Sunday, November 3rd, 2024

What should be the way to deal with seasonal challenges


Mrityunjay Rai

It hasn’t been long since Delhi and many other cities in the country were going through a heatwave. Now many of these cities have received a lot of rain in a very short time. In Delhi, the record of ‘maximum daily rainfall’ was broken in the last 88 years in June. Many roads were submerged in water due to so much rain in a few hours and traffic jams remained for hours in many areas. In the last few years, the weather in Chennai, Rajasthan, Bengaluru, Sikkim has been surprising. This year, when the number of people dying due to heatwave increased and ACs started bursting in homes, climate change became a topic of discussion in the WhatsApp groups of people living in high-rise buildings and housing societies of Delhi-NCR and discussions started on planting more trees there. That is, climate change, which they considered a topic of debate in newspapers and some global forums, started affecting their lives.

Record-breaking rains in a very short period of time after extreme heat and water crisis, this is what Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli have explained in their book ‘Shades of Blue’. In the book, they have analyzed the water problem in many cities of the country. This book emphasizes the same old belief, which has been discussed earlier as well. The thinking is that if cities are to be saved from water problems, then their wetlands will have to be saved. In fact, due to uncontrolled urbanization, wetlands in cities are decreasing, which is leading to drought conditions in summer and flood-like conditions in the rainy season.

This book is written about the relationship between water and cities. It was not long ago that there was a shortage of water in the posh areas of Bangalore and during that time the city was also fed up with the heat. Bangalore is known as a city where the weather is good. This incident reminded us of the relationship between water and humans. In our associate newspaper The Times of India, Mahesh Rangarajan, Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Ashoka University, has also mentioned this book in a conversation with the newspaper. he/she says that if we want to avoid seasonal disasters, we will have to learn from climate history. We will have to stop tampering with nature and respect it. In the context of this climate history, he/she has mentioned the wonderful work done in ‘Shades of Blue’.

This book takes readers on a journey to many special places. It mentions the work done by Arthur Cotton in the Krishna-Godavari delta and also the Bhakra-Nangal Dam, which was a part of the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s dream of modern India. The book explains that before starting work on any water-related project, it should be seen what its impact will be in the long term. Then it is also a well-known fact that water or weather disasters have the worst effect on the poor. Therefore, while making plans related to weather challenges, it has to be kept in mind that the poor also get relief from it. For example, due to increasing heatwaves, the work of those people who work in the open is more affected. These people are also more likely to lose their lives. If we want to find answers to weather challenges, then we will have to look towards climate history, about which this book tells us.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own



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