After the flood - Kerala 2018
My Motherland, Kerala, India has witnessed the most devastating flood in history. For the last 14 days, I was volunteering with tens and thousands of volunteers & I am writing down some of the observations to avoid confusions.
Kerala, India - is an province/state with very high health standards, low infant mortality rate, high population density and even higher literacy. The high population density has caused massive damages which is not yet assessed. Fisherman responded to the request of help which reduced the death toll.
The rescue relief efforts are beyond the any boundaries of caste or religion - the common man here has only one religion and that called "HUMANITY"
Government of Kerala + Government of India & the Volunteers from all over India are working together. I repeat, its not a scenario where Government efforts and Volunteering efforts are happening in parallel. The Government of Kerala has taken the unconventional step of getting the help of volunteers and they are taking every possible to step to consolidate the efforts of Volunteers and Governments.
I repeat the point 3 again for the benefit of International NGOs, as an independent volunteer, I am surprised by the steps taken by the Government of Kerala to unite and take help from the volunteering groups and please do not try to convince the government to convince the need to use volunteers/NGOs etc but rather, join the effort lead by the Government.
- Technical platform following the guidelines from (The Sphere project)[www.spherehandbook.org/en/what-is-sphere/] is developed https://keralarescue.in/ under the leader ship of a young engineering student Biswas. This uses tool like Django based rescue system, Ushahidi, KoboToolbox, NodeJS based volunteer registration, HDX etc
Before and After
A pregnant woman airlifted by navy. She delivered in the navy hospital in less than 2 hours. Everyone is safe!
(screen grabs from a video by me. Video source unknown)
relief materials (photo taken by a friend)
PS: Any money raised through this post will be donated to the Government of Kerala's Relief fund : https://donation.cmdrf.kerala.gov.in/index.php/
international donations can be done via Transferwise too https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/stand-with-kerala
Very sad... humans are humans, no matter what religion or nationality they are from :(
Condolences from a Pakistani 🇵🇰
Some people asked me for the receipt of the payment & proof: made a payment now (around 90 USD)
`Dear SBI UPI User, Your a/c no. XXXXXXYYYY is credited with INR 5001.00 on 2018-08-30 07:52:29 PM for reversal of transaction (UPI Ref no 824219083626).
Dear SBI UPI User, your account is debited INR 5001.0 on Date 2018-08-30 07:54:36 PM by UPI Ref No 824219087779.`
Kudos for all that you've done bro! It's been nothing short of a nightmare for you and everyone else who suffered due to the floods!
Great effort from all sides as bobby says. fishermen's presence in the situation was remarkable. The navy team and unorganized rescuers done a great job. Nature pull back its throw, now we are in a great mission to overcome the aftereffects. We see helping hands from nearby states and from all over India. We see our nearest state Tamilnadu is doing a great support in supplies. Daily we see many trucks carrying relief materials to the affected area. We are thankful to all and thank you bobby.
From a friend:
What a single flood has done to Kerala is; wash away all the perspectives and divisiveness from our eyes. Perspectives and assumptions we had of each community and caste and class and gender.
Overnight, our Fishermen turned into our strongest armed force. The Kudumbasree, who were only "Garbage people" aided us with 7 crore rupees and an army that marched in with their boots and gloves and cleaned out our houses better than we did.
The house painter who tranferred the deeds of his 4 cent property and house to a family he had never seen or heard of ever in his life.
The truck drivers that ran nonstop through the waters and roads transferring people and goods. Not a penny taken.
The 60,000 volunteers that turned up at Alappuzha when the Government called for a clean up mission. From ministers to Students; Bureaucrats to Farmers.
The 15 year old and his sister who gave away their 1 acre land towards Relief funding.
The many many marriages that were cancelled; to transfer their wedding allowances to the relief fund. The Register offices that rose up to the occassion throughout the floods :)
The gold ornaments that were taken off and passed on to make lives better.
The team that travelled from Kasargode to Kochi to clean the schools, because "schools HAD to open next week."
The Khalasis and Engineers and Electricians who came from Tamil Nadu to help repair a 5 km rail line in 30 hours!
The calls and messages and echoes that resonate when there is a "Listen, we need some help" SOS (From building houses to buying spoons for absolute strangers)
IT'ians and Students forever on the research of how-to-make-it-better and easier at everything...
The teachers and their darlings that redid and rewrote and made available all the class notes and study materials in a day! So ready for Back to School!
That man who sat in his wheel chair every day and came to the camp to make chappathis.
The aged that came looking for the collector to hand over their Old Age Pension towards the CMDRF.
For every hate story we hear, for every politically charged statement made. We have 100 answers for each of those stories in these. That is the strongest boat we are sailing in these days.
Stay strong:)
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Nice to see you people working together for the cause. Also good to know that the Government has also joined hands with you. Many a times people have criticized the Government for doing nothing. It's good to know that this Government is a "exception". Hope soon Kerala would be at its normal best. Thank You.
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Not only Kelala Govt Entire India and Indian govt did everything to save Kerala.... Please don't divide brother... We all are son of one India and if one is sick others will help...
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yes, everyone helped .. exactly my point