how armed firces helped peoples during indian ocean tsunami
Answers
The tsunami tragedy that struck large parts of Southern Asia abutting the Bay of Bengal and the South Eastern Indian Ocean littoral has been a tragic start for the New Year. It is feared that the total death toll in the affected areas may well cross the 200,000 mark. In many ways this is a multi-national disaster with the affected countries including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar amongst others and stretching all the away across the ocean to the East coast of Africa.
The initial estimates of the scale of the disaster were perhaps inaccurate and it was only with the passage of a few days that the actual contours of what had happened became clear to the region and the global community. The word tsunami itself was new to the lexicon and considering that the last such occurrence in this part of the world was in 1883, it was to be expected that the entire event had a macabre tinge of novelty to it and even the professionals such as meteorologists and disaster experts across the region were caught unawares.
However what merits note is the manner in which India was able to respond to this tragedy and the kind of assistance that was provided by the Indian military within the first 24 hours. Currently there is an intense debate about why India is not seeking help from foreign sources on one hand, and the response of the global community led by the USA on the other. Various views have been expressed about Indian prickliness at one level, and the parsimony of the major powers and the kind of duties and obligations that devolve upon the global community – states and civil society – in the event of such natural disasters that warrant huge amounts of humanitarian assistance.
To examine the facts about the first determinant – the Indian response. Parts of the Indian east coast and the Andaman and Nicobar islands were devastated and the first duty was to mount necessary relief and rescue operations. This was done with alacrity and the civil administration was supported by the military wherever they were located. It is the speed with which similar succour was made available to the neighbouring states that is noteworthy. Within 12 hours of the tsunami tragedy - by sunset of December 26 - the first Indian naval helicopters were in Sri Lanka with immediate relief material. And this of course has to do with the proximate nature of the island republic to the Indian peninsula. To complement this, by Tsunami Day 2 (Dec 27) two Indian Naval ships, INS Sharada and INS Sandhayak, dropped anchor in Galle and Trincomalee respectively. The relief support to Sri Lanka began in earnest with the third ship INS Sutlej also reaching Galle by Dec 28.
Simultaneously ships were diverted to Male in the island of Maldives in the southern Indian Ocean. INS Mysore, a destroyer, arrived at Male by first light on Dec 28 while two other ships INS Udaygiri and INS Aditya arrived the following day on T Day 3, Dec 29. Many of these ships had integral helicopter capability and were able to provide support from the air as well and this immediate response was invaluable in assuring the affected people that help was on the way. Their gratitude was expressed in abundant measure on the worldwide web, which played a vital role in the dissemination of information apart from the audio-visual media.