Bengal’s Amphan tragedy needs more national and global attention

In every briefing since January on the evolving Covid 19 crisis, the WHO Chief mentions the need for global solidarity to deal with a catastrophe of this nature. National unity and global solidarity remain the buzzwords according to Dr. Tedros to solve the problem. For cyclone Amphan ravaged-Bengal, the same yardstick should apply. It has been a crisis of unprecedented scale with more than 6 crore people impacted in the state. More than 10 lakh dwellings have collapsed in 24 parganas alone. Kolkata on 21 May, the day after the cyclone, looked like a ghost town. I had ventured out around noon and the streets that I could navigate (I could not enter 50 percent of the city’s streets), were speaking out one loud tale of devastation. Park Street, Southern Avenue, Rawdon Street, Loudon Street, all upscale Kolkata neighbourhoods, looked more like jungles than anything else. While I stood on Theatre road and looked at Loudon street, a posh Central-South Kolkata neighbourhood, all I could see was fallen trees and broken electric poles. Nothing else was visible. The city, it has to be emphasised, has never seen a catastrophe of this scale and magnitud