Specious reasoning

Your newspaper carried two reports of floods in two different locations in two different countries. As I sit writing this, the flood is in my backyard though I’m not from either of the locations. I am writing from Goa and though not much is reported about the flood situation here, I can say that the entire Konkan coast (west coast of India) is under the deluge of heavy rain and the subsequent flooding.

The question of the hour is, do we blame the incessant rain for the floods? I hear people around me complaining of the continuous rain. But then, we live in the tropics and monsoon means heavy rain. Is the monsoon at fault?

Foolish that we are, and that we have always been, we define development as the presence of wide roads and roads parallel to these wide roads and more roads also. Of course the topic of the quality of these roads is another matter altogether. Development also means buildings and clean paved surroundings. It means the burying of fields for more buildings and of course cutting of forests. Greed hath no bounds.

We detest the west and abhor the behavior of West, but you have to realise that the puppets from the government who go on Western junkets define development as what the west is — meaning broad roads, no trees in slight, pavers all over and no mud in sight. What the ‘wise’ imitators don’t understand is that, this model of development doesn’t work here because the climate of the west and here is entirely different.

We need mud and open land so that the rain water seeps in. Now drink your sins. Literally, drink them.

Joyce D
By email