The Man Made Natural Disaster

DHANANJAY RANA

Standard VIII, DAV Public School , Sector 6, Dwarka, New Delhi

The Man Made Natural Disaster

While the whole nation has been left flabbergasted by the so called “natural disaster” in Jammu and Kashmir, a few know the reality. Having spent 9 years in J&K, I remember seeing causeways in the roads for excess water in case of torrential rains. But when the roads were repaired, those causeways were filled and the authorities never minded to reconstruct them. How do they expect the water to flow out without a single causeway? Taking the case of the Kashmir Valley, a place with already so little space for the rain water to seep into the ground and a fragile ecosystem, was destroyed and replaced by concrete buildings and even the verandas were filled with concrete. Many don’t know but the percolation of concrete is more than 200 years. To understand this better, let’s take the example of a flower pot. If we seal the hole at its bottom and plant a sapling and water it every day, the sapling would eventually die because of water lodging as there won’t be any way for the excess water to flow out as the already little opening for the water to flow out was sealed. That’s what happening in Kashmir. This isn’t merely a natural disaster- it’s a “Man Made Natural Disaster”.

---- Dhananjay Rana