Tsunami tantrums - Part 1

I am sick of seeing and reading and hearing all about how India botched up the early tsunami warnings and how India said no, thank you, we don't want any aid and about how all the relief work isn't happening the way it should.

I mean, from what I've picked up from the net, I thought India was doing a pretty good job (sure, despite initial botch-ups). Given all the constraints and conditions that only a person in India can know about. And even given Amma's idiosyncracies (she is referred to here in the newspaper that I work for, as the "Eva-Peron like figure of former movie star J Jayalalithaa"), I still felt and thought that there was much more good happening in India (and TN) now than has during other recent catastrophes.

As a good example, just take the amount of relief money that has been collected. It is unimaginable. And yet we have twits from various think-tanks saying that a country that hopes to be #1 in the call centre industry could not even call its own people to warn them in advancem about the tsunami. And that twittish think-tanker was an Indian.

And when I opened today's paper, it had a report from a reporter (luckily not page 1) currently touring tsunami-hit areas, complaining and being complacent about the relief work, I really saw red. I mean, living the life that westerners do, can he have any earthly comprehension of how wretched a life in an Indian fishing hovel would be. And what sort of relief operations can be carried out, given the local conditions.

And the relief work _ he calls is "pathetically inadequate" coz no one has thought of putting up tents for the refugees and they are all crowding into the temples and schools. And because the kids are only being given cough syrup as medicine. God, I don't know if I should laugh or cry at that man's ignorance.

He says the "overall response seems to be disorganised, and lacking urgency, now that the initial panic is over. "

He complains that the smell of bleaching powder is everywhere. When I read that, I was ecstatic, coz to me that means help has actually arrived and something is being done. Real action, for sure.

And when I read the bit about a "harassed-looking soldier distributing food packets", I was almost beside myself with joy. People were actually getting food. What more? Food, shelter and medicine. Would all those affected have had access to all these things before the tsunami struck? I don't know.

What I do know is that something is being done _ very poorly by Western standards _ but excellent by our previous standards. And I have it from at least one reliable source that the work going on is phenomenal!!!