management as a resource. Arun Krishnamurthy of the Environmentalist Foundation of India…