CHENNAI seemed to perk up a little this morning when the first international flight for five days was able to land and depart from the city’s previously waterlogged airport. The largest city in south India, home to 8.7m people, has been flooded for days, following the worst rainfall in memory: 490mm fell on December 1st alone. More than 270 people have perished. Some were electrocuted by power cables; 18 were patients on ventilators at a hospital where the backup generators were flooded.
But as a fortunate few citizens head to the airport and railway stations, the nightmare’s next stages are coming into view. The first priority is to prevent the spread of waterborne disease. Insecticide is being used to diminish the risk of dengue, malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. But the clean-up task is immense. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former governor, essayist and patriot of Chennai, is astonished by “what has oozed up from the earth–every conceivable human waste, the disgorged remains of a use-and-throw society, in or out of plastic bags, squelching their half-used, half-discarded contents, the offal of kitchens and lavatories, dog-turd, dead...Continue reading
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