Editorial
Life on chill
The affected need emergency relief
The cold wave, which has claimed lives of a few hundred people across the country over the last few days, has made us realise once again how poor the poor and the marginalised of our society really are. They do not have basic warm clothes to negotiate the chill. While the very thought of people, old and young, freezing to death sends a shudder down our spines, what hurts even more is a lack of the society's collective endeavour to see the poor and the marginalised through the wintry spell. The prime minister has touched off a relief operation which needs to be taken forward. Many a minister has already taken a cue from her and distributed warm clothes to the homeless people in the capital. More leaders of both the ruling and opposition parties might follow suit. Unfortunately, as we have seen on many such occasions before, photo opportunities get the better of philanthropic considerations while the neediest of the needy remain outside the relief coverage.
The cold spell has also cruelly exposed our inability to plan ahead for such an eventuality. The measures have always been ad hoc rather than part of a comprehensive disaster management plan. The government appears more in the habit of acting after a problem snowballs into a crisis. No, this is not to suggest that the cold wave poses a calamity; at least not yet. However, the authorities should have anticipated the toll a cold of more-than-a-mild intensity could take on the poor. Anyway, in the immediate term, the government, NGOs and voluntary organisations should undertake a countrywide programme to collect warm clothes, new and used, from those who can afford to donate them for the needy people. In the longer term, there should be a programme to raise funds to build multi-purpose centres that can also be used as shelter-homes for the chill-bitten poor.
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