The Tsunami Disaster

[It is also equally disturbing to see our national President, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the notorious father of our nuclear bomb, calling for a tsunami warning system along the entire Indian coastline after the tragedy has swallowed up so many thousands of innocent lives. How would this high-tech hawkish guru who dreams of America-like militarily strong India explain why a highly- and densely-populated country with 7,000-km coastline never even bothered about joining the Pacific tsunami warning system?]

What would the Pacific Tsunami Warning System have done for a tsunami in the Indian Ocean? The presumption is that there are seabed-based sensors along the coasts of Japan, the Philippines, Korea, and various Pacific islands as well as seismic monitors on land in these countries and the West Coast of the USA to measure sea waves and earthquakes.

Anyway, it is reported that NOAA attempted to raise the Met Bureau (or whoever is responsible) in New Delhi and nobody was there to answer the phone or read the e-mail. Consider the fact that when an engineer sent a letter to Vajpayee about the swindling of hundreds of crores of rupees in Bihar from the Golden Quadrilateral project (and he specifically requested that his name be kept confidential), the Masanamuthus who were asked to take care of the matter promptly leaked his name which led to his murder. So, what kind of responsible behavior can we expect from those who have their jobs because of caste, political patronage, etc., as opposed to merit and willingness to do whatever it takes?

friend #5
``Or would you set an example by setting up a windmill in your backyard?``

He already has windmills in his backyard. Kanyakumari vicinity had a number of privately-operated windmill `fields`, I`ve seen them meself.


temporal #6
`` am disapointed a tad... i mean yes there is a dearth of sense of humour on hamdim`s wrong side of the border..``

I, on the other hand, am thankful I see nothing humorous in this matter.

We have frikking idiots for newsmen, politicians, scientists, etc., all hired for their being Masanamuthus and Bhagwan Dases and not for any particular skill. Here was this idiot newswoman from NDTV bugging an ISRO scientist on why India`s remote sensing satellites were not measuring the sea waves and providing early warning of the impending disaster. The man tried telling her that the remote sensing satellite did not have the instruments on board for this purpose. So she then asked how soon Indians can expect the (existing) satellite to be used for this purpose. She has no concept that the government has to appropriate the money for a satellite, Bharat Dynamics would have to build the rocket, ISRO would have to fabricate the satellite and then the satellite would have to be put in orbit all of which in the US might take a year but more like three years if the project is tackled on a ``war footing`` (the favorite phrase of ill-educated mufuka politicians and their flunky newsmen) in India.

On top of that, consider the fact that the frikking fishermen at least in Chennai were given government-built public housing (meaning, 3-story-high slums) long ago. However, they refused to vacate their seaside shanties and rented out their government-allotted housing to others and were happily collecting rent -- or more likely, cheated out of the whole deal by politicians named Sudalaikkannu or Tamil Selvan. Now they are wailing that their families were washed out to sea and certain death by a tsunami.

Maybe this is Nature`s way of cleaning the gene pool. If only we can have something similar in Tirupur and other places where people are still weaving khaddar (hand-woven) cloth so that the government doesn`t have to bail them out annually when nobody buys their output. Unfortunately for the general public, these leeches who refuse to learn a new trade (so much for the abolition of caste-based crafts through the spread of education as claimed by the Dravidian parties) have been given a new lease of life as the government bought up the stock of khaddar dhoties and saris for distribution to the affected people.

Didn`t some 90,000 persons die a couple of years ago in Bangladesh from floods? Didn`t separate cyclones kill 20,000+ in Andhra and in Orissa in the last decade? Just because we now have Sun-TV broadcasting anti-ADMK propaganda and Jaya-TV broadcasting the government line, people who watch these crap actually believe the sh!t they are being told. And of course the Masanamuthus watching Z-TV and Sun-TV in the US believe this is the reality of India.

Ref hamidm2 #19

[........... and now that a few days have passed, it is not a humanitarian issue any more .......... now it is all about gaining political advantage and looking good]

As usual, you have hit the nail on the head.

Without informing the Tamil Nadu government, Manmohan Singh & Company showed up and toured the affected areas. The Congresswallahs immediately claimed that the Chief Minister Jayalalitha was disrespectful by not being there to receive him or some such crap but she was touring in some other locality.

Sonia Gandhi showed up and toured some localities and people then complained she didn`t have sufficient police protection. Of course she didn`t inform anybody about her plans either.

