Tsunami Blog

Official Contacts in India

How One can Help in this Crisis, by Rediff.com

Tsunami Relief, by NASSCOM (India)

Also, it is no coincidence that two of the most affected regions, Nicobar and Acheh province in Indonesia, are among the most isolated and incommunicable. Even Indians need permission to go to Nicobar. Not surprisingly, this isolation actually made those people even more vulnerable.

In India, the flow of information has been in the stranglehold of various information and communications policies. Centralising information flow, as most governments in India have tended to do, more often than not defeats the very purpose of that information. In fact, at the end it leaves even the government in a blind. It is no coincidence that even after 48 hours after the sea surges, no information was available from many parts of the affected areas, and consequently, speedy relief did not reach these areas.

In fifty years, we have barely been able to make basic telephone needs available to 5% of the population. With the recent and hesitant reforms in the last ten years, we enhanced telephone density to 10% by opening up mobile telephony. Internet access in India is among the lowest for a country that aspires to be a potential powerhouse in the information technology sector. We have done everything possible to retard the expansion of information, broadcasting and communication channels. We have spent years debating new opportunities opened up by rapid technological changes in areas like DTH, broadband, convergence, satellite access, but have actually done nothing that would enable us to seize these new opportunities.

In the aftermath of the tidal wave, the government announced its decision to set up a tsunami warning system. Point is why is it that in spite of days of prior warning, cyclones and floods continues to kill thousands of people each year? Would a new tsunami warning system really help?

Three days after the tsunami, even as reports of dire needs are pouring in from many corners, as shortage of potable water and food and threats of epidemic outbreaks are becoming a possibility, we think our national pride will be hurt if we accept help from abroad. Just as we let our people down by failing to raise an alarm in time, we now exhibit our resoluteness in sacrificing our own people rather than allow others to step in with facilities for clean water and medicine.

Information is power. Free flow of information using the whole range of communication technologies is the best way to empower the people. For a country that proposed Satya Meva Jayate, rather than be shaken by the tsunami, we should use this crisis to shake off the shackles on information. Let the truth prevail.