Thank you all very much for signing.

The situation appears to be much better, thanks to the extensive rescue operations today, it is claimed that at least 58000 were rescued today.. Our Armed Forces, NDRF, Police, Fire Force etc has delivered once again, and proved that we could count on them any time there is a crisis.. What really stands out however is that the most dramatic and bravest of rescues were conducted by the fishermen and local volunteers, who risked their lives with absolutely no training and no supporting tools. This just shows us the spirit of Kerala..

One would evaluate the rescue and relief operations as a success considering the number of lives saved. The ones who couldn’t make it would be regarded as unfortunate, the wrath of nature.. and so on.. Or is it really? I know the scene would have been much much worse, had our rescue teams not done what they did today, still one more life that could have been saved and wasn’t, still piles up the failure of the state to co-ordinate things better. Don’t you think?

We can strike one off the list:

Global attention into this disaster: The story was covered by global media giants like BBC, CNN etc, but clearly this was after many lives were lost. It is unfortunate in our part of the world, to get glabal attention, a lot of us have to die.. But no point going there now.

What still needs attention:

1. This has not yet been declared as a National Disaster. I read some arguments against this saying, to declare something as national disaster means to accept that the rescue and relief efforts by the state government has failed or are insufficient. Now I don’t want to make this a political discussion. But do you people think this was a grand success? Well co-ordinated? I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that thousands were trapped on roof-tops for 2 or 3 days sending distress signals, and they were promised airlift several hours later, first light of day etc. Infants, people with special needs, the elderly.. every hour is critical for them. They could just perish waiting for help. And perish they did. Not thousands sure, but hundreds. Chengannur was worse, many people were rescued by local volunteers, and not by government rescue services, the people who survived, said they did not even see a policeman come to their aid, no food packets, not water.. It is said that they were in isolated regions very very hard for the rescue services to reach. But food packets at least? Not to blame anyone, just to point out that the rescue operations seriously did fall short in many places. So I still think this is qualified as a “National Disaster”, and it is high time that the central government took over.
2. Although the rescue operations are said to be reaching completion, thousands are still said to be stranded without food, water and necessary aid for over 4 days, the government should not cause further delay in rescuing them too. I request the central government to please deploy more forces and try to not lose one more life. Please!
3. Kerala CM says by Sunday, all rescue operations would be finished. But after that the government must focus on relief work. With lakhs of people displaced from their homes and in relief camps, things are not looking nice there either. Once again, local volunteers, school students etc are doing an exceptional job here, but I think the Central Government should join them too. We could use all the help we could get. The government must learn from rescue operations, not to lose time whenever things are not looking good. I think declaring this as National Disaster is important during this phase also.

What now?

1. We have under 50000 signatures now, and I am not sure if this is enough to make an impact at the Prime Minister’s Office. But we do not have much time to sit and wait. So I am going to try and send this petition out anyway.. If the PM does not consider our petition this time, I hope at least our grievances would be used to act better in future, if god forbid something like this happens was to happen again in our country.
2. There is another petition https://chn.ge/2L4h5nP which has over 140K signatures, so first I am going to try and convince them to send it to the PM. If they are successful, we could consider our cause as a success too, since both these petitions aim at similar goals.

I am looking at 38K signatures on our petition. So I am anyway going to print this, and send this to the decision-makers so that time is not lost. But I will leave the cause open for further signatures.

Once again, thank you all.

BR

Arun