-Business Standard Evidence on increasing risk should be tipping scale for the government New Delhi: At the COP21 talks in Paris, Chennai had been brought up as an unfortunate exhibit of the perfect storm triggered by climate change and indiscriminate urban planning. While India is already driving the conversation about the global effort to climate-proofing, hopefully the impact of this latest flood will also force its leadership to sit up and take...

-The Hindu Chennai: Completely unprepared for disasters: the hospitals in Chennai — private as well as government — were particularly vulnerable, improvising solutions as the situation developed. As water levels rose, Chennai saw every single system associated with modern life abysmally fail —houses collapsed, roads caved in, communication networks went down, sewage pipelines were wrecked, and carcasses floated on roads. Patients in government and private hospitals across the city took a beating. Completely...

-Economic and Political Weekly Chennai floods show the vulnerabilities that arise from the neglect of urban planning. In the second week of November, flood-marooned people in Chennai had an unlikely Good Samaritan. The cab service provider, Ola. As the city struggled to come to terms with its highest rainfall in 10 years, the cab company pressed in boats from an aquatic adventure outfit and secured the services of professional rowers and fishworkers...

-The Hindu   Although meant to function as watchdogs, human rights institutions in India are treated as subordinate departments with scant regard for their autonomy or statutory character A change in the occupancy of 7, Race Course Road, is spelling change in the composition of statutory bodies in India. With the Governors of various States, the office-bearers of the National Disaster Management Authority and the Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of...

-The Hindu   Uttarakhand is still in dire need of a development plan that is also sensitive to the fragile ecosystem that was crippled by the floods and landslides of 2013 Santosh Naudiyal stood on the verandah of a building in Rudraprayag last December while he narrated his story. On October 1, 1994, the night of the Rampur Tiraha massacre, Santosh and his friends boarded a bus to New Delhi to participate in...