Management of Weather Aberration has always been a very important and interesting subject, nothing has dismissed its importance today and it is going to be the same for many more years to come, and Climate Change only highlights the importance.
This year normal monsoon was predicted. But weather aberration was a rule rather than an exception. Monsoon started a little earlier but aberration continued unabatedly thereafter. Tamil Nadu witnessed 140 years record drought. Rainfall was deficient in other southern states.
Though flood in states like Assam, Bengal, Bihar and eastern UP have been very common phenomena but flood in Gujarat and Rajasthan have never been that common and can be consideration as the impact of Climate change. In Bihar flood created havoc. More than 250 people died. Millions of people have been affected.
Flood makes the life of farmers miserable. They are forced to leave their houses to take shelter in nearby schools and colleges. Crops are destroyed completely. After the flood water recedes, people return home only to find death and debris. Drinking water becomes serious issue. As a consequence, probability of outbreak of diseases due to consumption of contaminated water comes as a baggage.
Government intervention in the form of cash and kind like providing seeds and fertilizers etc are heard now and then. But middle men fetches the most. They enjoy the lion's share of the helps that the government tries to provide.
The agricultural department of government, agricultural universities, ICAR institutes try to give appeasements in the form of verbal advices. Some can be framed like :
- Grow early vegetables
- Short duration crops like forage and fodder would be useful as animal feeds availability becomes a serious problem.
- Short duration oilseeds crops can also be tried.
For all these, supply of inputs like seeds, fertilizers and credit becomes very essential. All these helps can never be enough to make up for the loss they incur due to flood. The students of the flood affected areas suffer a lot. But they get no option other than competing with others. No special concession is provided.
In addition to physical help and guidance people also need mental and spiritual help. For that different NGOs normally come forward. R K Mission Ashram, Bharat Seva Ashram Sanga, Heartfulness Institute under SRCM are some organisations that always provide help to the poor in distress.
Technically, Flood is termed as a natural disaster, but can we call it the same when the distress and the plight of the farmers and population could have had been much lowered than the records. Monetarily much is invested in post disaster management and record estimations but much of that share should be indeed used for the focusing disaster response, reduction of potential hazard and risk management.
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