Natural Calamity, Human Tradegy

India, world leader in natural disasters

By Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar

May 14, 2006

India leads the world in natural disasters. In the last two decades, it has got the most foreign aid for natural disaster relief and rehabilitation. It has obtained 43 such loans from the World Bank alone, well ahead of China (32), Bangladesh (28) and Brazil(27). India is easily No. 1 in aid received ($8,257 million).

Though India's land area is large (3.29 million sq km), it is smaller than that of China (9.59 million sq km) and Brazil (8.55 million sq km), and not much more than that of Algeria (2.38 million sq km), Kazakhstan (2.75 million sq km) or Sudan (2.51 million sq km).

The damage India suffers, and the disaster aid it gets, are disproportionately large. Rising population has driven poor Indians to settle in risky areas (flood plains, drought-prone areas, cyclone-prone areas, seismic zones).

Population pressure is lower elsewhere. Nevertheless, populations are rising the world over in high-risk zones, so natural disasters are causing rising damage and taking more lives.

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For Whom the Bell Tolls: Why the telephone failed tsunami victims
By Murray Massey,

Brisbane Institute, 10 March 2005

When 250,000 people die in the wash of a single natural disaster our concept of civilisation shrinks into a single and simple life story - humans versus nature. Yet, asks Murray Massey, why has the 21st century 'global village' of instant communications and technological wizardry witnessed a repeat of a 19th century disaster?

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Disaster and Development
A study by Sustainable Development Network

January 17, 2005

UN disaster reduction strategy is an unmitigated failure. What the poor need economic development, not more UN agencies if they are to be able to cope with disasters, says a new study from the Sustainable Development Network.

This week in Kobe, Japan, international luminaries are gathering for the UN’s World Conference on Disaster Reduction to conduct a 10-year review of the strategies for disaster reduction. In 1995, an earthquake in Kobe had killed 6000 people.

The report titled "Disasters and development", concludes that the UN strategy has done nothing to reduce the impact of natural disasters. Indeed, the UN seems so far removed from reality that it claims that an increase in discussion of natural disasters is a sign of success! Yet talk-fests such as the WCDR are probably making things worse by diverting attention away from the real causes.

The study point out that people in wealthy countries are much more resilient to natural disasters because they can afford robust buildings, infrastructure and insurance. When a disaster strikes, they recover far more quickly from economic losses. Wealthy countries in Asia, such as Japan, have developed technologies that spare human lives when disasters such as tsunamis occur.

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It was clear that the island's interior was sparsely inhabited, with the population being concentrated along the seafront. Earlier, while the plane was making its descent, I had had a panoramic, if blurred, view of the island, in the crisp morning sunlight. No more than a few kilometres across, it was flat and low, and its interior was covered by a dense canopy of greenery. A turquoise halo surrounded its shores, where a fringe of sand had once formed an almost-continuous length of beach: this was now still mainly underwater. Relatively few palms had been flattened; most remained upright and in full possession of their greenery. As for the forest, the canopy seemed almost undisturbed. All trace of habitation on the other hand, had been obliterated: the foundations of many buildings could be clearly seen, on the ground. But of the structures they had once supported, nothing remained.

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THE ANDAMANS STORY - Part 2
No aid needed, by Amitava Ghosh

The Hindu, January 12, 2005

Amitav Ghosh, discovers the difference between the diligent and open attitude of the armed forces, and the bureaucratic insensitivity and inertia of the civilian administration in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Finding an unexpected seat on a flight to Car Nicobar, he encounters the Director and his extraordinary story.

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Overlapping faults - Part 1
by Amitava Ghosh

The Hindu, Jan. 11, 2005

In the Andaman and Nicobar islands, although the manpower and machinery for the relief effort are supplied largely by the armed forces, overall authority is concentrated in the hands of a small clutch of senior
civil servants in Port Blair. No matter the sense of crisis elsewhere: the
attitude of the officialdom of Port Blair is one of disdainful
self-sufficiency.

