Unheard Voices

My feeling is that Rezwan bhai has hit the nail on the head. He has hinted at a link between democracy and disaster response/management in the case of Cyclone Nargis. Democracies thrive in open societies with free flow of information. A person’s right to know and people’s right to speak are fundamental to democracies. While some have tried to portray this flow of information and the different media through which they flow as “wastes of time”/ “distractions” that keep people from going about their daily lives, that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire situation. (more…)

I saw this article on the CHT on the BBC website today:

“According to the UN’s development programme, about 125,000 people have been affected by food shortages and the rats.
Some have started to receive aid, but unless more arrives soon these people will be cut off from the outside world, without any food to eat for months.”

AFP beat them to the punch though last month:
“Thousands of people in remote southeast Bangladesh are facing famine after a plague of rats destroyed their crops, forcing families to rely on dwindling food stocks, officials said.

Flowering of bamboo forests for the first time in 50 years in areas along the border with India has led to a so-called “rat-flood” — rodents who have multiplied in number by feeding on bamboo blossoms, rice stalks and vegetables.”

A plague of rats, of all things! It was as if we didn’t have enough to contend with, after going through last summer’s flooding and Sidr, on top of the political-economic storms that have continued unabated for what seems like forever. Bangladesh is always recovering from one disaster or another. If we spend all our time getting back up after getting knocked, when are we expected to get on with the business of development?

This brings us to the first point of this post: we need to reorient our strategic planning from being adaptive (reactive) to be more forward-looking (proactive). From what I gather, the warning systems and shelters that we have on the coast saved countless lives this past cyclone. But those measures all came into being after several brutally hard lessons. If past governments had made those strategic investments in early warning systems and damage control infrastructure earlier, would the human cost of Sidr have been as high as they are now? Could equivalent warning and mitigation strategies been developed for last summer’s flood, or for the floods that are sure to come this summer?

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Click To PlayI saw Elachi’r Ma several days ago. She was in TV news. She probably will be in late twenties or early thirties. She was wearing what all Bangladeshi poor women wear. A plain grey/green Sari with Black Par and a Nakful. She was looking exceedingly fresh, most likely she just had bath before talking to TV crew. And the poor people of Bangladesh, My God, are very camera smart. They will talk clearly and in an articulate manner without any shyness, nervousness or hesitation. (more…)

Zafar Sobhan

He who saves one life, saves the world entire.
–Talmud

A traveler was walking along a beach when he saw a woman scooping up starfish off the sand and tossing them into the waves. Curious, he asked her what she was doing. The woman replied: “When the tide goes out, it leaves these starfish stranded on the beach. They will dry up and die before the tide comes back in, so I am throwing them back into the sea where they can live.”
The traveler then asked her: “But this beach is miles long and there are hundreds of stranded starfish, many will die before you reach them — do you really think throwing back a few starfish is really going to make a difference?”
The woman picked up a starfish and looked at it, then she threw it into the waves and said: “It makes a difference to this one.”
–Popular fable

It’s a never-ending story: floods, cyclones, death, destruction. Inside the country, the events had a deadening familiarity. The days of foreboding as, literally, the storm clouds gathered The heightening anxiety with the periodic escalation of the official danger level. The collective holding of our breath and sense of impending doom as the storm hit. And the desperate rush for shelter and safety before, during, and after, that sadly left far too many behind and unprovided for.

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Watching news lately has become an emotional trial – I want to know the progress of salvage and rescue efforts in the aftermath of cyclone Sidr at the same time watching the unspeakable sufferings of the victims has become unbearable. A father standing alone washing dead bodies of his two Sons (about the age of my own Son) before burying, a mother crying her heart out after losing everybody in her family and her home and wondering why she was spared and confused about how to carry on, a boy weeping uncontrollably after losing his siblings and parents baffled not to find the only refuge he has seen in form of his loving parents. The story goes on and more clips get aired as the harsh reality gets uncovered and captured through the lens of flocking news crew and cameramen.

