Heat wave conditions in India – Telangana and Andhra Pradesh worst hit

                                                         K R Sudhaman

Gone are the days when India is to witness starvation deaths. The 1942 Bengal famine is the one of the worst in the world taking thousands or perhaps lakhs of lives in India. We have come a long way thanks to green revolution that there are no starvation deaths for want of food.

While India has conquered this problem there are deaths in India due to cold wave and heat wave conditions and this seems to be a recurring problem. Lately heat wave has become a frequent problem in the country in most parts of hinterland during summer. The country witnessed the one of the worst heat wave recently killing over 2,300 people and worst hit were Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Global warming is said to be one of reasons and this year's heat wave in India is considered to be among the top five deadliest in the world. We may blame the global warming for it but this is preventable if only India moves rapidly towards providing shelter and drinking water for all. This is the mission, which has remained unfulfilled even after 68 years of independence and it speaks volumes about the callousness of the government in not valuing the importance of human life.

It, therefore, goes to the credit of the government that they have taken these two unfulfilled objectives as a mission and promised to provide shelter for all and drinking water in all villages by 2022. These two have been done on a war footing as this will prevent deaths in heat wave or cold wave conditions. We cannot fight nature's fury like earthquake, flash floods, cloudburst and the resultant and unexpected deaths. But we can certainly ensure there are no deaths on these score by providing shelter and adequate drinking water so that we conquer this problems as well just as we done in the case of starvation deaths due to famine.