HRH, If you wish you can donate to the Indian Prime Minsiter’s Relief Fund.

Vera – why the defensiveness about Indian government performance? I didn’t criticize their performance after the Gujarat earthquake at all. What I did say was that both the response (on the Pakistani side) to the Kashmir earthquake and the response (in multiple countries) to the Tsumani showed that there was no coordination.

The Pakistani example is telling because the big international agencies had no desire to coordinate, and were quite opposed to the idea.

Why is it important to point that out? To make sure that the same mistakes aren’t made again.

Honestly, I’m puzzled by the way your responded. Nobody was engaging in blanket criticism of the GOI, why do you feel the need to engage in blanket defense?

But Mutineers perhaps prefer to mutiny, to criticise or exclaim about Indian stupidity rather than doing a single helpful thing?

Many kids born here seem to hate their brown hue (and India) when they feel so (white) American. Quite unlike the US Jewish or Chinese population.

Unrelated but could not resist!

For more kudos, even the BBC has admired the Kumbh Meal arrangements. Said they do not know how this massive festival is well organized.

I remember hearing grumbles about trying to interconnect rivers over a wide swath of territory to allow water to flow into other networks, ensuring the local ones don’t get overwhelmed.

In Gujarat, water from Narmada via it’s damn flows into other rivers as a part of maintaining those rivers (Sabarmati for example). It helps recharge the local acquifier and provides irrigation water for farms. Many say they’ve never seen so much water, all year round, in those rivers which went dry in summertime.

The project to interconnect rivers would be massive by any account. Other systems like the deep tunnel project in Chicago, which stores excess water underground (or the one in Japan) are very expensive, too. It would take a lot of investment in the infrastructure to allow for such a system to be implemented.

I thought that his been mandated for new buildings in Madras for some time now (since Jayalalitha’s time)?

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The question remains as to why India hasn’t done anything about harvesting rain water? I don’t think that it is such a daunting challenge of either the imagination or engineering. Doing so would address the problems of both flooding and draught. With Ennis’s permission, I am posting the link to an article I wrote last year when monsoon rains were causing similar havoc.

Part of it has to do with population densities, people having the ability to communicate about such disasters, infrastructure corroding, local erosion of natural barriers (like swampland), deforestation, the earth’s natural cycle (orbits, wobble of axis), global warming. Something that kinda freaks me out is the flipping of the magnetic poles.

Weather analysis is some of the most complex number crunching stuff out there (hence supercomputers for the job).

Climate change!

But heard about NYC this morning — it sounds totally insane.