What the monsoon asks of us

There is a moment, usually about ten minutes into the first heavy rain of May, when the lights in my flat flicker once and then resign themselves to darkness. I know what I am supposed to feel: mild irritation, followed by the practiced grace of a Maldivian accustomed to inconvenience. What I feel, increasingly, is anger.

It is not the outage itself. Outages happen, and the engineers at Stelco have, for a country of our size and shape, performed something close to a miracle for as long as anyone can remember. What bothers me is the annual theatre of surprise — ministers photographed inspecting flooded streets, the Home Ministry's weary press release, the television anchors gently chiding citizens for not preparing for a season that arrives, without fail, every year.

The monsoon is not a natural disaster. It is a scheduled event. We know, more or less to the week, when the first serious squall will arrive; we know which streets will flood; we know which outer islands will lose power for the longest. The list of known things is longer than the list of unknowns, and the list of unknowns is shrinking every year.

What a serious plan would look like

It would begin with honesty about what we cannot do. We cannot flood-proof Malé in a year. We cannot replace the underground cable between Hulhumalé and the capital on short notice. We cannot conjure up a second desalination plant before the rains.

It would then describe, in plain language, what we can do, and by when, and who is responsible. It would be less exciting than a groundbreaking ceremony. It would be durable. It would be written down.

The quieter point

Every year's monsoon is also, now, a rehearsal for something larger. The capacity to respond well to a storm that arrives every year is the capacity to respond well to sea-level rise that arrives every day. We are not separate problems.

If the state cannot manage the flooding of Majeedhee Magu, what exactly is our plan for the flooding of Fuvahmulah? If the generators at Stelco fail every May, what are we telling ourselves about the mid-century?

These are not rhetorical questions. They have answers. We have not yet asked them in a way that requires answers.