Capturing currents

 By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation  It is essential for the Media to anticipate calamities like the ones induced by seasonal changes.  Summer implies anticipation of drought, famine and heat wave in tropical South Asia: These can  have an impact on a whole gamut of human activities: construction, industrial production, supply of  raw materials, agriculture, food security, nutrition index, public health, economy, trade, tax  infrastructure, subsidies, insurance and politically, they can keep the governments in South Asia on  the edge. Monsoon implies anticipating landslides and mudslides, flash floods, floods and possibly as a  consequence - power crisis; epidemics follow in the breach of water and sanitation infrastructure.  Each of these consequences of monsoon can have deleterious impact on human landscapes –  agricultural and industrial output, food security, public health, domestic and international trade,  food i...

  By Malini Shankar, Digital Discourse Foundation  In the immediate aftermath of a natural or man-made calamity the Media can save lives, limbs and livestock by broadcasting and publishing / disseminating Dos and Don’ts for survivors. For this – state of the art brick and click economic power houses that modern Media are - Media Houses and studios need to be self-reliant. Media houses / studios must have ready-made dossiers comprising of:   Plan A: 1. Dos and Don’ts, 2. Demographic databases, 3. Research material, 4. Contact persons database / directory, 5. Civil List of Officers / ranks, responsibilities and contact details along with timings for meeting and contact 6. Infrastructure maps, 7. Geographical atlases, 8. Revenue maps, 9. Topo sheets, (Topography survey maps are called Topo sheets in administrative parlance) 10. Database of Natural resources, Bio and Zoo Diversity, 11. Database of Anthropological / demographic diversity 12. Lin...

  DDF Editorial Media Guidelines / advisories in disaster mitigation That the Media has an onerous responsibility hardly  needs  reiteration. We have learnt in the  Preamble of this book that if  24X7  Television channels were knowledgeable about  Tsunami  and  broadcast the tsunami occurrence in Nicobars and  Sumatra,  thousands of lives could possibly have  been saved atleast  in  Tamilnadu in India, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The lesson learnt  from  that  experience is that Media personnel need extensive training  and  participation in refresher courses on  many aspects of earth  sciences /  natural calamities as well as in disaster mitigation. In the  day  and  age  of climate change Media reporting on such issues  would  assume critical responsibility. “In the roughly two hours between the earthquake and the  tsunami’s  arrival in S...

  Digital   Discourse   Foundation   By Malini Shankar In the wake of the Turkey Syria earthquake of 6 th February 2023 it has emerged that a Dutch scientist had forecast the seismic event just four days prior to the earthquake based on planetary alignment. If planetary alignment belongs to the realm of astrology or astronomy can best be left to the advocates of empirical facts for scientific documentation. But scientific facts like planetary alignment, lunar cycles, shooting stars, meteor showers, ionic content in the atmosphere, seismic pressure accumulation, and measurement thereof, are all easy to document. Why then are these phenomena not being documented by the scientific or seismological community to forecast geological calamities?   Let us go by facts alone… I hope it appeases the scientific community to lead them into desperately needed earthquake forecasting. The Great Andaman Sumatra Earthquake that triggered a massive ocean wide tsunami on 26...