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New Delhi: Ignorance in the Face of Crisis
The biggest piece of news in India recently is undoubtedly the floods. On July 13th at 10am, the Yamuna river swelled to historic 208.53 meters, breaking a 45-year old record. Many streets and commercial lanes were subsequently flooded, increasing traffic and displacing upwards of 40,000 people.
Even as low-lying areas are flooded, the heavy rains continue to pile on, leading to the Yamuna river once again crossing the danger threshold on July 19th, just a day before the writing of this blog. As the monsoon season continues, the flooding will likely only get worse as the river continues to swell.
On its face, it's not hard to see how this is an emergency exacerbated by climate change. The sudden and extreme water levels of the river have been directly linked to heavy rainfall in a short period of time, as well as reckless urbanization, two phenomena that experts have stated are either effetcs or drivers of cilmate change.
Wading through knee-high water
A car submerged
A cremation ground flooded
CIvilians biking through water
The nightmare for tens of thousands of people will continue, as the floods worsen and more places end up underwater and more people are rendered homeless from the disaster. Meanwhile, not even 50 km away, it'd be impossible to see that anything was wrong. In the attractive tourist hub of New Delhi, life continues on as normal, especially for the tourists of that area. Every day, India remains just another beautiful place with incredible buildings and cheap prices. We, a group on a Dialogue of Civilizations for climate engineering and policy, were no exception.
Of our five days spent in Delhi, we spent plenty of time in The Ambience Mall, buying whatever we liked and getting to experience new foods.
Even outside of our free time, we would spend time in cultural locations such as temples and visit local universities. We would speak with those accustomed to such disasters and their implications. We would talk to people who either were personally affected or knew those who were.
All throughout these various activities, we would often pass by places that were flooded. Places that had water up to their eyes, places where it seemed like the power lines were the only thing remaining. Even as we were given consistent reminders of the present disaster India was facing, and even with the understanding that we were there to understand those very same phenomena, it felt like a minor note in all of our minds.
It didn't matter that we were there for it, the floods and actual environmental occurrings were just an afterthought. As Americans, we are used to ignoring crises that are happening in our own country. When California is struck by heavy earthquakes or when Texas loses its power grid, it's normal for people the next state over to disregard such news as irrelevant. We don't think of ourselves as a nation but rather as states, or even sometimes as individuals.
Visiting New Delhi for as long as we did was certainly a valuable experience in that we got to experience yet another culture and see its landmarks, but also in that it showed a mirror to the ugly way we process events.
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