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[Amitav Ghosh, the internationally renowned novelist, visited the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands recently to see for himself how the system and ordinary people have coped with the devastation caused by the tsunami of December 26. This is the first in a three-part series of special articles for The Hindu.The second and third articles will be published on Wednesday and Thursday. More on Amitav: http://www.AmitavGhosh.com]

Some environmental activists shamelessly tried to exploit the recent earthquake-tsunami catastrophe in hopes of advancing their global warming and anti-development agendas. ... ...The tsunamis are a terrible natural disaster -- but they pale in comparison to the not so natural disaster known as modern environmentalism.

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Now spend it sensibly

The Economist, January 6, 2005

As world leaders meet in Jakarta for talks on assisting the countries hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami, aid, in a variety of forms, is being pledged more quickly than it can be spent. But have those who deliver it really learned from past mistakes?

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Can someone answer my questions?
MG Devasahayam

The Indian Express, January 06, 2005

Govt excuse is the disaster caught everyone by surprise. But that is what a disaster is all about

I live in Chennai on the Eastern Coast with a panoramic view of the mighty ocean. I saw first hand the ‘‘tsunami dance of fury’’ and the death and destruction that followed. And I have a few questions.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has convened an all-party meeting to ‘‘mobilise the collective national will to meet the challenges caused by the tsunami devastation." Ironically the most serious challenge of rescuing the victims and recovering dead bodies with ‘‘some modicum of diginity’’ is well past. At this crucial stage even the local resources were not properly mobilised.

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Tsunami: Tragedy as a Teacher

By Thomas R. DeGregori

Health Facts and Fear January 5, 2005

Tragedies are great teachers, but unfortunately too many people draw the wrong lessons from them. Not too long ago, major tragedies were interpreted as some form of divine retribution for our sins. Now, geology (plate tectonics and volcanology), meteorology, other sciences offer hope for preventative and ameliorative actions.

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Tsunami Disaster - False Alternatives from Cultural Commentators
Warren Ross

Capitalism Magazine, January 3, 2005

The tsunami disaster is generating a confusing cacaphony of voices from both the Left and the Right asserting what seem to be contradictory positions. Man caused the disaster say the environmentalists. Man is small compared to the awesome power of nature say voices on both the Left and the Right. Which is it? And how do we reconcile the two positions?

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Do we really need a state sponsored warning system?
Jim Peron
Institute for Liberal Values, New Zealand, January 2, 2005

Seismologists said they knew within minutes that a tsunami was a real threat. In spite of that, people died hours later even though only a few minutes warning was all that was needed to save their lives. The consensus seems to be that no official warning system existed.
That appears true. And many people see this as a failure of government. But more went on here than is first apparent. Why was an "official" channel of warning necessary?

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Government-Enhanced Disaster
Timothy D. Terrell

Ludwig von Mises Institute, Posted December 31, 2004

Many have noticed that poorer nations are more severely affected by natural cataclysms than developed nations. Earthquakes, tropical cyclones, tsunamis, and flooding strike the wealthiest as well as the poorest nations, but the loss of life can be much higher where income is low.

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Why We Need Politics: The tsunami's sorrows will need more than pity
Daniel Henninger

The Wall Street Journal Online, Friday, December 31, 2004
A very long time ago, before what we would call modern civilization, people ravaged by the sea, as in South Asia on Christmas Day, blamed it on the gods. The god of the sea, their poets might write, had lifted the water with his hands to rage at some mortal slight, and shaken it, like a quilt across a bed.
Today, we know for a fact that these deaths in South Asia were caused by the violent movement of tectonic plates--dumb, unfeeling nature precisely measurable at 9.0--and by the failure of men to put in place for these coastal nations technologies that announce the onset of tsunamis. Because the gods didn't do this, the sense of loss is total.

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Tsunami Exposes the Nihilism of Environmentalism
Eric Englund

LewRockwell.com, 31 December 2004

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that set off the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami also set off Jeff McNeely – chief scientist of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN). In Mr. McNeely’s December 27, 2004 interview with AFP – the Paris-based news service – he exposed himself as the nihilistic, anti-human, irrational, and biocentric hack so commonly found in the environmental movement. With such a monumental human tragedy unfolding, Jeff McNeely found this an opportune time to place undue blame on the victims themselves – because, in essence, the victims weren’t eco-friendly.

