Mainly, this is because Bangladesh has gotten a lot better at dealing with cyclones, which build in the Bay of Bengal and surge north to hit the country with dreadful regularity. Over the past decade especially, the country’s early warning and preparedness systems have improved considerably. Officials evacuated some 3.2 million people who lived along the coastline in the days before Sidr hit, and stockpiled relief supplies and rescue equipment. Soon after the storm passed, the Bangladeshi government quickly began distributing 4,000 metric tons of rice, along with thousands of tents and blankets, and deployed more than 700 medical teams to the worst-affected areas.

I have a feeling that us poor brownfolk are gonna do OK.

It seems at this point in terms of helping the cyclone victims, the best thing to do would be to donate to charities that are helping out the victims in Bangladesh. However, individually we can also help by encouraging others to donate and become informed. With holiday season just starting up, many companies match charity donations or often even participate in choosing a charity to donate to. I encourage all of you to speak to your colleagues, classmates, friends, and family to donate and help the victims in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Red Crescent Society Sunday said the death toll from cyclone Sidr may touch 10,000 (official death toll surpassed 2,200 Sunday and a government official declared the disaster “a national calamity”).

Watch Cyclone Video here.

I have a question for mutineers on the above expressed thoughts/concerns:

Us brown folk living outside of desh, are we internalizing some of the condescending paranoia we constantly hear from white-driven mass media that sorrounds us?

I hear repeated expressions of gloom and doom scenarios about over-population, SARS, AIDS, nuclear war, water wars, earthquakes, tsunami, floods, religious/ethnic strife,… the list goes on. Through it all, desh seems to continue chugging along (mind you, I am not discounting the loss of life suffered – but in essence, the sky never seems to fall down like predicted). This cycle seem to be playing out again with the current “OMG, CAT 4 Cyclone” exclamations.

Given this, why are we desis so down on desh’s ability to handle the challenges thrown at it. I can totally get when a white guy/gal says “how will those poor souls survive”, because they don’t get (or don’t want to get) desh’s resiliency – and being condescending is sorta part and parcel of being wealthier. But we brown folk, shouldn’t we be able to give our brethren in desh a bit more credit/break?

By Bibhudatta Pradhan and Heather Langan Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) — Tropical Cyclone Sidr slammed into the Ganges Delta with winds of 250 kilometers (155 miles) per hour, causing devastation in Bangladesh before weakening over northern India. More than 496 Bangladeshis were killed and thousands injured, the United News of Bangladesh said on its Web site today. At least 1,000 fishermen were missing, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said today in an e-mailed statement. Some 3.2 million people fled to the country’s highlands or went to shelters, the UN agency said. Information collection on casualty and damage figures is still very much in the early stages and scarce,'' the UN said.Communication on islands is cut off.” The cyclone swept in from the Bay of Bengal, crossing the Khulna-Barisal coast yesterday at about 9:30 p.m. local time, the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. Sidr destroyed homes and livestock, uprooted trees and damaged crops as it made landfall, Priya Jyoti Khisa, a director in Bangladesh’s disaster management bureau, said in a telephone interview from Dhaka. Bangladesh and northeastern India are regularly hit by cyclones that form in the bay, bringing flooding and devastation to local communities. Bangladesh stepped up its storm preparations after a cyclone that hit the South Asian nation in 1970 left 500,000 people dead. Twelve districts, including Khulna, Patuakhali, Barisal and Bholad, were “severely affected” by Sidr, Khisa said. The storm’s center was 61 kilometers south of Shillong, India, at 8:30 a.m. local time today, the U.S. center said in its final advisory on Sidr. The system’s maximum sustained winds had weakened to 37 kph as it moved northeastward.

                       Storm Surge

Sidr brought a storm surge as high as 6 meters (20 feet) to

one of the most low-lying areas on the planet. The storm was 500 kilometers wide before coming to shore. In India, the outer bands of Sidr passed over West Bengal without causing damage, D. Pal, joint secretary for disaster management at the state government, said in a telephone interview from Kolkata. There were no “adverse effects,” K.L. Mishra, deputy general of the disaster mitigation authority in neighboring Orissa state, said by telephone. More than 30,000 people were evacuated from Indian coastal areas before the storm arrived, he said.

Chachaji – True, that bitterness helped Mujeeb to a landslide victory but creation of Bangladesh was due to ineptness of the Army generals and who didn’t realize the consequences. Later it was proved when Bangladeshi Army killed their father of the nation; so as usual Army was treating the civilian leaders as their pawns but the whole nation had to bear it. In my view Dictator and his cronies can handled the situation better by bringing both politicians (Mujeeb and Bhutto) to some deal like a confederate style government. It was a fact that none of them can able to run the other half due almost no support there. It was the first elections in 23 years and Pakistan didn’t even have the constitution (another incompetence of Army rulers) so nobody knew what they are getting into. But seeing the Pakistan’s Army’s history; I doubt they were ready to give up the throne and as usual treating the junta as their slaves; it was only after their shameful defeat that they gave war trodden cashless treasury broken country to a civilian leader.