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by B.Raman
(
October 30, 2012, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Our prayers are with the people
on USA’s Eastern Coast who have been living through nightmarish experiences as
they are threatened with hurricane Sandy. It has brought life almost to a
standstill, but fortunately there has been no humanitarian disaster of the kind
that the Tsunami of December 2004 inflicted on the people of Chennai, coastal
Tamil Nadu, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Sri Lanka, the Maldives,
Southern Thailand and some of the islands of Indonesia.
Barring
Indonesia, the rest of the areas were hit by a Tsunami for the first time in
their history. Many of us did not even know what had hit us when we suddenly
found huge waves taking away thousands of people who were near the sea shore.
As
I keep reading the Tweets of Barkha Dutt, Group editor of NDTV, who is
presently in the Brown University on the Rhode Island, regarding the progress
of the hurricane and its feared aftermath and watching the brave coverage
of Sarah Jacob of NDTV from the streets
and restaurants of New York, my mind goes back to the hours after the Tsunami
struck us.
Some
brave young journalists and officials were the first to reach the affected
areas to assist the disaster-struck people and keep the world informed of the
magnitude of the disaster. Sheela Bhatt of Rediff.com and Suhasini Haidar, then
working for CNN, New Delhi, rushed to the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, which
were practically cut off from the rest of India. Barkha Dutt rushed to coastal Tamil Nadu where many villages were swept away by the waves
and thousands of poor fishermen were killed by the marauding waves. Lyse Doucet
of BBC co-ordinated the coverage from all the affected areas---initially from
Tamil Nadu and subsequently from Indonesia.
Many
young officers of the Governments of Tamil Nadu and the Andaman and Nicobar
Islands rose to the occasion in a brilliant manner despite the fact that our
Governments had never prepared a crisis management drill for dealing with
Tsunamis since we had never experienced a Tsunami before. There was global recognition of the remarkable work
done by them.
The
Indian and US Navies together mounted a massive humanitarian relief operation
in south India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia.
When
memories of the disaster were still fresh, Governmental and non-Governmental
organisations in the US undertook a
systematic documentation of the Tsunami experience so that a data-base of
knowledge and experience was available for the future.
One
would have expected a similar exercise to document our Tsunami experience.
Unfortunately, we never did it. In 2005, I was associated as Distinguished
Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) of New Delhi. I proposed to
the late Shri R.K.Mishra, the then head of the ORF, that we in the ORF
undertake such an exercise. He reacted positively, but I found within six
monthsiof the Tsunami disaster a total lack of interest and co-operation for
the project, which failed to take off.
I
do not know whether the National Maritime Foundation of our Navy has undertaken such an exercise for
documentation. If not, it is time for it to do so.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For
China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com
Twitter @SORBONNE75)
 Our prayers are with the people on USA’s Eastern Coast who have been ...){kind=link}