Shailender Gaur’s Post

Transcript

Handling and management thing. So we should obviously be thinking of that more at this point of time, but let's also use this opportunity to clearly understand where we have gone wrong and you have rightly pointed it out. In 2011, when we bought when the when, when, when a government, when as far as some responsible minister of government thinks of doing something like this. You know, do a Western guards ecology expert panel, get one of the best scientists and the panel to actually study this and come up with some formidable findings which are not actually, you know, which are not things that can that will throw out people and make them, you know, lose their livelihood. So the heat was it was it was framed. Think that among I mean by vested interests, but what the report said was a lifeline for. The state of Kerala, the lifeline for the whole of the Western guards reached and we crashed to the report. In fact, we must also be remember reminded that the Kerala state government, the Assembly actually discussed this and tracked it. When considering the report came, they diluted it and then we need Kerala. We had the human we woman who was supposed to be the chairman of the Biodiversity board and he went in for drastic dilution. Right now we literally don't have a conservation spot. Almost all the ecological spots are or you know, sensitive zones are also controversial areas where implementation is simply not happening. Any conservation implementation is not. So that's the bottom. That's the first point. My second point is what is happening to these places. See, we understand that the rains have become very intense. The rains have are are more rains are falling in smaller batches of time. And, uh, this is a very, very disastrous can happen, But then what is our what, what are the other things that are happening? If you look at this particular region where this has happened, because the main party region, this is one of the most intense tourism destinations in the state. I mean, this is expanded so much of tourism. We are having hundreds of tourist destinations just in these hills ranges itself, in these vulnerable spots itself. In fact, one of the biggest tourism destinations is coming up in the famous. And the government of Kerala is also planning. You can, I mean, you won't even imagine planning at a tunnel Rd. through the very same mountains almost less than two kilometres from where this disaster happened, a tunnel Rd. right through the Western Guards. Can you imagine that? And we will still go and, you know, justify this and give the people to protest if they don't put the tunnel vote. We are sitting on a time bomb at this point of time in the whole of the Western Guards and specifically in these regions. Now that now the Third Point I want to sell say is that OK, we were having warnings in 2010 but what about the warnings in 2018, the 19/20/21, we have had landslides throughout, small and big ones nearby. The Puthumai landslide was next door in the same hill ranges. So all these warnings were there and unfortunately there are two things that the government did not do. One, if we had a risk assessment which is proper, we would have found that we put. Making people continue to live in these dangerous places should have been stopped. We should have rehabilitated them. We should have moved them out and put them in safer places. We should have spend the resources for that will then houses and given them compensations and move them. We didn't when when the warning comes. At least when the warning comes. They should have done that yesterday. A Science Center in a civil society run Science Center in Vienna which has been studying this issue since 2018. Very clearly warned the district administration, it's called the human centre. They very clearly they had previous data and they had data of rainfalls on these regions. They want the district administration and the state disaster management agency that this particular spot is going to have a land mean landslide. And the government ignored it, completely ignored it. If they had, if they had moved then itself, then we would have had. I mean, at least we could have avoided deaths in Mumbai and. And which is the software to do what you're telling me, shocking, Chida Kada Krishnan? What you're telling me shocking that 24 hours because before these three landslides hit, the government had actually been warned that this is going to come. And yet the government turned a deaf ear to this warning because of which at least 116 people are dead as we speak. Exactly. And this is, this is, this is on, I mean I'm going on record, this warning was given by a science group called Human Centre in Wayanad. They have been studying this issue. Unfortunately, the government systems, I don't think anywhere in India have a proper, you know, risk, proper risk assessment systems nor a landslide warning system anywhere established. And what did this group do? They only looked at the total precipitation and how the land is going to be affected. So much of water picked up the vulnerable spots and told them. Not just this place, they've also warned about a four or five other different places in Maynard where this can happen in the next coming days. At least we should have stopped the texts, I hope. The 160 deaths the government couldn't stop at, I hope that the warning that the home center has given for other areas, at least the government doesn't turn a deaf ear and evacuates that region as soon as possible. Shreedhar Rajshahi, thank you very much. It was good speaking to you. I hope the government of Kerala, I hope the government of Kerala and the powers that we are listening to this broadcast right now and listening to you right now. Thank you very much for joining us. What a huge disaster this has been in the state of Kerala 116. People At least 160 people killed and the death toll, according to the chief minister, is expected to rise.