An Indian friend has sent me this email and I really couldn't stop myself from posting it. Here you go:
HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING COMPARISONS:-
I couldn't' stop making this comparison..
inches of rain in new orleans due to hurricane katrina... 18
inches of rain in mumbai (July 27th).... 37.1
population of new orleans... 484,674
population of mumbai.... 12,622,500
deaths in new orleans within 48 hours of katrina...100
deaths in mumbai within 48hours of rain.. 37
number of people to be evacuated in new orleans... entire city..wohh
number of people evacuated in mumbai...10,000
Cases of shooting and violence in new orleans...Countless
Cases of shooting and violence in mumbai.. NONE
Time taken for US army to reach New Orleans... 48hours
Time taken for Indian army and navy to reach mumbai...12hours
Status 48hours later...New Orleans is still waiting for relief, army and electricity
Status 48hours later..Mumbai is back on its feet and business is as usual
USA...world's most developed nation
India...JUST A DEVELOPING NATION..
oopss...did i get the last fact wrong??? Or am I just being proud of being an INDIAN?
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Is it as scary as I think it is.. dunno... yes, it is..
Nothing can explain the devastation Katrina has caused and the heart pain and shock it has sent down the spines of millions of people.. and then you get spineless twits trying to blame each other for it.
Who's next to divert attention from Katrina..as usual, the US war machine would come up with a plan to nuke somewhere else now that the whole world has seen how a government fighting for quality life, democracy and freedom around the world has let its own people down in their greatest hour of need.
I can't believe that the world's super supreme almighty power has had to wait until millions were displaced before it raised the alarm about a storm which even the third-rate instruments in wonderland would have registered.. had there been anyone capable of reading the data on his seat ;)
oops.. why do i have to stab my wonderful wonderland in the back everyday.. dunno.. I am being silly, I suppose.. No.. It isn't just that.. It's just that these things horrify me..
Last year's tsunami.. and then this hurricane and we being an over-populated badly planned island, where poverty is on the increase and the quality of life dropping at astronomical rates..
Dunno.. it just makes me sad in a selfish way..
8 September 2005
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15 comments:
and I am too lazy and psssssssssssst.. come closer.. I can't swim ;)
I can perhaps float like dead wood, hang on at your own peril SBG....
MUMBAI my city always makes me proud....cheers
Also to add a touch of realism both the tragedies MUMBAI / NEW ORLEANS the extent of suffering could certainly have been avoided.
People suffered in both these cities due to the callous attitude of the Governments, MUMBAI I know for sure pays more than 40% of India's Taxes contributes billions to India's GDP and get zilch in return.
What saved MUMBAI and had it back on its feet, its people not the government not the aid agencies just the common man.
Another point we should not forget MUMBAI had the worst deluge ever to hit all of INDIA in a century.
Although RAIN was less in NEW ORLEANS it was innundated by the Sea which came in as the leevees broke under barrage of the sea and 300Km/hr winds. & dont forget NEW ORLEANS is 7feet below sea level and this sort of disaster was waiting to happen.
Sorry for hoggin the comments SBG just leaving some points I thought relevant here.
sbg-
very much agreeing with "bedoon esam" here: mumbai cannot be completely flooded by simply a levee breaking like norlins did.
what devastated norlins wasn't a lot of water falling from the sky (like during monsoon in mumbai) - it was the combination of 180 m/h winds and having both sea & lake higher than the city.
as for the abysmal "response" by all sorts of institutions (local, state, federal) -> they're just lucky i don't believe in vigilante justice.
damn zionists.
--raf*
Such a silly girl. American had
a horrible start to our recovery...true. But it is more
important how we finish than how
we started. Rest assured that
we will take care of our hundreds of thousands of evacuees and rebuild all shiny and new. The
Indians will do the same. They
are a great democratic society who
have brought their culture to NYC
for all of us to enjoy.
They had bungled the relief effort and let people die in the streets for lack of food, water or medicine. what a shame!
Shame on the US!!
marco
www.elblogemarco.com
anything that happens in "America" is like OH MY GOD.. and anything that happens in liek the third world countries is like, oh too bad, and life goes on...
kaza,
i dont disagree with u.. the issue here isn't american or third-world-country lives..
human life is the same - or it should be so.. the issue here is how competent are those in charge of ensuring our safety are? met offices are run by the state, relief aid and emergency services as well.. the US is - correct me if i am wrong - one of the world's biggest donors..
I am sorry.. u don't send aid, expertise and export technology to the rest of the world and leave your own backyard at mercy's hands.
also.. and this is in response to everyone.. I just posted an email I got because I was shocked by the figures in it.
I also realise that it could be misleading, that both tragedies are of different natures, different scopes...
Like everything else in life, anyone writing anything - myself included - is selective in what he writes.
It could be the truth and nothing but the truth.. but it will no way be the whole truth..
I will elaborate on this point in a future post ;)
I have to say - for the tsunami, people mobilised all kinds of relief and aid, which seem to have been absent for Mumbai and New Orleans.
I agree that Mumbai survived better and returned to normal sooner than the USA's little fiasco.
Two things I see contributing to those observed things.
One is that the world thought the tsunami was shocking and the people were genuine battlers who needed help, whereas Mumbai and Norlins are considered to each have a huge country backing them, removing the need for foreign aid. Also, I think in the latest case, people are thinking that anyoen who votes for Bush, or by not voting for someone else lets Bush win, don't deserve aid.
The other thing, about being on their feet faster. Hey the tsunami and monsoon victims lived very direct lives, they KNOW that if you don't do something, no-one else will do it for you, and then that undone thing will come back to kill you.
But in the hurricane aftermath, the citizens of a reasonably well-off city decided that all the "dirty work" was to be done by someone else. They left their loved ones floating or laying around, didn't do much to clean up or fend for themselves, and generally it looked to me as if they were all just wallowing in self-pity and waiting for Big Daddy to come wipe their bums for them...
I said well-off city because while I recognise that there were a lot of people there that the US government considers underprivileged and third-rate citizens, they'd still had sanitation, clean food, and clean living conditions most of their lives and had no idea of what fending for oneself really entails.
Oh yeah. And probably Bush sticking his armed forces where they're not needed and therefore having none at home to cope with the crisis may have had a *little* to do with it. Maybe this http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2005-09-02 clarifies it for you like it did for me...
I am also an Indian as far as the classification of people go. Even I recd the same in my email - and this is how I responded to it in a hurry.
The stats in the email is also known as patriotic farts.
There was a Tsunami... remember?
There are poor people in India, who are yet to get any relief from state or central government.
We should never try to compare the scope or magnitude of tragedies, or the management after that to justify anything.
If we are all God's children, the dead ones are all God's children. God never created a developed country or a developing country.
Having said all that, Can we Indians wash away our guilt and shame of what happened in Gujarat?
A lot of innocent people died - cause they were born into this religion or that religion.
In a world where "collateral damage"is accepted, I guess we are all victims of some sort of a collateral damage...
People remember Katrina but not the Kyoto agreement that would save a lot more!
“anything that happens in "America" is like OH MY GOD.. and anything that happens in liek the third world countries is like, oh too bad, and life goes on..”.
Exactly.
Shame on the US anyway, a near fascist corporate owned government that the people need to take back,
As for the other stuff:
As Vonnegut said, Mother Earth has had enough of what people have done to her and on her in the name of religion and right of property. She is trying to rid the scum from the face of the earth and start fresh and I don't blame her.
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