The situation in Mumbai was handled in an exemplary manner and nothing can ever take away the credit that goes to all the concerned parties who made sure Mumbai was back on it's feet within days. Kudos👏
Now, for New Orleans, I would like to state a few of my observation.
New Orleans for US is similar to Bhuvneshwar in Orissa - beautiful, has a lot of history, and is co habited by rich and poor. Economically not a very important area for their respective countries, prone to hurricanes and devastation by flood.
To add to it, New Orleans has another distinct disadantage which renders it at an even bad state than Bhuvneshwar - the city is below sea level and on the other side it's flanked by the massive Missisippi river.
The people are too attatched to the city to let go of it easily. This is the reason they did not evacuate even after repeated warnings and of course, a basic fact that they just wanted to test it out......
Families going back to seventeenth century live there in beautiful mansions and on the other side, poor,largely blacks,struggle to elk out a living while their young generation fights smuggling, drug abuse and poverty.
So in no way Mumbai and New Orleans is at par. There are a few other things added to this:
1) Mumbai was hit by rain and flood. Not hurricane which destroyed buildings and drowned a city already under the sea level. Several others towns in both Lousiana and Missisippi stand completely destroyed. And in 90% of these towns, the water has already receded and dried. Yet there is nothing left in those towns for the people to go back to,so great has been Katrina's destruction.
2) The economic importance of Mumbai to India is equivalent to New York in US, and had it been New York, the story would have been different. Similarly, in India, had it been Bhuvneshwar, as we have seen in the past, the story would have been entirely different.
A few years ago, a hurricane had hit Bhuvneshwar, and the city had remained cut off from the rest of the country for days after that, with countless deaths, damages to property, sickness,people trying to evacuate in panic yet unable to in the confusion,lack of infrastructure and the inability of either the local or the state govt or the national govt to organise rescue in time, loss of jobs,little or no rehabilitation -yet it just made the natinal headlines for a few days only to be forgotten a few days later, and now it stands almost completely erased from the public mind....
Every year floods hit Assam and Bihar and thousands die or are rendered homeless,many killed in the flood or after the flood due to disease.....
I would say that in all these instances, the govt has had a key role to play. Mumbai is India's financial capital, India perhaps cannot afford to treat it like Bhuvneshwar or those 100 other towns in Assam and Bihar which face massive destruction each year due to the floods in the Brahmaputra and Ganges - the state knows, the centre knows, and yet does absolutely NOTHING to save the lives, cattle and property there....
Yes, I love India, but to loose it's tag of a third world country, it needs to treat Bhuvneshwar in Orissa or a Kaishnai in Assam like it treated Mumbai - at least the US govt responded, even if late and the devastation made world news, all the other states in US are coming together to do whatever they can to help the victims - A Kishnai does not even make front page in India.....and the people from other parts of India read the small piece of news with their morning tea and and forget all about it the moment they fold the paper close.....
These are just a few of my small observations and I don't mean to hurt anyone..... Edited by Minnie - 18 years ago
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