Chennai vents ire, offers help on social media

CHENNAI: By giving everybody with an

internet connection a public voice

,

social media

has been a force to reckon with -for better or worse. It has served as a platform for a call to action in times of distress but also helped magnify distorted facts and

provoke agitation after a calamity

.

In Chennai, with heavy rain from the first week of the

northeast monsoon

flooding several localities and reviving
the ghost of the December 2015 floods, people have taken to Facebook and Twitter to expose ground realities and vent their anger at civic agencies.

Most of the fury was over the fact that officials have clearly failed to learn from the past, and left the city at the mercy of a wholly inadequate storm water drain system.

Sunil Jayaram, a member of civic group Chitlapakkam Rising, posted live updates as he went around various localities to provide proof of the indiffer ence of officials.

“We suffer every time it rains,“ he said. “Civic officials show no interest in intelligence gathering or any willingness to solve the problem of flooding.“

Sunnambu Kolathur resident Anand Chandrasekar posted this on Facebook on Saturday evening: “Stuck with 30-40 families since Monday night. We have exhausted our drinking water, milk, bread and groceries. There is close to 4ft of water in our locality. I spoke to the Kanchee-puram collector, who guided me to the BDO and then the PWD. They promised help but it never arrived.“

But it has not all been criticism. People also tried to help.

Businessman and

lawyer Sam Paul

and his friends reached out on Facebook to help affected people, offering to provide safe accommodation and food.

“My friends and I began an initiative called Team Hope during the 2015 floods,“ he said. “We reach out to stranded people. That's the least we can do.“

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