Pralay in our backyard?

In hushed horror, I found myself humming an eminently unexciting nursery rhyme while reading about death, destruction, atrocities, insider trading, booming corruption and political intrigue in the newspapers. “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?/Brother John? Brother John?/Morning Bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing/Ding dong dong! Ding dong dong!” I hummed, not unlike a moron.

Alarmed introspection revealed that the trigger was a report by the British global risks analysis company Maplecroft, which has announced that it was terribly risky to live in our part of the world. It has predicted a looming catastrophe in India, and the possible demise of my home cities of Kolkata and Delhi. The only country worse of than us is little old beleaguered Bangladesh. Which is hardly any consolation for us proud Indians, the emerging economic giant, an aspiring world power and the self-appointed Big Bro of South Asia.
The report says Bangladesh and India are the world’s most vulnerable countries with regard to the dangers of climate change. They face the greatest risks to their people, their ecosystems and their business environments. In terms of cities, Kolkata and Dhaka are among the six in the “extreme risk” category, while Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Karachi are in the “high risk” group of 10. Fast growing cities are the most likely to be at risk.
Oops! So is climate change really that bad? Could it actually wipe us out? Should we stop saluting the gods of global warming as we enjoy the thrill of rain in dry old Delhi? Is dear old Kolkata on its way to becoming a nightmarish waterworld? Looks like it’s not impossible.
Reeling from heat waves, floods, droughts, furious storms and other natural calamities, these most risky regions could be thoroughly ruined. Even minor changes in climate conditions could lead to water shortage, crop failures and the spread of disease, and rise in sea levels could lead to loss of land. Of course, in our largely agricultural, land-dependent country, with our spectacular inability to deal with disasters and general lack of public health and public services, such things could totally shatter us. Fast growing cities like our metros are already under a lot of pressure thanks to the lack of infrastructure and resources, and escalating natural calamities might just tip the applecart. So yes, we have reason to be afraid. The warning bells are ringing, ding dong dong.
Interestingly, all 30 nations in the “extreme risk” category of this Maplecroft report are developing countries. Most of them are in Africa and South Asia. The rich countries of the global north are at lower risk and are better placed to cope with natural disasters than the poor countries of the global south. Which is a great irony, since the global north is mostly responsible for the mess of global warming that the global south is likely to pay for.
The 30 nations likely to be worst affected are poor, with dense populations, dependent on agricultural land vulnerable to droughts and floods, other natural disasters, rising sea levels or political conflicts. And most of all, these are countries that cannot cope well with such disasters, whose governments have no capacity or infrastructure to combat climate change. The safest are the rich nations of northern Europe, led by Iceland.
In short, the risk ranking doesn’t depend only on environmental conditions and changes in climate. It depends largely on social and economic factors. And taking all this into account, the riskiest 10 nations are Bangladesh, India, Madagascar, Nepal, Mozambique, the Philippines, Haiti, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and Burma.
No, dear reader, don’t scowl. India is not the odd one out in this list. We may believe that it’s too big, too refined, too much of an emerging giant to belong in this cluster of sad little failed, failing, puny or just tiny nations, but that’s just our ego. Our acute pressure of population strains our natural resources, and severe poverty, poor public health and dependence on agriculture make life more difficult. To top it all, we have catastrophic corruption at every level, wherever you look. This makes the people of India as vulnerable as babes in a blizzard, where the government cannot protect and public services are weak or simply unavailable. Let’s face it — bad governance makes us so very vulnerable, not just climate change.
So should we get our doomsday kit ready? Or should we simply ignore the warning bells? Accepting it is not going to be good for business anyway — the belief that everything is likely to collapse in a couple of decades is not exactly a magnet for foreign investment. And when supply chains of multinationals are affected, poor countries are likely to get poorer. Emerging economic giants may shrink and shrivel. And become even less capable of handling the predictable climate change calamities.
Anyway, alarm bells have many strings attached to them. How much should we trust these surveys and reports? Should we take them at face value? Are their preconditions all kosher? Is their methodology perfect? Maybe, maybe not. Such reports take on great urgency only if there are no other alarms ringing in your ear.
From where I sit, we have been hearing alarm bells for years. Hunger, unemployment, horrible discriminations of caste, class, gender and other social constructs is helping India collapse by itself. We don’t need the curse of a swelling sea to ruin us.
And we know it. Suicides are increasing chillingly across the country. An Indian commits suicide every four minutes. And it is not just an affliction of adults, driven by poverty, unemployment, dowry, failure, illness or mental agony. It has also affected children pushed to the limit by an aspirational world. Every day, eight children kill themselves. About 1.3 lakh Indians commit suicide every year. India is the suicide capital of the world.
This speaks of an unbearable helplessness. It points to the failures of society and successive governments. And no new report flagging impending doom can ring warning bells louder than this. The early steps of the pralay dance of Shiva is best seen and heard in our own backyard. Right now.
Are we sleeping? Are we sleeping?/ Mother India? Mother India?/ Warning bells are ringing, warning bells are ringing/ Ding dong dong! Ding dong dong!

The writer is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at: sen@littlemag.com