FLOOD IN ORISSA

Blessing in Disguise
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There is a saying when majority suffer a handful rejoice- that’s the rule of the game called natural calamity. Here I mean the human beings only, because this two legged creature will not hesitate to cut ones near or dear one throat in case of his difficulty. Where as a tiger or a bear does no harm a man who tries to climbs the same tree where they have taken shelter due to flood.
Now it’s the time for flood in Orissa, I will confine my self to this state only because some one else will write for others.
Ever since I have started reading Odiya news paper from my school days one thing is obvious that this state will not progress for two reasons, the rivers and its people.
Now its flood time in Orissa, the hoardings are still there on the road side about the preventive steps for heat stroke.
How come a natural (?) disaster like heat wave and flood will be a Blessing in disguise?

In summer season Government spends lakhs for purchasing tents, pots, glasses, first aid teaching classes ,hoardings, news paper warnings, plus ten thousand of rupees for death due to heat stroke(Government. figure and press figure never tally) .You know who will be benefited “Public hai sab jante hain” from the heat wave. The opposition and the ruling party make a deal and fight in the “well” of the house where as people die in search of a ‘well’ in the village for a liter of drinking water. The school and colleges are closed by Government over night because of a combined attack by media and opposition party. But the students continue to go to private tutorial classes in spite of the heat. Some rich and famous schools do not carry on the Chief Minister’s order telling that-- their schools are centrally air conditioned.
Now the heat wave is gone but the weather continues to be hot and humid and the education institutes and its teaching staff getting ready to get up from their two months hibernation.

Hardly the auto, the taxi, the school bus and cars have started taking students to schools and colleges the rain comes. For big cities its fun time due to water logging as buildings are built every second day but with out drainage facilities. The press and media people are busy in high lighting the miseries of the people with out any solution, (one can see in TV a half drowned man is being interview—‘as to how does he feel’? (Apko kaisa lagta hai?, HOW DO YOU FEEL?) the man excitedly blames the ‘sarkar’ -for not doing any thing for him. The schools in villages which had opened after the summer vacation are once again closed as class rooms are converted to social homes for flood victims. Whether it’s train or bus accident or natural calamities media take a delight in bringing out from victims mouth-- “ Sarkar kuch nehin karte”(Government is not doing any thing)
Of late a ‘national attitude’ has become a ‘state attitude’. If people of Orissa have gone out of their own for picnic or sight seeing and dies out side due to accident then why ministers and Government officials should fly by air and bring back those dead person’s at a huge cost of exchequers money, as if they are martyrs!!

Odiya paper’s head line reads like this “record flood in such and such river”, other countries are making records in sports or inventions but we make records in flood, train accidents, road accidents, malaria, starvation and infant mortality, what a shame?? Do not blame it for global warming, its hand warming which causes the flood in Orissa. The river beds are filled with sand, the trees on the river banks are no more, the national highways passing through different towns acts as an embankment with no proper drainage facilities and the sanctioned money is not spent for prevention but for prolongation hence this annual phenomenon.
The mudslinging act starts by the opposition telling that the present flood is man made.
May be in a day or two the CM (photos have already been published)with his starched white kurta and Paijama will try to emulate Gopobandhu and fly by air to see the flood scenario. After his return with a gloomy face he will call for a press conference and will tell that ‘he is going to Delhi for Rs: 5000 crores for the flood victims’ (? politicians& businessman).The flood recede of it’s own as the lunar force become less and less on the Bay of Bengal. It’s high time the name should be change to “BAY OF SORROW” because the Bengali (here I mean Bengali from Bangladesh) continues to harm Orissa/Odisha as “Bangladeshi migrants “and “Bay of Bengal”.
The flood problems remain as it was when I was a school student, as we do not believe in prevention; we are a state of patch work management and happy to have the Lord of the Universe who does nothing except bringing miseries after miseries to the state of Orissa as he is not troubled so also our present day “LORDS”.


SANJOY KUMAR SATPATHY
PATIA
BHUBANESWAR