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Urir Char 1991                   Ashar Char 2007

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Links to NGOs:

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(click on the links below to go to their websites and donate)

BRAC - the largest NGO in the world from Bangladesh

Drishtipat effort for two local organizations with low overhead fee

The International Federation of the Red Cross (You can select Cyclone SIDR)

British Red Cross [ tax efficient donation for people living in uk]

Canadian Red Cross

UNICEF

CARE

Islamic Relief

Bangladesh Cyclone Appeal - World Vision UK (You can select Cyclone SIDR) Tel: 0800 088 088

Save the Children

Christian Aid

Catholic Relief Services

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FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN BANGLADESH AND ALL OVER THE WORLD
********************************************
Those who wish to help, may remit cash directly to the following account :

Chief Adviser’s Relief and Welfare Fund,
Current Account No. 33004093,
Sonali Bank, Prime Minister’s Office Branch,
Tejgaon, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
SWIFT Code : BSONBDDH

Ref: Chief Advisor’s Office Website and Bangladesh High Commission to Canada Website

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FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN AUSTRALIA
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Bangladesh High Commission ,Canberra
Account Name: Relief Fund
Account Number: 032729 199161
Bank: Westpac Banking Corporation
Branch: Manuka, ACT

ref: Press release on flood relief

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[Source: the Daily Star]

We were in October and it was a couple of months since I had arrived in the Sundarbans. A ‘super-cyclone’ was announced heading towards the Sundarbans. I was returning to Rajat Jubilee via Rangabelia. It was the middle of the afternoon, it was getting windier and windier and the sky was unnaturally dark. I had been warmed of a cyclone coming towards the Sundarbans and I was getting worried. Should I stay back within the safe walls of the Tagore Society based in the relatively rich island of Rangabelia? But I was supposed to teach the next day in Rajat Jubilee. So I thought that I should go to Tiger ghat and see if the sole and unique boat plying between the two islands was on its way back. If it was, I would board it, if it wasn’t, I would come back. It was a little after 2 p.m. so I headed out. On my way, I saw some of the Tagore society NGO workers sitting in front of the TV and I stopped by to ask ‘what news?’

I asked so as to know the latest about the direction the cyclone had taken. I was replied ‘Sourav is hitting away’.

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As the news has started to trickle down from the southern part of Bangladesh, things are not looking very good. The loss of life, although limited compared to the past two big cyclones, the damages to property and people’s livelihood. Sometimes you have to wonder why our country can never get a break. Yet, we fight on and move ahead. This time it may not be so easy for the millions of people in Southern Bangladesh. Spare a thought for the villagers we rehabilitated in Annadaprasad in Bhola. God knows where are they now.

Please pull in your resources to the best you can to donate and mobilize public opinion.

* I will host a page in DP with links to various organizations raising funds from Sidr.

* You can also send your check to Drishtipat, added benefit will be that, if you have corporate matching, program, the donation will double. This is time to pull in your resources.

* You can help by mass publicizing and also alerting people in the western media. It is important to alert the world media as much as possible because that will bring in the aid and international response. Dia from Drishtipat NY is helping CNN reporter to get to the affected. Thanks Dia.

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1. Bangladesh Ravaged By Massive Cyclone Sidr . Hundreds of human lives are lost. The death toll is rising every passing hour as news keeps trickling in.

2. So far 587 687 693 1000 1595 are believed/reported dead.

3. Hundreds of densely inhabited islands around the Genges delta and northern Bay of Bengal so far remain unaccounted for.

4. Unprecedented damage to property and cattlehead are being reported from Bhola ( eye of 1970 Bhola Cyclone) and other southern districts in Bangladesh. Aerial footages show that miles after miles, villages after villages have been turned into a total rubble. It feels like 10,000 tornados simulteniously ravaged a 200 mile radius area.

Photo: AFP

5. While all form of communication including electricity, telecommunication, road-river transportation remain disrupted in the southern Bangladesh, rest of Bangladesh remains under darkness

6. As the category 4 cyclone had its landfall near Sundarban, irreparable damage have been done to the flora and fauna in the Sundarbans. It will take many years to know how mnay of several hundred  Bengal tigers survived the 20 feet tidal waves.

