Industrial and other Manmade Disasters

Appeal by

People's Science Institute

About the appeal

Havoc created by the Uttarakhand deluge is unprecedented. Cloudbursts, heavy rainfall and losses incurred in terms of human life and property have turned an exceptional natural phenomenon into an ongoing grieving tragedy.

With horror we saw on television, the Japanese experience of a huge 9.0 scale earthquake, followed by a terrible tsunami. The first images show large amounts of black water entering the country side and passing over the protective wall barriers.

Indifferent rain causes outbreak of dengue, malaria and other vector-borne diseases in eastern India, and particularly Kolkata.

Maharashtra suspends Mahyco’s licence for Bt cotton seeds, on grounds of market malpractice in fraudulently hiking seed prices.

 The second edition of the book came out in 2008 just after the devastating Bihar floods in the year when the river thundered down from the Himalayas on its way to the sea sweeping half of Bihar.

It makes some suggestions on the way in which it may be useful to proceed. The article argues that a new case has now been added to the existing list of river-water disputes and that the issue has turned very crucial as feelings are running high on the Mullapperiyar issue in both Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and that there is a risk that the dispute might become intractable. The article warns that wisdom is needed to avoid a serious deterioration of the relations between the two states.

Guest post by: Parineeta Dandekar

This article by Kishore C Samal in the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) discusses how in the natural disater prone state of Orissa the authorities have not been able to draw up an effective disaster management plan and politicians continue to play politics with relief works. It argues that for dealing with these disasters and the relief and rehabilitation work that follows what is needed is the participation of the local community and functionaries of panchayati raj institutions, and coordination with national and international bodies.

It has been dominated by reports of  a major cyclone Thane that lay centered on the the 29th December 2011 near latitude 12.30N and longitude 83.00E, about 300 km east-southeast of Chennai (Tamilnadu) and 480 km north-northeast of Trincomalee (Sri Lanka). Earlier reports related to the cyclone Thane indicate predictions and cyclone warnings made by the IMD for the north of Tamil Nadu and the south Andhra Pradesh coast along with possibility of heavy rains and severe winds and warnings for fishermen to refrain from going into the sea.

Later reports indicate that Cyclone Thane has hit the landfall between the Union territory of Puducherry and neighbouring Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu at about 9 am leaving behind a trail of devastation followed by later reports of weakening of the cyclone activity and predictions of heavy rainfall over Kerala, south interior Karnataka and north interior Tamil Nadu