Why blame the climate, just admire the benevolent stickers.

Although this is the time for northeast monsoons in Chennai, it has been flooded as it received double the amount of rain that it receives every year. Chennai is on the coast of the Bay of Bengal so the water should run quickly into the sea but water has built up inside the city instead. Of course, being a coastal area it is flat but the real cause is construction of 150,000 illegal structures, cutting down of 52 acres of forest, including 8,000 trees and the disappearance of 300 tanks, canals and lakes, because of construction. Why do the authorities allow illegal constructions? Because that is where politicians, civil servants and business fellows park their black money. We remember the trillions of rupees in black money generated from scams during the 10 years of Congress raj. We can get a rough estimate of the enormous scale of black money in India when we see that a 3-bedroom apartment in Malabar Hills in Mumbai costs $1.9 million while the median price of an apartment in Manhattan in New York is half at $980,000. The other reason is buying votes by regularising unauthorised construction in the name of helping poor people. But what it does is to legalise criminal land grabbing and building of unsafe structures which will collapse instantly in an earthquake and, to add to the fun, the lanes are so narrow that rescue personnel, such as the ambulances and fire tenders, will not be able to enter. No doubt, the land mafia contribute handsomely to political parties for election campaigning. Help politicians to help the poor, how noble. Except when Mother Nature decides otherwise. To show their concern for the victims in Chennai party workers would not allow relief packets to be distributed unless they had stickers of benevolent pictures of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, also known reverentially as Amma, which means 'mother'. Luckily, heroic efforts of ordinary people helped to mitigate some of the suffering of the victims. The phenomenal rise in land prices has corrupted the entire economy. The Securities and Exchange Board of India is worried about diversion of funds raised from Initial Public Offerings on the stock markets by the promoters of companies. Public sector banks are unable to deal with the pile of bad debt because business fellows had borrowed huge amounts with no intention of repaying the loans. Special Economic Zones set up Congress to boost trade, in an imitation of China, failed miserably because IT companies shifted there to take advantage of the tax holiday and 52% of the land lay idle, presumably because fellows were waiting for prices to rise before making windfall profits. Once the waters recede the media will move on to some other event and everyone will forget. Except those who have lost everything.