7. Although the capital city of Dhaka ( around 100 miles inland) historically was never affected by bay of Bengal storms, this time Dhaka has been badly affected. Several death have already been reported from Dhaka, mostly by tree or building collapse. [ On apersonal note: a very nostalgic and loved spot of mine was the bat tala, benyan Shade inside PG Hospital / BSMMU campus. That 100 year old benyan tree has been uprooted by the storm, keeping a security guard trapped under it for four hours]. Hundreds of thoyusands of much needed greenery around bangladesh has been destroyed. Dhaka has no power supply all day. Non stop rain and sudden drop in temperature have made the life of the homeless people more miserable.

Update:

This email was sent from Dhaka earlier tonight,

… entire country is without electricity for last 24 hrs! We started getting power for an hour from 10:30PM tonight & no cable connection is available . Dhaka is like a deserted ghost city with everything closed even including the gas stations ! I tried to get to the net from my pocket PC couple of times but couldn’t get any net connectivity ! Lets hope that things are back to normal tomorrow .

Update 2:

Rezwan has an excellent round up of experiences from Bangladesh and analysis from abroad.

[Cross posted in rumiahmed.wordpress.com]

Exactly 27 years after the big cyclone of 1970, another big one has hit Bangladesh.
Rezwan’s blog has for more details here. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people there.

I still remember my late Mama’s voice in a phone conversation in the late nineties when he told me that now we will just have to say Bismillah and drink the water here. He was referring to the higher than acceptable arsenic concentration in the drinking water from groundwater sources in Bangladesh that was discovered earlier and widely “acknowledged” around that time. Groundwater contamination by arsenic at such high quantity is not just happening in Bangladesh, it is also happening in India, China and in other parts of the world. In fact, worldwide 140 million people, especially in the developing countries, are at risk of arsenic poisoning through drinking water.

So far, we have been hearing mostly about the risks of water with high concentration of arsenic on people and what may be causing it and how many lives maybe at stake. The burning question of how we divert this inevitable calamity went unanswered for too long. The government and international organizations kept pondering upon the question giving no priority and significance to the issue. Even the organizations that initially funded the tubewell project to tap into the groundwater for drinking, where the root of the problem goes back to, failed to recognize and work towards diverting the catastrophe until many years later.

Do a chemistry professor named Abul Hassam, an expatriate Bangladeshi, finally have the answer that will provide a simple yet affordable way to avert what he calls the arsenic poisoning of drinking water “one of the worst natural disaster on earth”? Will Abul Hassam, named this year “Heroes of the Environment” by Time, with his solution save millions of lives of his fellow Bangladeshis as well as millions more elsewhere in the world? Read more about it in Time magazine.

Relatively quiet time on the blogosphere as some of us are busy with flood related campaigns.
As international organizations ring in with alarm bells today on the impending humanitarian catestrophe in the post flood situation, its hard to understand if our government truly understands the magnanimity of the crisis. Here are two editorials which are praiseworthy highlighting the ineptitude of the current administration in handling the looming crisis.

THe first one is by Nurul Kabir of New Age who laments the chief adviser’s naivity in tackling the flood situtation.

Fakhruddin looked sincere on the TV screen, but sounded a little naïve — a component of human life, which is absolutely undesirable a quality on the part of the head of a government of countries like Bangladesh who is expected to serve millions of distressed people in a complex political situation. The people, still organically belonging to the two major political parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party of Khaleda Zia and the Awami League of Sheikh Hasina, we are afraid, would not come forward ‘spontaneously’ without genuine signals of the two top leaders. His call, however humane, to the business community to take ‘social responsibilities by keeping the price level of the essential commodities at a tolerable level’ may also go unheeded, as the private sector businessmen trading in essential commodities may find it difficult to operate against the inherent economic rules guiding prices of commodities in an unregulated market system

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