The first week of August, yet again, saw Kerala battling natural disasters on an almost State-wide scale. Between July 31 and August 7, 22 people lost their lives in heavy rainfall incidents across the small southern State, while more than 14,000 people, including 2,407 children, were forced to relocate temporarily to 337 relief camps (as on Sunday) opened by the government. National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams had to be deployed in 10 districts while the armed forces were on standby.
Ever since Cyclone Ockhi in 2017, when Kerala was rudely awakened to the reality of natural disasters and the ever-looming spectre of climate change and its grim consequences, such arrangements appear to have become an annual affair for the State, often dubbed ‘God’s Own Country’ in glitzy tourism advertisements.
The devastating, back-to-back floods of 2018 and 2019 impressed upon the small State that natural disasters are not aberrations that occur, perhaps, once or twice in a century.
