“Women and children were spotted screaming for help from treetops in Uttar Pradesh. In parts of the state, river levels rose so quickly that villagers had no time to save any belongings.
“The gush of water was so sudden we did not get the time to react,” Vinod Kumar, a resident of a flooded village in Basti district, told Enadu TV.
One woman in Uttar Pradesh who identified herself only as Savitra said she had not “eaten anything for the last two days.”
Health workers were fanning out across parts of Bangladesh and India to try to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid and cholera.
In northwestern Bangladesh, farmer Rahmat Sheikh and his family were among 2,000 people who fled their flooded village for higher ground in the Sirajganj district.
“The floods have taken away all I had,” said the 40-year-old Sheikh. “Rice paddies in the field, two cows and my house all are gone. I don’t know how we will now survive.”
Some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced or marooned by flooding, according to government figures. At least 144 people have died in India and 54 more in Bangladesh.
India’s Meteorological Department said unusual monsoon patterns this year have led to heavier than normal rains….”
What do 19 million refugees look like?
I wonder if the media would consider this worth covering extensively – not only because of the number of people in distres — but even from sheer intellectual curiosity:
How do crowds move? How do they survive?
Amazingly, they will…
Lila Rajiva: The Mind-Body Politic 
Leave a Reply