Ramesh Pandita
Right goes the saying that, ‘the intensity of a storm is assessed by the silence it leaves behind’ and this is what of the late people of India in general and Uttarakhand in particular have experienced. Nature’s fury in the form of incessant rains, which lashed over whole of the Uttarakhand and parts of adjacent states devastated almost whole of Uttarakhand. Rains supplemented by cloud bursts in the Himalayan hill state added to the woes of people in general and pilgrims in particular who failed to make it to safety as they were not even left with slightest of chance by nature to run for their lives. This open dance of death has spread shock waves all across the globe. The loss of life and property is disproportionate and beyond measures, but still the observers are putting it beyond 1000 corers and the complete recovery from devastation will take at least another five years. The huge loss of life is owed to the fact that Uttarakhand is also known as Dev Bhoomi (The Land of Gods), the abode of four major Dhams of Hindu faith as such remains most of the time thronged by pilgrims, which contributed to greater loss of life. The horrible tale of destruction and devastation, as covered by both print and electronic media for past few days has taken everybody aback.
It is said that coming events always cause their shadow before they actually come. The similar kind of catastrophe struck Leh and Kargil districts of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2010 when hundreds lost their life and scores got injured and left everything devastated all around. Ecologists, environmentalists, metrologists and other naturalists at that time failed to recognize the incident as shadow of some big event in the offing and the nature choose this time Uttarakhand, again the Himalayan hill state. The magnanimity of nature’s fury which struck Leh and Kargil districts of Jammu & Kashmir was far less than the one which struck Uttarakhand, hence without doubt can be termed as the shadow of present event. People have already started dubbing this kind of devastation as ‘Himalayan Tsunami’ over which humans have no control.
Though people from different walks have already started debating over it as consequences of environmental degradation, deforestation, global warming and other similar reasons, which for the justified reasons is the cause of such large scale devastation. But people most of the time forget to analyze, that virginity of these mountain peaks and other such high altitude places, where man has ventured against the wishes of natures, definitely would not have resulted into the loss of life and property, but that does not mean nature would not have been so much furious to these place. When nature gets furious, it can get anywhere on land, sea or sky over which humans have no control and had there been anything like so, then vagaries of nature in the form of tsunamis, tornados, volcanic eruption, forest fires, avalanches, snow storms and other different kind of blizzards would not have been there. Yes what is required is to have best preparedness of disaster management in general and place prone to any kind of natural calamities in particular. By putting forth this argument I don’t want to rub away the fact, that there is indispensible need for protection and conservation of nature.
As is said, better late than never, so holds true about preparedness towards combating the vagaries of nature, which more or less can be considered as the curative part of disease, but what is more important is to pay always attention towards its preventive part. Nature is bound to go its own way and we humans have got no control over such natural events which are somewhat destined to happen, and the occurrence of such natural events cannot be every time termed as the outcome of human actions. Human life is very precious and to ensure its safety from all sides should be of primary concern of all of us. Need is to look at the present tragedy from different aspects but collectively and none of them can be ignored. Missing state disaster management system, lack of govts preparedness to combat any eventuality, unplanned and illegal construction, environmental degradation, global warming and many other similar things have just simply given us reason that how absence of all this has actually indirectly contributed to such large scale destruction and devastation and how perhaps the presence of same could have actually averted the loss of life and property to a greater extent.
(The author is Assistant Librarian, BGSB University, Rajouri,)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel