Facing aftermath of the flood
Monday, 13 August 2007
Maswood Alam Khan
WHEN a shark with its razor-sharp teeth shears a leg off a swimmer, the swimmer feels no pain instantly except a little imbalance while trying to shore up strength to swim ashore. Totally shorn of one leg, the swimmer is stunned---feeling no pain, finding no blood in the initial few moments.
Excruciating pain accompanied by profuse bleeding starts a few minutes later when the victim in most cases faints. Similarly sufferings in most of human tragedies accentuate in the aftermath. Pains of losing our mother or son mount with days passing.
Our people are now grappling with floods from torrential monsoon rains and glacial snowmelts. The pain they have now been suffering out of hunger, thirst and diseases is 'no pain' compared to the havoc that is awaiting them once the flood recedes. They will be writhing about with acute agonies as they would return to their devastated homes to restart living and their shattered fields to restart tilling. For people like us who work and live in air-conditioned environments and look out at the plight of flood victims through windowpanes of our cars and helicopters it is impossible to empathise with actuality of their pains, pangs and twinge.
In our rural homes a landless peasant, who has to eke out his living as a day-labourer, gets up very early in the morning to catch the fazr (morning) prayer. At the end of the prayer when he raises his hands with palms spread out the only favour he earnestly begs from God is a fortune to get a labouring job on the day. Like animals herded at the local market to be sold, he and other labour-sellers throng at a designated corner in the market to be hired for the whole day to work for anything anywhere as ordered by his new master. For him to return home without a job found is a sentence of hunger for the day passed by his fate.
Thousands of day labourers did not turn up to the local markets to sell their labours for the last ten days as all the fields in the flood-affected areas where they were to work are under water, which means they have since been fasting along with their spouses and children. Well-to-dos are loath to recruit these labourers even for any urgent manual jobs as they won't risk spending their savings due to uncertainty of days ahead due to flood. An omen of disease, hunger and death is stalking families of the have-nots in all the flood-stricken areas in Bangladesh!
In the multitude of gloomy news of floods and resultant human sufferings I was reading in an English daily on the August 07, a pleasing news item captioned, "Preventive step shields flood-hit char people" warmed the cockles of my heart! While millions of marooned people elsewhere in Bangladesh had to desert their homesteads about 1500 people of 250 families in three char areas in the river Teesta at Monrea union under Gangachara upazilla in Rangpur, according to the news, were not affected by the flood due to a preventive measure taken by the Oxfam-assisted NGO "Social Equality For Effective Development" (SEED). Working since 2002 to alleviate poverty in Gangachara upazilla SEED assisted in upping the level of earth of the charareas as an innovative step to protect the marooned families and their livestock in the event of floods.
Since our childhood, we have learned (perhaps by rote) that 'prevention is better than cure'. Policy makers too agree that 'an ounce of prevention is worth tons of cure' and they formulate grand strategies on how to prevent disastrous floods by constructing dams and taming turbulent rivers; most of those strategy papers unfortunately never see the light of day and the few strategies which are somehow implemented are ultimately found non-effective due to wholesale robberies committed by the implementing authorities and agencies.
One taka properly invested in elevating or embanking low-lying areas of the flood prone districts before this flood could have saved seven taka today in relief and rehabilitation costs. If we could follow what SEED did in Gangachara millions of our people would not have been bereft of everything today and the government and other donors could have saved avoidable expenses on accounts of relief and rehabilitation.
However, bygone is bygone. We may now embark on framing strategies and draw pragmatic road maps in collaboration with neighbouring countries like India and Nepal where people suffered heavily by the same flood. All these three countries may sit together to identify areas where we can contribute to reduce intensity of future floods. Many experts are now saying that climate change because of carbon emission is the black culprit behind accelerated glacial snowmelts. Instead of passing the buck onto others and demanding countries like the USA to compensate for global warming we should rather show the world that we are not going to follow the footsteps of those industrialised countries by setting up industries and using gadgets that emit carbon.
Bangladesh, like Bhutan, is far ahead of most of the developed and developing countries in respect of caring the planet. Regional cooperation in governing the behaviours of our rivers and rivulets will play the most pivotal role in flood control. In the last eight years there have been four examples of at least 30 million people being affected in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Some experts comment that the present flooding could be far worse than the record-breaking floods of 1988 and 1998.
Meanwhile, integrated measures for mapping of the flood-affected areas should be taken up by our government either through aerial photographs or through terrestrial surveying by the concerned meteorological department. Such maps, compiled by a central authority, should also be distributed to different utility and development agencies like those of Roads & Highways, Telephone and Telegraph, WASA, transport and shipping companies etc., so that they can design their future development projects circumventing or thwarting destructive paths of floods.
However, we should now focus our attention to the present crisis management. More than two hundred people have already died due to flood. Agriculture has been battered; paddy fields with standing plants and saplings have been washed off. Millions of people in 38 out of 64 districts of our country are passing hellish moments; thousands are afflicted with diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, pneumonia, jaundice and skin infections. Refugees may fall sick with malaria, dengue fever and other fetal diseases if the malnourished are not immediately provided with food and medicines. They are passing days and nights under open sky taking shelters on embankments or highways or railways. Running water supplied by WASA has been mingled up with sewage. Buildings of educational institutions have been fully or partially damaged and roads and dykes breached. The weak women and children are losing out to the adult and strong men in their fights to grab whatever minuscule relief materials trickling down to relief camps. In addition, unscrupulous businesspersons are selling adulterated medicines at higher than normal prices lest buyers should doubt the genuineness of medicines if offered at lower prices.
Ten million people have been left homeless or marooned---five times the number displaced in Darfur! Our government must not hesitate to ask for global help in our relief and rehabilitation efforts. It is lamentable that we were, in earlier instances of flood, a bit reluctant to be seen asking for international help. Such haughty attitude reflects our prejudiced pride and false vanity prevalent in this subcontinent. In Pakistan, the government even suspended access to international aid staff in some areas of Baluchistan severely hit by flash flood several weeks ago. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, India was one of the few countries not to request volumes of international aid.
Our government has finalised a post-flood agriculture rehabilitation programme and already allocated Taka 650 million (65 crore) for supportive measures like free distribution of seeds and fertilizers among the flood-affected farmers. The Bangladesh Bank has already declared that Taka 77 billion (7700 crore) would be disbursed as farm loans through government-owned and private banks. We earnestly hope, the bank field officials of all the banks, especially those of Bangladesh Krishi Bank and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (BKB and RAKUB), would show the same fervour and patriotism they had showed to flood victims by disbursing loans in time after 1998 colossal flooding.
Now is the time for us to listen to the hushed panting of the victims who are now too weak even to cry and rush to their places carrying with us whatever we can glean and garner to salvage these unfortunate creatures of God. If we claim ourselves as humans, we should not wait for others to help the destitute. Nor should we listen to what people and functionaries are barking about white and black money. We Bangladeshis are world-renowned emotional race; let us fire our emotion to salvage the drowning.
The first aid must go to children, women and the old who are suffering from diseases like diarrhea. Carry, please, rehydration fluid sachets like those of orsaline, common medicines for curing light diarrhea, energy biscuits, 'chira-muri' (rice parched in hot sand), molasses, purified water or water purifying tablets, basic clothes, utensils, matchboxes or a few lighters, kerosene oil, candles and some cash bills. Look out whether the relief materials you are buying are genuine, not stale or adulterated. Hungry men, women and children are now desperate and may injure you in their rush to grab foods and relief materials you are carrying. Therefore, it would be safe if you go by a group or donate the relief materials to the genuine camps like those of the Red Cross or the reputed NGOs.
If you spend Taka one thousand---cost of a few packs of cigarettes---for the relief package, mind you, you are giving succour to at least five families for one day. You and I are not that cruel though at times we are stupid; we cry when an actress sobs in a cinema; shouldn't we cry when our own people have lost the strength of crying?