The best of this comedy happened when Sonia Gandhi was returning to Delhi. She reached the Chennai airport by car. Only 4 cars had been given the sticker which enabled them to bypass security and drive on the tarmab all the way up to the aircraft. In the fifth car was the Central Minister for IT, Dayanidhi (Fund of Compassion II) Maran. His car was stopped by Airport Security from entering the security zone. He thundered, ``Do you know who I am?``, instructed his driver to drive through so that he could get on the plane with Sonia Gandhi and kiss her ass during the 2-hour ride to Delhi. The car ran over the foot of the poor security guard who was standing in front of the car. We have the perfect example of a society where the original Fund of Compassion could declare with a straight face that ``All men are equal before the Law`` when the Shankaracharya was arrested but his nephew the Fund of Compassion II was somehow exempt from rules applying to airport security.

In any other country, use of deadly force would have been routinely authorized to prevent such an event and the Fund of Compassion II would have 150+ bullets in his body. However, the Masanamuthus of Tamil Nadu are blissfully unaware what $2 billion in assets and a Ministerial job can do to a man`s ego.

harimau #15

{{Here was this idiot newswoman from NDTV bugging an ISRO scientist on why India`s remote sensing satellites were not measuring the sea waves and providing early warning of the impending disaster. The man tried telling her that the remote sensing satellite did not have the instruments on board for this purpose.}}

Quite apart from that, to provide usable warning, tsunamis have to be detected in near real-time while racing across open ocean, before they have a chance to approach an inhabited shoreline. Tsunami waves in open deep ocean have a very long wavelength (of the order of 100 km) and typically a low amplitude (of the order of 1 meter). The usual ocean surface clutter is made up of waves of very much lower wavelength – meters or tens of meters - and amplitude of the order of meters. My first guess is that it would be almost impossible for a remote sensing satellite (tens of thousands of kilometers above the ocean surface) to detect tsunami waves and filter them out from ocean surface clutter. The instruments (and associated processing capability) may simply not exist. Pressure sensors on the seabed are probably the method of choice.

The general standard of reporting on science and technology in Indian media is still extremely poor, with very few exceptions.

rsridhar #1

{{Tsunami of this magnitude is a rare occurance and no Tsunami has hit the Indian coast until now. So, there was no precedence.}}

Actually there have been several prior incidences of tsunamis impacting India’s coastline in the last 150 years. See the following link from India’s National Institute of Oceanography:

26th December 2004 Tsunami

Note in particular a 12 metre tsunami at Kandla in 1945 (i.e. well within living memory) following an 8.5 Richter scale earthquake 100 km south of Karachi.

Further, Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a very seismically active zone, with several magnitude 8 earthquakes in the last 150 years.

What is true is that as a nation we do not have a major cultural memory of disastrous impact of tsunamis (whereas Japan, by contrast, certainly does). On the other hand, we are very familiar with cyclones, floods, droughts leading to starvation deaths, and somewhat aware of earthquakes. I think that for cyclones at least India’s warning systems are now adequate; the problem is more of getting populations to take the warnings seriously.

hamidm: I am glad to learn from you that the life of the poor is cheap. I guess all these fools around the world - kids emptying their savings, church groups across the US raising funds, even those bad Saudi Arabians collecting $3.6 million in a 3 hour telethon - who are raising money for the poor who were affected need to be educated by you.

As textbook, I suggest you use the Pickwick Papers where there is a dainty young lady who says something similar (``I understand that it is winter, the poor dont feel cold. When you whip them, the poor dont feel pain. When a poor woman dies, her children do not feel sad....`` Something like this). You could read out this passage and who knows - you may be invited to CNN to educate the rest of the fools around the world.

And of course you are so clever to realize that in case of official funding this is all politics. I didnt realize politics (as in spreading goodwill around) was a bad thing. That is another piece of wisdom I have just gleaned from your post.

actually the people at colachel(normally a spectacular fishing village in kanyakumari district) were very upset with VIP visits an would not allow them to enter the town. The only person they allowed was Manmohan Singh who I must say handled the situation with sensitivity and skill.

