Act wisely, don’t spread panic

This Wednesday, I was confounded by the advisories that were being aired by breathless anchors. “It’s an orange alert, sir,” a young boy told me. Orange alert? Though the word sounded vaguely American, I didn’t know what it meant.

Watching the quizzical expression on my face, the American university-returned South Mumbai teen, who was frantically tweeting the ‘orange alert’, said, “It’s serious stuff, man. It’s about the cyclone this evening!”

That’s when it clicked — the city was facing Cyclone Phyan. ‘Orange alert’ was part of the US system of grading possible threats — red, yellow, blue and green denoted the magnitude of various threats. When I strolled back to work, I casually conferred with Ashwin Aghor, who covers the environment beat for us and asked him if things were really as grave as everyone was making it out to be. Ashwin showed me the news article which had been published in that day’s DNA. The article clearly said Mumbai should be ready for the rains, the cyclone is likely to ‘touch and go’ as expected, thus assuaging my worries.

The last time streets were deserted on a working day was after 26/11, when all of us had no other option but to laze in the safety of our home and follow the action on television. Then it struck me — in the absence of credible information, rumours gain wings. Uninformed tittle-tattle gets passed around as facts. There is no disaster management official issuing updates on a regular periodicity.

It is this absence of information that brought out the latent apprehensions and perceived fears among Mumbaikars. Contrast this with what happened in America. In the wake of 9/11 attacks, the country embarked on a plan to chart out various types of disasters — both manmade and natural. Seasoned experts were enlisted and they drew up possible scenarios. Security drills were devised and assiduously executed.

For example, if it is announced in a corporate firm on the 109th floor of a high-rise that there is a bomb in the building, you won’t see a mad dash for the staircase or elevator. People will instead head in an orderly fashion to the fire exit. Keeping the example in view, the attitude of Mumbaikars to Cyclone Phyan knocking at its doorstep is not surprising. The all-encompassing pall of doom that this city has learnt to live with since the July, 2005 deluge refuses to go away. This subtle difference between reckless courage and sensible paranoia is breached every time there is a threat (no matter how remote) of a disease striking or a natural disaster happening.

Take swine flu for example. People stopped eating street food fearing the contagion! Can you imagine the logical dexterity of people who stop eating out to prevent flu? You can’t blame them — our experts in the state health department were flummoxed with the outbreak. This is why they went around like headless chicken and ordered closure of schools and colleges, circulated memos to check travellers at inter-state bus depots and railway terminals.

Clearly there was no coherent strategy in place. At best, the officials remind me of American poet John Godfrey Saxe’s poem where six blind men try to touch and describe an elephant. Of course, erroneously.