Kuldip Maity

When Nature unleashes her fury, the only option for many is to pick up their lives and start from scratch after the storm has passed. Devastation is an acceptable outcome. It should not be. Improvements in science have given us early warning systems for rains and cyclones. In India, the east coast, though, is more prone to cyclones than the west. To make matters worse, West Bengal also sits on an active seismic zone.

One may ask why cyclones hit the Bay of Bengal coast and why they are so frequent. Meteorologists have an answer but that doesn’t help us much in saving ourselves from Nature’s fury. The more important question is how we can recover from the impact of a cyclone.

According to the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project, between 1891 and 2000, 308 cyclones have hit the eastern coast of India out of which 103 were severe. Given the early prediction system in place, the question that begs an answer relates to our readiness to face the next cyclone of Amphan’s intensity and our ability to repair the devastation wreaked by such an intense cyclone.

The West Bengal government claims super cyclone Amphan has left a repair bill of Rs 1.02 lakh crore. The state has announced financial aid for eight lakh people hit by Amphan. The prime minister has announced a grant of Rs 1000 crore as preliminary relief.

Apart from the financial burden left behind by Amphan, there is the cost of the lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted the economy on a huge scale and forced us to think of a new way of functioning that factors in social distancing, work-from-home, a depleted labour force in manufacturing and how the pandemic will play out and how many it will kill before we can control it.

The experience sadly has underscored our limited resources to contain damage resulting from Nature’s fury.

One must, in this context, keep in mind the fact that West Bengal has been a lucky sufferer. Odisha and Bangladesh have faced many more powerful cyclones than Bengal. It is argued that Odisha has mastered the art of managing cyclones and other states can learn from it. (After Amphan, we did borrow Odisha’s disaster management teams to work alongside our teams.)

So, in a sense, our mission to become better prepared to face natural disasters starts now. The era of technological advancement and digital Darwinism calls for advanced protective measures. From building embankments to disaster management technologies, cities and villages must build the infrastructure that can handle such natural disasters.

We need to focus more on sectors such as health, finance, housing, food supply, energy supply and communication while preparing for such eventualities. The immediate response and rehabilitation procedures should be laid out in a detailed framework. Timely preparation will not only save lives but will also minimise the damages.

When we speak of society today, we shall only be referring to the collective of people state-wise, and not in any broader term. Our country as such consists of many such societies together. Let us look at any one such society.

The people in it speak more or less the same language, share more or less the same culture, the topography, climate and sociological opportunities and, as such, are best suited to have an economically symbiotic relationship with each other.

Where one group of people will understand the opportunities and be willing to work on them, they will need another group that can put in their mental or physical labour to make them a reality. This other group can either come from the same society so everyone is acclimatised in most respects and are in sync with each other or can come from a different society with different existing constants.

The cost of utilising the manpower in the two different cases will be vastly different. While in the one case the people will understand the language and nuances, in the other case considerable costs will be incurred in decoding and correcting. While in the one case societal money will be saved because the people will live in their own homes, in the other, each society will pay double the needed amount in running dual establishments. While in the one case people will get a morale boost from being with their family and long-term acquaintances, in the other case the workers will be distracted and will have to be provided motivation more often, and everything comes at a cost.

The list is endless. But the point here is one. One half of society should aim to provide employment based on more factors than only daily-wage considerations, while the other half may want to explore the local opportunities before they search for employment in a distant land, away from a known social structure.

The sooner the two groups in any society understand this and work together, the sooner we shall be able to avoid the complex issues that arise during unforeseen calamities and pandemics.

“A natural disaster is an act of nature of such magnitude as to create a catastrophic situation in which the day-to-day patterns of life are suddenly disrupted and people are plunged into helplessness and suffering, and, as a result, need food, clothing, shelter, medical and nursing care and other necessities of life, and protection against unfavourable environmental factors and conditions.” – Ref.: Guide to sanitation in natural disasters WHO (1971).

On the other hand, a pandemic can reasonably be defined as a disease worldwide that affects such a large proportion of the population as to create a catastrophic situation in which the day-to-day patterns of life are suddenly disrupted and people are plunged into helplessness and suffering, and, as a result, need medical and nursing care, and protection against economic and social factors and conditions.

Now imagine a double whammy of a natural calamity during a pandemic!

Some privileged among us have the luxury of merely imagining this double whammy. But the vast number who are experiencing the effects of both are still wondering how to deal with the dual effect of the blows on their lives.

While they seem to have a few common factors that can be jointly addressed, the reality of the situation only doubles the concerns of the financially challenged rural community. Where a pandemic requires social distancing between the micro and macro, individuals and communities, a natural disaster calls for mass evacuations into crowded shelters simply not designed for social distancing.

Such and more are the challenges faced by us this year during which super cyclones, earthquakes and fires have ravaged people already crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown it prompted. People reaching out to help have been stricken down, people being helped have walked from certain destruction into the already destroyed. Death has become so accepted that it has transformed into a mere number being reported in the news at night.

It is a time to introspect on the fact that some of us still have the luxury of introspecting. Or to do as much as one can for others in the hope that we may not fail ourselves as human beings and carry each other into the next era of happenings.

We knew it but did not realise its importance till the coronavirus pandemic pushed it down our throats. The importance of taking care of our mental health just as much as we do of our physical health suddenly became a reality as the lockdown aimed at breaking the infection chain confined us to our homes and we are bombarded with news about COVID-19 deaths, the devastation of the economy and job losses across entire sectors.

As the virus keeps stalking us, we, in the confines of our homes, have started not only to miss our old unfettered “outside life”, but are also getting anxiety attacks about the new world. How many of us had seriously imagined that work-from-home would one day define the new normal?

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. This pandemic, by shredding the fabric of our social wellbeing, has, in turn, impacted our emotional and psychological existence. A successful professional who is also a known face in Kolkata’s social life has become a wreck. Now in his seventies, he has served on company boards, runs a consultancy, draws a hefty pension for having served a multinational as an executive director abroad and worries about his children staying in foreign lands. His biggest worry is about the staff of his office and how to look after them. For the last two months, he has been paying them from his reserves. At this rate, he will have to draw down his savings for their upkeep. He had given up smoking but now has gone back to his old vice.

This is a story that is common now across the entire spectrum of society – globally. Even those who have the relative safety of a government pension or salary are worried about buying their medicines and what to do when they need medical help, as they can no longer drop in at their doctor’s chamber or hospital because of the coronavirus scare.

The total disruption of life as we knew it is playing havoc with our mind and so our physical wellbeing. Earlier, we had chosen not to care about our mental health as much as we had cared for our physical. But now, weighed down by our anxieties, we are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of keeping ourselves mentally fit.

Mental fitness so far has meant our ability to reason. But this pandemic has laid bare the spectrum of mental health with all the three components -- emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. And that we need to take care of mental health as much as we need to take care of our physical has become glaringly obvious now. It’s not just important, it’s as essential as your daily walk or run to stay wholesomely fit.