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Are Tsunamis Good for the Economy?
Chris Westley

Ludwig von Mises Institute, Posted December 30, 2004

I didn't think anyone would dare to apply the Bastiat's Broken Window fallacy to the human tragedy that is still playing itself out along the rim of the Indian Ocean, but sadly, faith in economic fallacies is even more common than deadly tsunamis. That is why I was surprised to hear the Institute for International Economics' C. Fred Bergsten (December 29th) on National Public Radio's Morning Edition explain how this crisis would actually provide long-term benefit to that region of the world. Bergsten said ,

"Like any disaster, you get negative effects through destroying existing property and people's health, but you do get a burst of new economic activity to replace them, and on balance, that generally turns out to be quite positive."

To be fair, Bergsten admitted this disaster is, above all, a human tragedy, but his comments ignore other effects that will result when positive economic growth results from any disaster, whether it occurs due to a matter of policy (wars) or to unanticipated changes in the physical environment (tsunamis).

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How Tsunami shook Indian economy
The Economic Times

INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK, Thursday, December 30, 2004

Fishing villages have been wiped out and money-spinning tourist resorts wrecked, but the economic cost of the giant seismic waves that swamped coasts across south Asia will be much smaller than the human toll.

Sri Lanka's economy will be hardest hit and Thailand's important tourism industry will have to pick itself up again after suffering setbacks. The immediate impact on Indian economy is seen as negligible.

But overall, South Asia's economies and markets are likely to suffer the most from the disaster, in which more than 70,000 people died after the strongest earthquake in 40 years sent a wall of water surging across the Indian Ocean.

India Inc felt that estimated losses will top Rs 3,000 crore (USD 700 million).

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A Tsunami to Our Priorities
Fredrik Segerfeldt

TechCentralStation.com, December 29, 2004

A few days after the Asian earthquake disaster, with perhaps as many as 100,000 casualties, the human losses and the struggle of the survivors are what occupy most of our minds. I myself have acquaintances who are still missing from the Thai beaches of Kao Lak. However, I cannot help but to ruminate on some political aspects of this huge tragedy. There are several thoughts that keep popping up in my mind.

The first one is the importance of economic growth. In Hawaii, there are reportedly technical systems that allow countries in the Pacific, like Japan and the US, to receive warnings well in advance of tsunamis reaching their shores. In combination with well-developed infrastructure, it is likely that the system would have saved many lives, had these countries been hit.

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A Great Natural Disaster: Prosperity is the best defence against a tsunami.

The Wall Street Journal Online, REVIEW & OUTLOOK, Tuesday, December 28, 2004

The world's thoughts are with the victims of the tsunamis that swept across South Asia Sunday, killing at least 23,000 and leaving millions homeless. In the coming weeks and months, the priority must be to render the survivors every possible assistance. The response so far has been admirably swift.
One might think that a disaster of this scale would transcend normal national or political considerations. But in the world of environmental zealotry, even an event such as this is seen as an opportunity to press the agenda. Thus, the source of the South Asian tsunami is being located in global warming.

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When Your Mother Kills
Carlo Stagnaro

TechCentralStation.Com, December 28, 2004

A tsunami killed more than 40,000 in six Asian countries. Hundreds of thousands are either injured or missing. Cold numbers, however huge, cannot give you an idea of what kind of tragedy occurred. Pictures do. Corpses are lying everywhere, families are destroyed, buildings fall down.

All of this takes our mind away from today's comforts and technologies and gives us a glimpse of the world as it was centuries, if not millennia, ago. Namely, hostile: every single moment of the human adventure on Earth is part of a struggle between man and (mother) nature. Every step forward in our history has moved us toward a more humanized world: cold has been defeated by fire; difficulty to travel has been overcome by the wheel; food scarcity has been tackled by agriculture; the need for energy mitigated by the harnessing of fuel.

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