LEARNING THE RIGHT LESSONS FROM THE WAILS OF WAYANAD

Thirteen of Kerala's 14 districts are prone to landslides. But little was done after Puthumala was struck in 2019. We must use suitable technologies to guard against future tragedies

THE calamity in Wayanad, the most devastating landslides in Kerala's history, is not just a wakeup call it is a death-knell, one that had long been tolling.

Yet instead of introspecting, learning from our mistakes and ensuring we never again repeat them, we in India focus on immediate relief (which Kerala does well), then on rehabilitation (which Kerala does less well), and then lapse into business-as-usual.

This failure to rise above our political inertia prevents us from safeguarding our future from more such cataclysms.

On Saturday, August 3, I made an emotionally searing visit to Wayanad and assisted in the distribution of relief supplies gathered by the MP office in Thiruvananthapuram. Picking my way through the rubble to view the destruction in Mundakkai, Chooralmala and Punchiri Mattam, I beheld JCBS rumbling where, till five days ago, lavishly verdant, hilly and scenic villages had sprawled beneath great blue skies. I saw the fortunate in a relief camp.

At a hospital suffused with the anguish of those whose homes and dreams were pulverised by a bombardment of rocks and boulders in the early hours of July 30, I met a young survivor who had endured unimaginable horrors. At eight years of age, she had lost her father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather and grandmother, and sustained numerous injuries, from broken bones to a heavily bruised face. As I watched her propped up in bed, immersed in her colouring book, desolation gripped me. After all, we should have been able to prevent what she had endured.