Until the first week of June this year, Mangaluru city had never witnessed large-scale and life-threatening floods except for once in 1972. Meteorological experts attributed it to a ‘cloud burst’, but what happened in this coastal city recently was a result of ignorance and nonchalance on the part of the city’s planners, who have been unmindful of the topography and natural dynamics of the region. Ignorance, because the planners did not care to protect the wetlands, as a result of which the whole area has been inundated, causing significant social and individual damage. Wetlands International, a global organisation dedicated to the preservation and sustenance of wetlands, describes wetlands as “funnels on the surface of the earth connecting the underground water sources”. They suck rainwater into the ground and replenish the acqua-vascular system of the earth. In the summers, they maintain the surface water level. They also work as a natural flood-control mechanism, and every city that has wetlands should consider itself lucky. These wonderful bodies are now being choked with debris dumped by real estate sharks, who are gobbling up land at a mind-boggling pace in Mangaluru. https://swarajyamag.com/politics/why-did-floods-rattle-mangaluru-neglect-of-wetlands-was-a-decisive-factor