Lesson named Irshalwadi Disaster!!

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“Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster” ... Elon Musk

Well, no need to introduce this name yet Mr Elon Musk is American Billionaire Businessman & creator of Electric Car Tesla, & now owner of World’s Expression Platform (sarcastic) i.e., Twitter & with due respect to his own disastrous approach to work (or life) yet no two minds about his intelligence, which get reflected from his above quote! Reason for this quote is obviously a disaster which actually people may call an accident or mishap but the outcome was disastrous (just like Musk’s decisions at work) & as usual we are witnessing the show by the entire society about it. Fortunately, this time political parties didn’t blame each other for the disaster (at least until now), maybe they all are busy in dealing with a disaster on their own political front but focus is on help & rescue for now! And the incident is a landslide which wiped the entire wadi (group of small hutments, smaller than village) in Sahyadri range of mountains, part of western ghat range, named Irshalwadi. Till now nearly thirty people are confirmed dead & more than hundred are still missing. For those who don’t read newspapers or read, only news of their interest, two days back at night due to heavy rains, part of hill or land got separated & crashed on the hutments on its sloping side or say base of slope & as most of the villagers were sleeping, they just didn’t realize what has hit them. The place is in remote parts of the mountains though in Raigad District but the only way to reach there is on foot for the last near five to six km distance (well, there still such places exist even in 2023). It’s raining throughout the time making the rescue mission near impossible which our system (read as govt as well all involved in helping) is doing with full efforts yet the entire thing is post operation & hardly any survivors were there.

My subject of sharing is not to doubt the way rescue mission is being done or blame but to ask the question to entire society, why we must wait for a disaster to happen to display how useless we are in anticipating such disaster & our attitude towards it even when it happened as there is news in media about Disaster Tourism (new terminology), wow, we can commercialize anything, even death! As in the name of help or say excitement or to have some adventures trip thousands of people are visiting the disaster site making the actual working people difficult to work on rescue mission & Collector has to declare a Curfew over there for non-official people visiting Irshalwadi! What kind of society we are really within, I wonder & then this attitude (read as ignorance) about non-seriousness of the mishap isn’t uncommon as even after any road accident, many people are busy in taking photos or selfies to upload on social media than helping the victims or personals who are actually working for it!  And the problem lies right within our education which doesn’t make us sensitive from our childhood to any such aspect of life where ours or other people’s lives are at stake! First, let’s understand what a disaster means, & I am not referring to the Oxford dictionary but the way we use the term. Disaster is something an event or act or incidence which leaves a drastic effect on the surrounding at large where this incidence happens & mostly the effect is in the bad interest of that surrounding. Here the surrounding includes living objects (including humans) as well non-living things too, which are destroyed or get suffered in the act/ incident causing the disaster. This act can be triggered by human error(usually) or because of nature’s outburst such as hurricane or tsunami or earthquake but as I said, in all these situations its destruction & damage which we call a disaster after such an act.

Now, coming to our object of sharing, if a disaster is due to sheer by nature’s anger such as tsunami or earthquake then we can blame only our bad-luck but when the action behind a disaster is induced to some human error as well when we neglect warnings of nature then the real cause of disaster is always some human or group of humans, which is the main aspect of recent disaster I wanted to point out. As few years back similar land slide has happened in the same mountain ranges, name of the deceased village then was Malin & nearly 100 plus human lives (and domestic animals) has lost but we have learnt nothing (sorry to say) & in such case responsibility of the disaster is not of nature but we the humans only! As agreed, all these villages & bastis (wadi) are settled all along the mountain ranges for hundreds of years but look at the damage we have done to earth in the last few decades, reasons of which are unplanned urbanization, uncontrolled population & our ignorant approach towards nature conservation! As no disaster (barring earthquake or volcano) is caused overnight, it does give warnings as well the final act of nature also is like retaliation or buckling down under the constant encroachment of humans on it in various forms such as reclamation of oceans or digging for mins or deforestation or changing course of rivers & many such!