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and can be reached at e-mail: maswoodalamkhan@gmail.com
WHEN a shark with its razor-sharp teeth shears a leg off a swimmer, the swimmer feels no pain instantly except a little imbalance while trying to shore up strength to swim ashore. Totally shorn of one leg, the swimmer is stunned---feeling no pain, finding no blood in the initial few moments.
Excruciating pain accompanied by profuse bleeding starts a few minutes later when the victim in most cases faints. Similarly sufferings in most of human tragedies accentuate in the aftermath. Pains of losing our mother or son mount with days passing.
Our people are now grappling with floods from torrential monsoon rains and glacial snowmelts. The pain they have now been suffering out of hunger, thirst and diseases is 'no pain' compared to the havoc that is awaiting them once the flood recedes. They will be writhing about with acute agonies as they would return to their devastated homes to restart living and their shattered fields to restart tilling. For people like us who work and live in air-conditioned environments and look out at the plight of flood victims through windowpanes of our cars and helicopters it is impossible to empathise with actuality of their pains, pangs and twinge.
In our rural homes a landless peasant, who has to eke out his living as a day-labourer, gets up very early in the morning to catch the fazr (morning) prayer. At the end of the prayer when he raises his hands with palms spread out the only favour he earnestly begs from God is a fortune to get a labouring job on the day. Like animals herded at the local market to be sold, he and other labour-sellers throng at a designated corner in the market to be hired for the whole day to work for anything anywhere as ordered by his new master. For him to return home without a job found is a sentence of hunger for the day passed by his fate.
Thousands of day labourers did not turn up to the local markets to sell their labours for the last ten days as all the fields in the flood-affected areas where they were to work are under water, which means they have since been fasting along with their spouses and children. Well-to-dos are loath to recruit these labourers even for any urgent manual jobs as they won't risk spending their savings due to uncertainty of days ahead due to flood. An omen of disease, hunger and death is stalking families of the have-nots in all the flood-stricken areas in Bangladesh!
In the multitude of gloomy news of floods and resultant human sufferings I was reading in an English daily on the August 07, a pleasing news item captioned, "Preventive step shields flood-hit char people" warmed the cockles of my heart! While millions of marooned people elsewhere in Bangladesh had to desert their homesteads about 1500 people of 250 families in three char areas in the river Teesta at Monrea union under Gangachara upazilla in Rangpur, according to the news, were not affected by the flood due to a preventive measure taken by the Oxfam-assisted NGO "Social Equality For Effective Development" (SEED). Working since 2002 to alleviate poverty in Gangachara upazilla SEED assisted in upping the level of earth of the charareas as an innovative step to protect the marooned families and their livestock in the event of floods.
Since our childhood, we have learned (perhaps by rote) that 'prevention is better than cure'. Policy makers too agree that 'an ounce of prevention is worth tons of cure' and they formulate grand strategies on how to prevent disastrous floods by constructing dams and taming turbulent rivers; most of those strategy papers unfortunately never see the light of day and the few strategies which are somehow implemented are ultimately found non-effective due to wholesale robberies committed by the implementing authorities and agencies.
One taka properly invested in elevating or embanking low-lying areas of the flood prone districts before this flood could have saved seven taka today in relief and rehabilitation costs. If we could follow what SEED did in Gangachara millions of our people would not have been bereft of everything today and the government and other donors could have saved avoidable expenses on accounts of relief and rehabilitation.
However, bygone is bygone. We may now embark on framing strategies and draw pragmatic road maps in collaboration with neighbouring countries like India and Nepal where people suffered heavily by the same flood. All these three countries may sit together to identify areas where we can contribute to reduce intensity of future floods. Many experts are now saying that climate change because of carbon emission is the black culprit behind accelerated glacial snowmelts. Instead of passing the buck onto others and demanding countries like the USA to compensate for global warming we should rather show the world that we are not going to follow the footsteps of those industrialised countries by setting up industries and using gadgets that emit carbon.
