To many of my friends, the monsoon brings to mind the smell of wet earth, playing in the rain, the greenery and all those things that make you go aah, but to so many others it means losing their homes and their means of livelihood. Images I see in the papers about families on rooftops waiting for relief, about farms totally flooded, about people packing all they have and moving somewhere else, some where drier, just like they do almost every other year, disturb me to the core.
Now a serious question t whoever knows the answer, because even after knowing so much, I’m totally bewildered. We may not be good at predicting the exact day of the onset of the monsoon, but haven’t we found a way to predict whether it is going to be a good or a bad monsoon? Even if we haven’t, don’t we know that every year we have to be prepared for the eventuality of either a drought or a flood? Given the fact that approx 60% of our people engage in agriculture, shouldn’t we take the situation more seriously? Then why aren’t we doing anything to contain the situation?
We, as a nation, have put a lot of emphasis on remedial measures time and again, but are we so short sighted when it comes to planning for all this? Despite monsoon matrices being plotted out, and all the big, big studies being carried out, what has been done? Flood control an Flood management programs were put forward in 1954 and yet in 2007 we still see houses submerged. I read in the TOI that “In a rain year, the average loss of life is 1590 and the collateral damage is Rs.800 crore.” Yet why do we let this happen year after year? Why let so many die? Why throw all that effort, all that we made away? Why?
Current mood: indignant, angry, pained
4 comments:
Why such a serious post in between kinda jolly & feel good blogs :)...showing off shirly as a very serious and sincere girl, eh?? :P
& you seriously want to do sumthing about it, start small.... go spend a day in an orphanage or sumthing....i have also been thinking.. want to do it but neither time nor company :( ... & forget abt floods and drought....u cannot do anything babe...relax...u'll get ur time when you can do sumthing...do it then :)
but then, you always hear about "little drops of water.." and all that jazz.. seriously, its so depressing to be told you cant do much. well, i'm just going to do my little part in my life spreading cheer and goodwill :)
babe, it's not that easy... what makes u think that ppl aren't doing anything abt it....it takes time to do anything... we spend a lot on satellites that try & predict monsoons & their effect....it's not that ppl aren't trying.... US gets hit by tornadoes every year, then y did Katrina & the likes happen....it's jus that you can't predict everything.... say the met tells you that there is a 30% chance of cyclone hitting coastal orissa...what'll u do?? tell ppl to leave.... & what happens to them? their livelihood? who'll feed them? even if u told them, they won't leave cos their entire life is disrupted...ppl'll jus wait for something to happen before they move out & by then, sum damage is invariably always done....
& i repeat, if u r so touched and moved by the plight of these ppl, then contributing in any small way that u can is also useful... u can go talk to ppl who have suffered cos of that (altho that might not be poss in bang)....u can contribute clothes to victims...recently thr was a drive in bangalore to collect clothes for the victims of the recent flood.....
anyways, me likes u even more now for ur attitude :)
ya i know bout that.. :) but i also feel there should be lots of large scale initiatives taken up by the govt. like they did in china. Because , what we need is prevention. Yes stuff like say a cyclone or something, you cant do much about it, but if it is something like yearly flooding and all, why not? But ya, i do figure that all those stuff will take ages to get implemented. till then we just will keep holding on and trusting that everything we all do makes a difference.. :)
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