Sunday 27 August 2017

At Least 950 Killed In South Asia’s Annual Monsoon Floods



Devastating floods triggered by seasonal monsoon rains have killed more than 950 people and affected close to 40 million across northern India, southern Nepal and northern Bangladesh, officials said.

The rains have led to wide-scale flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in the three countries, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and crops.

Bangladesh, the death toll climbed to 132 while some 7.5 million people have been affected in this year’s floods, according to the Disaster Management Ministry.

Crops on more than 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of land have been washed away while another 600,000 hectares (1,482,600 acres) have been damaged, posing a serious threat to food production, the ministry said.

The U.N. World Food Program said that Bangladesh was at risk of “devastating hunger” after major floods that destroyed crops, homes and livelihoods of people across many impoverished areas in a delta nation of 160 million people.

“Many flood survivors have lost everything: their homes, their possessions, their crops,” Christa Rader, WFP’s Bangladesh country director, said in a statement. “People need food right now, and the full impact on longer-term food security threatens to be devastating.”

In neighboring, the northern Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam in the remote northeast are the worst hit, accounting for 680 deaths, most of them from drowning, snake bites or landslides.

South Asia’s monsoon rains run from June to September.

Disaster management authorities in Bihar said the state’s death toll of 367 could go up further as floodwaters recede and bodies are recovered from submerged houses.

Army soldiers and volunteers have evacuated around 770,000 people from inundated areas. Of these, some 425,000 were living in 1,360 relief camps set up in school and government buildings, said Avinash Kumar, a Bihar state official.

In neighboring Uttar Pradesh, the state government said around 2.3 million people in 25 districts have been affected by the floods when at least three major rivers overflowed their banks, entering fields and homes.

An Uttar Pradesh government spokesman blamed the unprecedented flooding on the release of water from dams in upstream Nepal.

“Rains have been intense but the release of water from Nepal has aggravated the situation,” said Manish Sharma.

Army troops have been helping to evacuate people marooned on rooftops or trees, while air force helicopters dropped packets of food, drinking water and medicines to those camping on higher ground, mostly along highways.

Meanwhile, the state administration was bracing for the threat of infections as floodwaters recede. Health workers have begun sending supplies of mosquito repellent, bleaching powder and water purification tablets to the worst-hit areas, said health official Badri Vishal.

In the eastern state of West Bengal, the top elected official, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, said 152 people had died and 15 million had been affected by floods in the past few weeks.

Another 71 people were killed in Assam as rivers breached their banks and entered low-lying villages. At the renowned Kaziranga National Park, officials said around 300 animals, including around two dozen rhinos and a Royal Bengal tiger, have been killed after floodwaters submerged nearly 80 percent of the wildlife park.

Nepal’s Home Ministry spokesman Ram Krishna Subedi said floodwaters were receding and rivers were returning to normal.

The death toll from the floods in Nepal stood at 146, with about 30 missing.

27 August 2017

http://energybangla.com/at-least-950-killed-in-south-asias-annual-monsoon-floods/

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Meet Prakash, man who conducts last rites of unclaimed bodies with respect



The long and short story when a person dies is that he or she is given a proper last rite. But imagine the grief of the family which could not find or identify the bodies of the beloved ones who had died.

Their dilemma is while unable to accept the on the loss, they have an added emotional stress on whether the last rite must have taken place — according to their traditional practices or not — in the event that the body is disposed of as unidentified.

Enter 64-year-old legal consultant Prakash Gidwani — the man who collects unclaimed bodies and ensures that they get a decent funeral irrespective of the religion the dead person might have followed.

Gidwani, a member of the disaster managment cell of BMC, collects the unclaimed bodies from various hospitals in Mumbai.

He has been doing this yeoman service for since the last 34 years. Gidwani said he has performed funerals of over 1,000 bodies so far.

With the help of his associates, Gidwani also pulls out bodies — mostly decomposed — found near the sea shore and informs the local police station as well as the fire brigade.

“I have been doing this social work since 1980. We recover bodies that generally get washed away in sea. Most of such bodies are highly decomposed. After following certain legal procedures, like registration of accidental death case at the police station concerned, we wait till establishment of his/her identity. The unclaimed bodies are generally kept at mortuaries for 15 days. Meantime, we try to find out if any missing complaint has been registered in any police station. Eventually, when we don’t get any lead to establish its identity we conduct its funeral with due respect,” said Gidwani.

He said the BMC provides only 300 kg bundle of firewood for funeral of a body. Gidwani has though some disillusionment in his work. He said mortuary vans overcharged while ferrying decomposed bodies to hospital.

“They demand Rs. 12,000 to take a decomposed body found near the sea shore because of its stench. So we have arranged one vehicle for the purpose,” he said.

Further, the duty officer of a police station gets Rs. 1,500 to conduct the final rites of an unclaimed body. But the procedure to get Rs. 1,500 reimbursed is so lengthy that most of the officers contact Gidwani to shrug off their responsibilities.

Nonetheless, Versova-resident Gidwani feels peace and blissful in cremating the unclaimed bodies with dignity.

“In this fast pace world where modernisation is at the centre, most families have become nuclear and senior citizen parents feel neglected. Such parents leave home in distress either to commit suicide or search shelter in old-age homes. We too take care of such parents by providing them better medical assistance before reuniting them with their children,” Gidwani said.

Gidwani further said to show respect to victims of the 26/11 Mumbai blast, he provided shrouds (kafan) to wrap the bodies before their funeral.

27 August 2017

http://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/meet-prakash-man-who-conducts-last-rites-of-unclaimed-bodies-with-respect/1127589

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