Coping with Natural Disasters in Future - Will being 'Swach Bharat' help?

We need  to learn from our experiences and put our  hands and heads together to bring about a permanent solution.

                                         TO err is human, but to learn from it is development.

It was a life time's achievement! To get land at the crowded city of Chennai this cheap and to build a house. A few handfuls of  'under the table' deals settled all the necessary legal matters. Nobody was being harmed, it seemed at the time.

And then those plastics.They told us, time and again to segregate the plastics  and use it for road laying and the like. But where was the time for the voice of the environmentalists then? It was so neat and convenient to wrap up all the bin's contents in a plastic cover and toss it across the road. Whether it blocked the street dogs' or straying cows' stomachs was their own concern.

But now it is different. The recent experiences cannot be wiped out from our minds so easily.The close shave with loss and even death. The feeling of being trapped and separated from the outer world. The darkness. The power cut.The fear of snakes swimming into our houses. The thirst when our water supply was cut off . The starvation.

Now we know and understand. We will clear the way for the  excess water to flow into the sea, if need be after all our rain water harvesting schemes have been used to the full.  We will keep our city clean. We will segregate our wastes. And don't forget to tell the Corporation to do its part too.To provide the necessary bins and trucks and man power to clear the waste in time.

We Tamilians can do anything once we make up our minds. 'Swach Bharat? Okay, fine. Just see if we don't follow the rules. The biodegradable waste should end up in manure pits and covered with soil for some 3 months or more, right?

And the non-biodegradable should be collected all the more carefully and taken either for recycling or better still for direct use elsewhere where it will not in any case block water's flow: neither in roadside drains nor in other water bodies, irrespective of whether they are in use or not.

Tamilnadu's recent floods  might  have finally brought about a general awareness among the public. Awareness regarding the preventive measures we ought to take to avoid the stench of death and loss, the fear of resulting diseases, the unexpected displacement of our regular livelihood. The unknown potholes and manholes that cause so many accidents.

Disasters have visited us in the past. And we rose above them. Warned our children about them. And taught them to manage, to live 'humanely' and to respect lives. We shall do it again and this time it will be different. Because we learnt so much from the media. About people all across the world, their disasters and how they rose above them.

                                                          Photos : Google images