STH, an unpleasant necessity...

Some days ago, a friend of mine told me that even though he read the STH blogs regularly, (http://www.savethehills.blogspot.com) he found the blogsite depressing..

Indeed it must be extremely distressing to the readers of STH to be deluged with so much bad news all the time.

I confess, it is taxing for me too - to squirrel out these grim prophecies from the internet, visit and photograph landslide zones, talk to people with nothing but despair on their faces and write letters (which I know will never be answered) to officials who haven’t a clue about disaster prevention.

...but then I must persist.

On my way up to Shillong recently, I met a young journalist who is working for a prominent national TV channel and when asked he said he had not heard of Kalimpong and was blissfully ignorant about landslides
And so are most people.
The fact is landslides affect just 10-12% of the country whereas 58% of the Indian land mass is earthquake prone and floods affect millions.

Also the people affected by landslides (ie us mountain people) seldom speak out about their travails – thus the media, government and especially our own people are totally ignorant of the scourge of landslides and unless WE make an issue out of this form of natural disaster, it will remain unknown and uncared for.

You see, for us living in the hills, landslides are our tsunamis and floods and are even deadlier than earthquakes because they occur every year with unfailing regularity; lastly and perhaps most importantly they are now creeping into our populated urban areas.

So even though mine is an extremely unpleasant task of doling out daily dollops of doomsday sayings

– regrettably I have to carry on

Having said so much….

here is something from "The Statesman" and photograph from Tungsung, Darjeeling

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DM visits landslide affected areas

Statesman News Service
KURSEONG, June 22: Yesterday, the Darjeeling DM, Mr Rajesh Pandey along with the Kurseong SDO Mr Dibyendu Das and the Kurseong municipal officials visited the landslide affected areas in Kurseong. Mr Pandey assured that the Kurseong sub divisional relief authorities and the Kurseong municipality authorities should submit proper report, following which the district administration would provide proper assistance, for the restoration, of the landslides affected area and victims, accordingly to government norms.
Notably, due to the incessant rainfall during the past few days, a number of minor and major landslides occurred at several places in Kurseong sub division which is, till now, the highest landslide affected area in the whole of the district
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Photo credit
Mr Suman Rai - ATREE, Darjeeling


praful rao