“What’s for dinner?”
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Focus: Tsunami catastrophe: The chaos left behind — An interesting account. Looks like weird cover-ups for no apparent reason in India. Hair-raising stories. Crocs eating the dead. Attacking the living.
Abandoned by their rulers and left to survive in the jungles
Luke Harding in Port Blair
Sunday January 2, 2005
The ObserverFamilies whose homes were washed away by last Sunday’s giant wave told stories of having to survive for days on nothing but rainwater, coconut juice and bananas. Others spoke of trekking for hours through jungles where crocodiles lurked in the rivers when it became clear that rescue was not going to arrive.
The administration in Port Blair, the Indian Territory’s capital, has so far refused to allow international aid agencies to visit the worst-affected islands. It has also banned all foreign journalists.
Then there is this:
In Sri Lanka, plastic landmines were reportedly displaced by the giant wave. Torrential rains have flooded a number of areas around the Indian Ocean, preventing access. And dangerous animals have been forced into areas occupied by people to forage for food.
It is hard to overstate how boneheaded, shortsighted and petty most sub-continent bureaucrats can be.
I once had one brag to me that he ejected a western NGO leprosy worker on a technicality. (Why? Because it showed his power, I think. )
It can be other reasons too… common is that they have some scam going on in that region that they don’t want outsiders to see.
Or, that region might be inhabited by a rival tribe or is predominantly a different religion.
Usually, they can’t be figured out.