Then, I got several email messages from young, fired-up Indian students abroad, asking for my journalist's advice on how to send their dollars directly to the families of soldiers killed in action. Now, there are none that ask how to send dollars to help the cyclone victims. There are no parades of ad agency and PR firm types down Bombay's MG Road to raise money, as there was during the war. Also, only months ago, whether and how much you had contributed to a Kargil fund became a test of patriotism. Perhaps I am.
People die, but never in thousands as in India.
Because here, there are at best only limited, ineffective, efforts to evacuate them before the storm hits. Because a lot of people in coastal areas in India live in flimsy huts that are no match for cyclones. Because too, a lot of people in India are so poor that they are no match for cyclones. Yes, as with so many things in India, high death tolls in a cyclone have a lot to do with widespread poverty. The implication being, should you have missed it, that poverty is a natural condition the world over and we should not worry about it too much.