Kerala experienced an unprecedented devastating floods this monsoon. The
southern state had never witnessed such a deluge in last hundred years. The
calamity not only claimed hundreds of lives but inflicted a shattering blow to
the economy of the state popularly known as God’s own country.
The impact of the devastation clearly proved that the state was ill
prepared to handle heavy rains and the subsequent floods. Otherwise so many
lives would not have lost and large number of villages even urban centres, some
of which are popular tourists’ destinations, inundated by flood waters.
Ironically, more than a decade now experts and environmentalists have
been warning repeatedly about such possible rain related floods and subsequent
devastations due to changing monsoon patterns under the impact of global
warming and ecological degradation. They had particularly alerted countries
like India where infrastructure is extremely poor and people are careless and
not disciplined.
However, neither the central government nor the states and for that
matter nor the people heed to this warnings. The net result of this negligence was
the Kerala like deluge. The large-scale destructions could have been minimized
and number of deaths reduced had the administration prepared itself listening
to warning of the experts more seriously. Only God can say when the states and
the country as a whole would learn how to handle Kerala like heavy rain and
floods.
Unfortunately, this is not for the first time such a flood related
deluge was witnessed in the country. Such devastations had also been
experienced at least in two places in recent past – one in commercial capital
Mumbai and another in Chennai, the Tamil Nadu capital. But nobody seem to have
had any interest to learn from those twin disasters. The Kerala calamity should
be treated as a wake up call by other states. Because similar cloud bursts can
occur in any place in the country.
Not only governments, common citizens
are also having a responsibility to cooperate with official agencies in
handling such critical situations. Sadly, the expected co-operation is not
coming forward from the common people. Take the example of Kerala. A migrate
labourer from Odisha was heard informing an Odia news channel that fifteen days
before the deluge a warning message had been put forward from the government on
mobile phones about the possible flooding. “ However, neither I nor other residents
here took the warning seriously and decided to stay back instead of moving to
safer places”, he said.
In
this circumstances, the state agencies should have gone for forced evacuation.
Forced evacuation had yielded wonderful results during cyclone Phailin in
Odisha. At least the death toll had been hugely minimized.
Finally, political parties should desist themselves from scoring
political points during natural calamities. Immediately after the Kerala
deluge, Congress president Rahul Gandhi demanded that the Centre should declare
the unprecedented floods as a National Calamity without any delay. This was an
unnecessary demand. Gandhi never explained what extra benefits would the flood
hit state be getting if the disaster got a national tag. There is no need to
bracket a natural disaster a national or international calamity.
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