Climate Change, Ecological Risk in Mumbai and Kolkata with reference to Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable -An Ecocritical Review

Abstract

“Climate change has reversed the temporal order of modernity: those on the margins are now the first to experience the future that awaits all of us ...”, Amitav Ghosh on Tidal surges in his The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable(2016). Till the end of the early modern period, human habitats were traced by the side of river banks, not by the side of the seashore. The latter was regarded with awe, due to its unpredictable storms. Although people inhabited the coastal regions, chose a safe and remote place eventually. In contrast to this pragmatism, colonial rule has cherished a manipulative anthropogenic attitude, by settling along the seashore. This shift in the habitat has directly exposed the people’s lives to risk. In this context, the present two coastal megacities: Kolkata and Bombay have a historical legacy of inundating the population into havoc. But, what could be the reasons for increased storm surges and deluge in the recent past? Indeed, the politics of development has accelerated the pace of disaster on both; dwellers and eco-sensitive biosphere. The mangrove ecosystem protecting these coastal areas is a habitat for biologically diverse flora and fauna, which are threatened by habitat degradation. This paper analyses the triggered risk factor for the lives of people and the species in those coastal megacities, due to unabated, often unchallenged developmental projects and climate change, from an ecocritical perspective. To exemplify this argument Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable is referred in this paper.