Uttarakhand tragedy: Shocked TV actors react

Man proposes, God disposes- if ever this truism could have been applied, it must be in today’s flood ravaged districts of Uttarakhand. Thousands of people have been marooned and many more missing leading to fear that the death toll might have substantially grown, with already more than 200 deceased. In this sad scenario, we spoke to a few TV actors on what they feel about this misfortune situation. Aastha Choudhary said, “My heart weeps for the poor victims. The government needs to step up to the plate and provide some kind of succour. New reports mention that the relief and rehabilitation efforts are finally picking up speed. The brave jawans of the Indian Army and other security agencies are at the fore front risking their lives to save the distressed. I salute their efforts.” Adaa Khan texted us saying, “It is really sad and shocking! So many people are still missing and many lives have been lost. My heartfelt condolences to their families. I feel it’s high time the government should be prepared for such natural calamities. We need to have proper disaster management programs in place.” “Although I do not have much detail about this incident, but generally speaking the unholy nexus between politicians and developers does lead to green laws being side stepped. And when nature wrecks its fury, the chaos gets manifold. The government needs to get stricter, remember how polluted our national capital was before CNG was made compulsory for public buses. Firstly we need to see that the activities of the government are time bound. We need to focus on how we should use investments efficiently. And these politicians escape the music during voting time is because the people are bothered about basic needs of food, clothing and shelter rather talks of global warming,” said Samir Soni. Here Astha adds, “Given the ecological sensitive nature of the Uttarakhand valley, I support the call of environmentalists to restrict the number of pilgrims who go for Dharm Yatra every year. For large number of visitors puts pressure on the fragile hill tops of Himalayas. Green laws also need to be implemented strictly, lest we will have more disasters waiting to unfold given the rampant tree felling in pan India.” Sara Khan joins the debate adding, “We first need to provide relief to the suffering people there. Pining blame and talking about what could have been done can come later. All people including the film and TV industry now need to get together and generate the 1000 of crores required in the short, medium and long term to get things back on track. I also feel that just saying government is wrong is not the answers; we ourselves need to introspect for there are a lot of us who grease palms to get clearances. And last but not the least a balance between development and ecology will need to be found as India needs to grow to feed its ‘rapidly’ growing population. Also rapacious growth all the time is not possible, for example while building dams, we also need to look on the interest of the tribes living there. Last but not the least; we spoke to Ragini Khanna who had a different take on this. “I have watched the videos online and they are scary; entire families have been swept away. Visuals that we normally associate with Hollywood films, (buildings collapsing like pack of cards) are being played out for real time on TV. This tragedy just goes that at the end of the day, man will always be feeble in front of Mother Nature. And if you mess with her, she hit backs and how. In a matter of minutes, entire lives were ruined. We plan for years but have no idea what will happen the next minute. So I guess we should be humble and good to all.” Our thoughts go out to the sufferers of Uttarakhand tragedy!!!