Nature teaches best lessons to all.

The rich and powerful are gloating all over the globe about their wealth, possessions and far reaching powers. Little they know that in a second, everything will be levelled and they will be on the roads searching for food and water. This is miserably happening everywhere wherever Nature unleashes its fury for the transgressions of man. The recent rains that flooded the great city of Chennai have taught harsh lessons to the rich in society. Several of them lamented that they too had to flee for their dear life, leaving all the bungalows and cars and other belongings rescued by the disaster relief team. There was no place to go since all the roads have been marooned with water, no communication facilities. They were frantic for a bottle of drinking water and a bite of bread.

This is how nature teaches the wealthy and powerful. Of course, the poor and middle class too suffered losing everything they had. They too were evacuated to safer places to stay in the night. Now the same rain is playing havoc in many cities of Colombo. Besides teaching many lessons to every single individual who were affected, it teaches lessons to the administrators of the big cities. In India, floods are very common. Mumbai city is often affected by torrential rains every time. In spite of all this, no government is learning the bitter lessons of managing rains and flood. Chennai is already affected by several floods during the past several decades. Yet, the metro city lacks serious planning of storm water drains. It was hepzardal. None surveyed the natural gradients and let free rain water to reach the sea in case of floods. Even now the authorities are concerned only to drain the existing water in inundated areas. There is no co-ordination between city planners, administrators and Corporation authorities.

In this information age, if anybody feigns ignorance in dealing with such natural calamities, they are not fit to hold positions and powers. There are many brilliant people abounding in every engineering discipline, who knows how to make long term viable plans. It should not be left to the government authorities, who know only to tackle an existing situation and they don’t think beyond the immediate solutions. The political leaders are concerned more with their political future and elections and their steps will be to gain political mileage out of every sad situation. They are not really concerned with the common poor citizens who live in remote hamlets in far off places. But at the time of electioneering, they will search out those remote citizens for the sake of vote mongering. Now that the people have realized the futility of depending on such selfish people, they started using their wits to come out of such bleak situations. In every event, everyone has to learn valuable lessons.

Imagine for a while how the Stone Age man has progressed in civilization. There were none to teach him lessons on life. He learned everything by trial and error methods only. Thus after millions of years of struggles, he has progressed as a modern man using many gadgets for comfortable and carefree living. In spite of the technological edge, we are blinking at every tragedy. It is due to selfish politicians, greedy traders and power mongers in society. Only when they face distressing situations, they will learn their lessons well. The ultimate sufferer is the common man who stands alone with just the cloths on his body!

We find nowadays that even highly advanced countries are confronted with floods, tornados volcanoes and what not? In many Western countries, freak weather systems have destroyed many lives, properties and habitations. There also, the government could not act immediately excepting weather warnings and evacuating the likely populations. At least from now on, the vulnerable countries must act in a coordinated way, watching for weather storms and be prepared on the ground level to minimize loss of life and properties. Of course, none can predict perfectly which way the depression will move but we should never be pound foolish and penny wise. Invest in protective technology instead of undertaking space exploration at exorbitant costs.