Cold kills dozens in India

We tend to think of excessive heat as the main weather hazard in India, but every winter, people die of the cold.    This year the death toll is believed to have passed 170.

Most of the victims – at least 114 - have been in Uttar Pradesh, with others in Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand.    As usual, the old and the homeless are most at risk, with many of the dead found in parks or on the street.  

Last week, Delhi had its coldest day for 44 years.   Night shelters in the city are overcrowded, and those who cannot get in, have been lighting fires in the street to try to keep warm.

Meanwhile in the Ukraine, at least 37 people have perished from the cold.   (See also my blogs of 4 January, 2010 and 3 January, 2011.)

*Canadian review of new paperback edition of my book Disaster! - http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/51986

Indian cold + reminder

Every year, in India, hundreds of people die in summer from the extreme heat. Then in the winter, the poor and the homeless perish from the extreme cold. So far this winter, the toll is said to be at least two dozen.

Particularly badly hit have been Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, while in Delhi temperatures have gone down to almost -8C, and at Leh in Kashmir, the thermometer had dipped to -23. Homeless people have taken to gathering around street fires to keep warm, and night shelters for the poor are overflowing.

Last winter up to 100 people died from the cold, with most victims coming from Uttar Pradesh. (See my blog of Jan 4, 2010.)

*A reminder that I’m giving a free talk on London's Disasters at Shoe Lane Library, 1, Little New Street, London EC4A 3JR tomorrow (January 4) at 1230.

Indian air crashes

There appear to be just 7 survivors from the Air India Express air crash at Mangalore in the south of the country, meaning that 159 passengers and crew have been killed. The Boeing 737 arriving from Dubai overshot the runway and burst into flames in a wooded area beyond.

It is not clear what caused the accident. Light rain was falling, but the authorities say visibility was satisfactory, and there was no distress call from the pilot. However, some survivors said they thought they heard a sound like a tyre bursting before the crash. The airport is on a hilltop and can present problems for pilots.

India’s worst ever air crash, and the deadliest mid-air collision in history, happened on November 12, 1996 over the town of Charkhi Dadri, near Delhi. A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakhstan Airlines Ilyushin Il-76 collided killing all 312 passengers and crew on the jumbo and the 38 people on the Ilyushin.

The official inquiry blamed the Kazakh pilot saying that he had failed to follow air traffic instructions, and suggesting that the crew’s poor command of English might be a factor. The Saudi pilot was praised by villagers who said he had managed to steer his stricken aircraft away from their homes so that it crashed in an empty field.

India - forgotten terrorism

We are used to hearing about Islamic terrorism in India, but another bloody insurgency has attracted relatively little attention. Over the last 20 years, Maoist rebels have fought a campaign in which more than 6,000 people have been killed.

The Maoists want to establish their own state and are active across large parts of central and eastern India. In their latest attack, they killed 16 people at a village in Bihar. A survivor, whose son died, said the assailants tied up the victims – labourers and poor farmers - then shot them. India’s Prime Minister has said the Maoists are now the most serious security problem facing the country.

Last month, one of their leaders, Kobad Ghandy, was arrested in Delhi. From a prosperous background, he was educated at one of India’s most exclusive schools and then trained as an accountant in London. According to friends, it was there that he became radicalised, denouncing India as "semi-feudal, semi-colonial".

Building a police state (3) + Tamburlaine

As Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith tries to justify an expenses claim of at least £116,000, evidence of the extent to which she is creating a police state in Britain grows ever more clear. Ms Smith is under fire for claiming that her sister’s home, where she sleeps in a spare bedroom while she is in London, is her main residence rather than the constituency house where she lives with her family.

Meanwhile, Tony Benn, a redoutable campaigner for civil liberties, who had served a mere 48 years as an MP before his retirement from Parliament, was stopped and searched by police on his way to the House of Commons because his presence in the area made him a potential terrorist suspect.

A group of Stoke City football fans found themselves in an even more Kafkaesque situation. They were having a drink in a pub on their way to a match in Manchester. The publican has apparently testified that they were well-behaved, however, police detained them in the pub, and required each one to sign a statement saying they were "part of a group of football fans … causing a disturbance". A fan who questioned whether they had to sign a document asserting something that was untrue was threatened with arrest. Then they were put on buses and sent back to Stoke so they missed the match, and all it’s all perfectly legal under Labour’s “Violent Crime Reduction Act” of 2006. Nor is this an isolated instance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/27/civil-liberties-football-violence-police

On this day....604 years ago, Tamburlaine the Great died. Born in a village about 50 miles from Samarkand in 1336, he would lead 35 campaigns and amass 27 crowns. Those who tried to resist him would be massacred and have their cities destroyed. After taking Aleppo, he engaged in learned debate with some captured academics while his soldiers ran amok murdering the citizens. He devastated Delhi so severely that it did not recover for a century, then razed Baghdad and built a pyramid of 90,000 severed heads on its ruins. Tamburlaine died on his way to invade China when he was 69. For more details see
A Disastrous History of the World.