Bangladesh, like Bhutan, is far ahead of most of the developed and developing countries in respect of caring the planet. Regional cooperation in governing the behaviours of our rivers and rivulets will play the most pivotal role in flood control. In the last eight years there have been four examples of at least 30 million people being affected in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Some experts comment that the present flooding could be far worse than the record-breaking floods of 1988 and 1998.
Meanwhile, integrated measures for mapping of the flood-affected areas should be taken up by our government either through aerial photographs or through terrestrial surveying by the concerned meteorological department. Such maps, compiled by a central authority, should also be distributed to different utility and development agencies like those of Roads & Highways, Telephone and Telegraph, WASA, transport and shipping companies etc., so that they can design their future development projects circumventing or thwarting destructive paths of floods.
However, we should now focus our attention to the present crisis management. More than two hundred people have already died due to flood. Agriculture has been battered; paddy fields with standing plants and saplings have been washed off. Millions of people in 38 out of 64 districts of our country are passing hellish moments; thousands are afflicted with diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, pneumonia, jaundice and skin infections. Refugees may fall sick with malaria, dengue fever and other fetal diseases if the malnourished are not immediately provided with food and medicines. They are passing days and nights under open sky taking shelters on embankments or highways or railways. Running water supplied by WASA has been mingled up with sewage. Buildings of educational institutions have been fully or partially damaged and roads and dykes breached. The weak women and children are losing out to the adult and strong men in their fights to grab whatever minuscule relief materials trickling down to relief camps. In addition, unscrupulous businesspersons are selling adulterated medicines at higher than normal prices lest buyers should doubt the genuineness of medicines if offered at lower prices.
Ten million people have been left homeless or marooned---five times the number displaced in Darfur! Our government must not hesitate to ask for global help in our relief and rehabilitation efforts. It is lamentable that we were, in earlier instances of flood, a bit reluctant to be seen asking for international help. Such haughty attitude reflects our prejudiced pride and false vanity prevalent in this subcontinent. In Pakistan, the government even suspended access to international aid staff in some areas of Baluchistan severely hit by flash flood several weeks ago. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, India was one of the few countries not to request volumes of international aid.
Our government has finalised a post-flood agriculture rehabilitation programme and already allocated Taka 650 million (65 crore) for supportive measures like free distribution of seeds and fertilizers among the flood-affected farmers. The Bangladesh Bank has already declared that Taka 77 billion (7700 crore) would be disbursed as farm loans through government-owned and private banks. We earnestly hope, the bank field officials of all the banks, especially those of Bangladesh Krishi Bank and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (BKB and RAKUB), would show the same fervour and patriotism they had showed to flood victims by disbursing loans in time after 1998 colossal flooding.
Now is the time for us to listen to the hushed panting of the victims who are now too weak even to cry and rush to their places carrying with us whatever we can glean and garner to salvage these unfortunate creatures of God. If we claim ourselves as humans, we should not wait for others to help the destitute. Nor should we listen to what people and functionaries are barking about white and black money. We Bangladeshis are world-renowned emotional race; let us fire our emotion to salvage the drowning.
The first aid must go to children, women and the old who are suffering from diseases like diarrhea. Carry, please, rehydration fluid sachets like those of orsaline, common medicines for curing light diarrhea, energy biscuits, 'chira-muri' (rice parched in hot sand), molasses, purified water or water purifying tablets, basic clothes, utensils, matchboxes or a few lighters, kerosene oil, candles and some cash bills. Look out whether the relief materials you are buying are genuine, not stale or adulterated. Hungry men, women and children are now desperate and may injure you in their rush to grab foods and relief materials you are carrying. Therefore, it would be safe if you go by a group or donate the relief materials to the genuine camps like those of the Red Cross or the reputed NGOs.
If you spend Taka one thousand---cost of a few packs of cigarettes---for the relief package, mind you, you are giving succour to at least five families for one day. You and I are not that cruel though at times we are stupid; we cry when an actress sobs in a cinema; shouldn't we cry when our own people have lost the strength of crying?
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and can be reached at e-mail: maswoodalamkhan@gmail.com