Tsunami Killer

Tsunami Killer

Tsunamis used to be the stuff of Japanese folklore. But they swept into millions of real lives in coastal south and southeast Asia in the morning of Dec. 26.

In a country where even patently man-made events like railway accidents are put down to the will of Lord Vishwakarma, as the rail minister did recently, it may be too much to expect evasive action when nature vents its fury on this scale.

Countries on the Pacific rim are, however, part of a tsunami warning system, and it took the killer waves two to three hours to reach the Indian coast from their point of origin. An early warning system could conceivably have detected the arrival of tsunami and put out warnings to people in coastal areas in time, but in fact neither India nor Sri Lanka are members of the international warning system.

Delhi must not be squeamish about asking for international aid wherever necessary -- the stakes are too high and this is the wrong place to stress national self-reliance.

After all, New Delhi itself is providing aid to Colombo and the Maldives, so there cannot be anything intrinsically wrong with it. We must inevitably join up with international tsunami warning systems in order to get that little bit of advance warning, the next time a disaster like this strikes.

-- The Statesman, Calcutta