The Tsunami hit the west coast non uniformally. For example I understand that Thengaipattinam, another beautiful backwater area just north of colachel did not get affected at all. There, the backwater is separated from the ocean by a tiny sliver of land where many people live. I was there just one month ago and photographed some children. Gladly my friend informs me that they are fortunate and safe.

some interesting web sites of this region

http://www.thengapattanam.150m.com/history.html
http://www.thoothoor.com/Home.htm
http://www.kanyakumari.tn.nic.in/

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re:#21 by AlephNull
Thanks for the info.
This makes it all the more imperative that some kind of detectors be placed along the coast and India join other nations in detection of Tsunami in future.
I also take back my word of criticism against ISRO. I now realize that satellites can`t detect a Tsunami. I now realize only the sensors on ground can do that.
Sridhar

Udayakumar is an Indian version of Dr. Hoodbhoy. I am glad to see that Indians have treated him with the contempt that his kind deserves. Not that Pakistanis would treat Dr. Hoodbhoy any differently, God is my witness that I have called him the Punjabi equivalent of ``Massamunthu Fund of Compassion`` several times, it`s just that chowk would never post such an interact. It`s heartening that chowk has not given Udaya the same sacred cow status.

I thought this article was genuine and sincere.
An Indian demanding to know why nothing was done to save the lives of thousands AND would it be done in future or not ( still ) ?

The more disturbing thing is actually seeing all the Indians getting on his case. Very disturbing.

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Ref Rakapo$h #28

[I thought this article was genuine and sincere.]

The only guys who are the least bit sincere about India and poor Indians are those people who don`t give a damn about other Indians and are intent on amassing wealth through some business enterprise. Because these people employ tens of thousands of others directly and hundreds of thousands of others indirectly. They pay taxes which enriches the government coffers too. The rest are all leeches and hangers-on who are looking for an opportunity to rip the public off or to demand a subsidy for some unprofitable trade which they have been practicing for 3,000 years but don`t have the business skills to cut out the middleman and reach the consumers directly so that they could pocket more of the money. My example here would be the weavers of silk saris which enrich all the Chettiars/banias who sell them in their stores in any city in India but the weavers themselves remain poor. As to the fishermen, going out to the sea in wooden rafts with a small net in hand ain`t going to get them out of poverty nor is fishing by thousands of them within three miles of the shore going to keep the stocks of fish from depleting.

[An Indian demanding to know why nothing was done to save the lives of thousands AND would it be done in future or not ( still ) ?]

Exactly what could be done? Tsunamis travel at 900 kmph or more, the speed of jetliners, in open ocean. They cannot be detected in the open ocean because they are a small swell, not a huge wave. They become huge waves when they reach shallow water. So unless you have seismic monitoring stations using sensitive equipment and technology -- all of which probably would have been denounced as an unnecessary expense in a poor country like India by Manamuthus like Udayakumar, PhD, and the use of inappropriate technolgy as opposed to the age-old wisdom of watching the animals to detect strange behavior and feeling the arthritis in one`s knees act up as the humidity increases, etc. -- you can`t do much. So the first thing that the Masanamuthus should demand is the shutting down of Institutes for the Application of Appropriate Technolgy (meaning, appropriate to the third world and not appropriate to the threat on hand). But they can`t and they won`t because railing against technology is their bread and butter; witness Udayakumar`s repeated rantings against power plants.

Even if you have the most excellent scientific listening posts, they need to be manned by people who feel responsible for doing their jobs. So long as jobs are handed out based on whether you are named Ananthapadmanabhan (you don`t get a job with a name like that) or Senthamizh Selvan (you would be hired in a jiffy), there is no reason for those who are manning these positions to do a good job. Even the much-vaunted IAS whereby these super Indians are trained at government academies to do everything from running Air India (into the ground) or a nuclear power plant to managing the development of a district fell short in Tamil Nadu -- because again the Ananthapadmanabhans who pass the IAS opt for Central service or a job in Nagaland rather than work with, for and among people named Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion or Love King, knowing that these thugs would employ violence against civil servants who don`t toe the line -- and had to be replaced from the pool of equally incompetent mufukas. Short of taking out and shooting everyone connected with a failure a la Stalin (I mean the original, not the son of Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion), a work ethic cannot be installed among Indians.

[The more disturbing thing is actually seeing all the Indians getting on his case. Very disturbing.]

You should be thankful that we see through this man`s charade.

thamed,

here is a simple quiz for you :

....... what do you say at the breakfast table when you read the headline :`` 60 die in head-on collision of two busses on gt road``

a) pass the butter
b) pass the salt
c) pass the milk
d) pass the paratha

.......... i am sure you got the right answer - nobody from the sub continent has ever failed this test ........

My asking Udayakumar what is his idea of development = taking his case(which is very disturbing to Pakis, the poor things).

If the main victim er hero the author was here, he might have to answer what is his idea of development if he does not like power plants. Such a harsh question, how cruel I am, victimising not only the author but scaring these poor Pakis out of their wits.