“We are not expecting heavy rainfall over Kerala for next five days from tomorrow” was the statement of IMD additional DG Mrutunjay Mohapatra and the words that bought glimmer of hope for the flood-ravaged Kerala. The Kochi naval airstrip was to be opened for commercial use by Monday and for the first time in over a week no alert has been declared in the fourteen flood-affected districts of Kerala.
The Centre and other States have pledged to help, the railways have decided not to charge the relief materials being sent, students and activists are on a drive to collect and send relief material and the Pope has urged people to pray for the flood-ravaged Kerala.
It is safe to say that Kerala at this point does not have a lack of compassion or acts of humanity. The country, on the other hand, lacks the attention to concentrate on a very important fact i.e. it took just a lot of rains to convert God’s own country into hell. The flood-ravaged Kerala has lost the lives of 357 people and roughly 906,400 hectares of crops. The calamity has cost the state and its people INR 19,512 crore at the last check.
The 2,086 mm of rain this year in Kerala is thirty per cent above the annual average. Thirty per cent extra is all it took to drown the life’s earning of so many and the lives of so many others. Thirty-five of the thirty-nine dams had their gates thrown open and the situation only went from bad to worse after that.
In 2011, the Gadgil Committee put forth several recommendations to the central government about ecologically-fragile regions in the Western Ghats. They found the highest number of vulnerable zones in Kerala. Some reasons for its vulnerability were natural such as its location and topography. Many other reasons – quarrying, mining, illegal repurposing of forests, and high-rise building constructions – were man-made, controllable factors that the state government chose to look over time and again.
“The flooding has definitely brought to light the existence of illegal stone quarries or a large number of unauthorized constructions on river beds, in this sense; it is definitely a man-made calamity where intense rainfall and human intervention have made it a serious disaster.” Said Prof. Madhav Gadgil.
N Sasidharan, a dam safety expert claims that the authorities waited until the last moment in the case of Idamalayar reservoir thus intensifying the damage. “This is the result of poor planning by the disaster management authority,” Sasidharan added.
While experts blame the hand of the man behind the condition of the flood-ravaged Kerala and the governments refuse to look into environmental problems, the common people continue to join hands with the required authority to bring relief to people affected.
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