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Anand Kesavan dropped his cellphone into the swirling waters that had submerged a pocket in central Kerala. While it rained incessantly, he was there, as part of voluntary rescue operation, pulling out people from the deluge. The 39-year-old Thrissurian managed to retrieve the gadget, but lost its critical use during the next two days’ relief work. The little device came in handy not just to make frantic calls to friends or relatives during the week-long downpour; it served a far more crucial purpose. Equipped with an internet connection, the cellphone helped in letting the armed forces locate families and lone souls, marooned in spots unfamiliar to the army, navy and air force, called in by the state. Social media, too, played saviour. Many resorted to Facebook and WhatsApp to share their location. Tech-savvy among the distressed responded well to the mobile numbers put up by the state’s Disaster Management Authority, asking people to send their locations through WhatsApp. Help-seeking Facebook videos of a homemaker and her hungry kids or an old man looking for medicine yielded intended results. Several volunteer groups functioned primarily relying on social media for their operations. Profile picture of Sankaran Nair on Facebook suggests he is middle aged. His post on the social media site made news for the wrong reasons, “Natural calamities affected on (sic) the Christians and Muslims-dominated districts in Kerala...” A tweet mentioned that “the flood was Ayyappa’s fury over judicial interference with women’s entry into the Hindu lord’s hill-shrine at Sabarimala.” Another one went to exhort people to “stop donating to Kerala. Beef party hit back.”
Those who tweeted on these lines had no idea about the southern state’s true socio-religious fabric. Unfortunately, some Malayalis, too, commented insensitively.
GPS-assisted pranks too weren’t rare. As Sqdn Ldr Ron Robert of an Air Force team recalled: A man waved his red shirt, signalling a pilot to descend his chopper over his house in South Kerala. In the trying times, all he wanted was a selfie with the ‘rescuer’.
Not very far, in Chengannur, four villages were completely submerged under water in Alappuzha district. A 28-year-old Joby Mussa got into the helicopter because, “I thought they were asking me to come for a joyride.” Fake alerts were also spread as ‘news reports’ across social media.
The way ahead
The water-rich state should ideally go for large-scale distribution of aqua purifiers. It will also avoid the waste created by discarded plastic bottles.— Anshu Sharma | Co-founder of seeds
A calamity is also an opportunity to create a new future. The build-back should be safer, better and greener, with a futuristic vision spanning to another few decades or a century. That would necessitate land-use restrictions, fresh building codes.—Muralee Thummarukudy | Disaster management expert
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