Please read and help Kerala
I don’t know if anyone has heard about the floods in Kerala. If you haven’t, let me tell you about it. This is a long post, but i hope you read it - I am providing as many sources as i can:
Kerala is my home state. Although I live and mostly grew up in the city of Chennai in the neighbouring state, Kerala is my motherland, so to speak. My parents grew up there and my uncles and other relatives still live there. Kerala has the moniker “God’s own country.” It really is lush and beautiful, and attracts a lot of tourism from around the world.
During August this year, during the expected monsoon time, Kerala experienced the worst flooding seen in a century.
Around the second week of August, the monsoons which normally occur at that time took a began taking a heavy toll on rivers and dams across the state, leading to widespread flooding like never seen before. It is estimated that the rain received was about 257% more than normal.
(source for the above infographic) Opening the dams meant that areas that were already flooded needed to be evacuated. More than a million people had to be evacuated . The army and navy had to be called in to help:
The situation was rightly declared an L3 level disaster:
The losses are estimated to be around 20 billion rupees in total.
Thankfully humanity showed their best in volunteer work. Hundreds of fishermen brought their canoes and boats to help evacuate people. College students pitched in to collect relief materials. I’m lucky that my family in Kerala all live on the coast and didn’t lose their homes like millions of people did, but my uncles experienced extreme flooding and property damage as the dam waters washed through their town to the coast. All the schools and colleges in my dad’s hometown have been converted to relief camps. Onam (the state harvest festival) was so subdued this year. Us malayalis who live in other cities generally hold Onam celebrations in Malayali clubs and the like but this year, all Malayali associations unanimously decided to donate the money that would’ve been used for the festival into the relief fund. Everybody I know has donated atleast a little. My family has donated all we can. And as of 28th August, donations to the Relief Fund has reached about 7.13 billion rupees. (which is, ironically, 20% more than what the Indian Central Government initially provided as funds)
But it is not enough. The damage will take years to undo. Small businesses will take years to rebuild. And kids will take weeks or even months to go back to school. Donations in kind (food, medicines, clothes etc) are taking a long time to reach relief camps due to structural damage to roads and transport. The damage is insurmountable. It breaks my heart to watch the language news programs showing people going back to their homes and finding everything washed away, even having to find their commodes unusable. Water borne diseases are on the rise. Those who owned cottage industries have had all their tools washed away. Kids have lost their schoolbooks. Whole houses have been destroyed.
(source for the above image)
And on top of this politicians are doing what they do best - shifting around blame. My own countrypeople are saying nasty things. That the floods were caused because there is a large population of beef eaters in Kerala ( Kerala has a large population of both muslims and christians alongside hindus, and all three religions live in harmony with each other as they have for hundreds of years,) that it was caused due to a sacred temple being opened to women, etc. etc. People have shown their worst sides around the country. There are more accusations and mudslinging going on that i just cannot wrap my head around at this time. The facts do not change - millions of lives are destroyed, and now is not the time to be nasty to each other.
So tldr, the people of Kerala have had their lives destroyed and are in desperate need of funds since most sources are being held up in bureaucratic red tape.
Please donate whatever you can. Here are some websites:
1. The Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund (the main state government collection point - for international donations please read the instructions properly)
2. Kerala Flood Relief Fund from USA - Facebook (run by two indians living in the US - they reached their goal but have still left it open at the request of the kerala government - here is an article about it)
3. GoFundMe by Kerala Club of Detroit (another fund run by indian diaspora in the usa. they still havent reached their goal as of 30th august)
If you cannot donate at least spread this message to ensure it reaches someone who can help. Please let me know personally if you donate to any of these..
(All these links should work internationally. If they don’t please dm me and I’ll try to help.)
(some additional sources if you want to read further: CNN , older CNN article, BBC)
I’ll leave you with this image:
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