And especially the recent one at Irshalwadi types, with keeping all due respect to authorities as well the deceased residents, agreed for many years all these settlements are safely living at their respective location but population has increased, so has needs & then nature also takes toll on the surroundings. Entire Sahyadri region has always been used to having heavy rainfalls & we never know or understand how damaging water can be so it’s always better to keep an alert eye as well as be cautious. Time & again environmentalists as well engineers have given warnings about our way of handling not just developments or growth but even our lifestyle attitude towards nature can lead us to disaster, which we are witnessing. There are two ways to handle any disaster, one is to avoid or delay it & another is to face it in such a way that there will be very less or minimal damage. In recent times with the help of technology we have been successful in saving many lives while facing disasters such as floods, especially hurricanes or storms along the coasts but we are big failures on fronts to predict as well stop & act rightly when it’s a disaster like Irshalwadi! Right from locating such spots/places where landslides & floods can cause damage to relocate its residents, many things have been neglected & this is not the case of just some villages at remote places scattered all across the Western Ghats but right in our Pune city also. Look at the slums/illegal homes settled along the slopes of Parvati hills right in the centre of Pune & same is the scene with most of the hills in & around Pune & compare it with Irshlawadi disaster & even a small kid will tell we are living on a disaster time bomb which is ticking loudly but we are deaf to it neither we can see the burning fuse of this time bomb! This attitude of ours, is my sharing’s objective as while on one side we are launching satellites in the space to keep track of natural calamities but what we are doing with the calamities which can happen right in front of our eyes, what are we waiting for to take action to stop another disaster or series of disasters!

On one side govt is busy defending illegal settlements where disaster can strike any time but do mind when any disaster hits you, it doesn’t think whether the structures are legal or illegal, it wipes out everything that is responsible & even not-responsible for the cause! Nature, as I said above, never acts in vengeance however, we mistreat (read as insult) it, all nature does to our acts is, just react & unfortunately the outcome of that reaction is usually a disaster! We are yet stuck with step one itself i.e., identifying places where likely disaster can happen so to think about stopping or avoiding it & to train the society to face the disaster seems like Mungerilal ke Sapane! As may it be Malin landslide or Irsahlwadi, the very basic problem was even to reach there for any help or rescue, so how are we going to train the residents of such spots to face such disaster, as they only are the ones who can help themselves. Where is the training team in place & who has stopped us (read as govt) to at least reach out for all such settlements & take their basic training for facing a disaster, even at Parvati Hill slums also! Why not there can be a satellite, especially to keep a twenty-four-hour eye on all such locations, so we don’t have to rely on someone to reach up after any disaster & then we start to reach the spot. On one side we are talking about AI (Artificial Intelligence & not Air India) & on other side we (again read as govt) confess helplessness in managing our resources because of physical conditions at disaster site, baat kuch hajam nahi huai! This doesn’t mean I am neglecting site conditions & difficulties faced by the rescue team at site, they did & are doing a great job but that doesn’t or won’t save the lives in future also as its post disaster action, right? There is so called Disaster Management team, but not once I have heard any capable officer being posted there like Force 10, which has been formed after Mumbai Terror attacks as this is similar case, though the attacker is not a terrorist nor its intentions are to spread fear but unfortunately the acts cause same effect on the society at large! Thousands of people living in places like Irshalwadi may be having sleepless nights now thinking next will be their turn for landslides or floods & only because we are failing to give them a right system in place to face the disaster, is my object of sharing!

Every time, like the Police used to come at last in Hindi movies, when any disaster strikes, we (read as society, not just govt) start a show named disaster management & by the time we end our show the next disaster is already ready to make a bigger strike, is a sad story! Right from cutting forests to diverting rivers to protecting illegal settlements built by damaging natural habitats to ignoring basics like rain water harvesting & executing development plans without making nature as part of development, we are making disasters by ourselves & then blaming nature for the same; unless we won’t accept this fact & then correct ourselves, Irshalwadi wasn’t the first disaster of its kind & definitely won’t be last, mind it!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

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