In the last week of August, the city of Vadodara went under water.
Almost 40% of the city remained under water for four days. There was no supply of water or electricity. Mobile phones ran out of power, Mobile network towers died as they ran out of power.
Obtaining food became a problem.
The river, Vishwamitri, that flows through the city broke its banks and inundated the city.
Houses on the ground floor were completely destroyed. Shops and Establishments in the lower floors of shopping center were flooded with water.
The water that was flooding the city was contaminated with sewer water, thus there was no chance of recovering anything that had been touched by this flooding.
It is estimated that 50 Crore would be required just to restore the vehicles that had met a watery grave.
Business losses run into thousands of crores.
The administration went missing for these four days.
Politicians that later came to visit the colonies were shooed away. The politicians then sent police to arrest those who were shooing them away, filed cases against them, only to see their cases being thrown out of the court by judges who took the police to task.
That was in August. Come October, the city is back on its feet and dancing through the night in the nine night festival of ‘Garba’.
Millions of rupees are being spent on this festival. Some of the organizers (yes, it is no longer a community festival but a business opportunity to make money) sold tickets to their ‘events’ for as high as 4000 rupees a pop.
But it has been raining in the city.
Question is, how can anyone be so self centered and celebrate knowing that hundreds of thousands have lost their all in the recent floods?
Do the citizens of Vadodara or indeed any other city in India have any empathy left in them?
How can you dance the night away in gay abandon knowing that lives have been lost, homes and businesses destroyed just a month ago?
Why people don’t channelize their energies in doing something constructive than just going out and spending money on themselves with nary a care about others?
How can we build a more empathetic nation, if our approach to tragedy remains just a lip-service.
