The Other Side of the Coin

Mother nature. It can be beatiful, breathtaking, wonderful, and enjoyable. However, it can be fatal. The past few months have seen some really horrible natural disasters in this world. And I am speaking only for India and America. There must be many more of them, which I have not even heard about.

First came the Tsunami. Then the rains and the floods. And the latest killer is the Hurricane Kartina on the Gulf Coast of the USA. It will be very interesting to find out if the Green House effect or the pollution is in any way linked to any of these. Even if there is a small possibility of that being true, then we, as responsible citizes of this planet, must take drastic measures to control pollution. It is for the good of our and our future generations. It will always be a raging debate as to how much pollution should we (and can we) avoid. Less pollution means more efforts and less comforts. While I agree that it is not possible to eliminate pollution completely, at the same time I also want to make the point that we need to devise smart and simple ways to avoid whatever little pollution we can. An example is to use a bicycle instead of a bike whenever commuting, wherever possible.

That having said, I want to show you an email that I got as a forward from someone regarding the comparison of Hurrican Katrina with the Mumbai rans. The email is pasted below. Below that is my response to that email. The email really made me go crazy. As I have said, this email was a classic example of how readers can be fooled by using skillful words, stats and an unfair conclusion. As we keep reading such things in the future, we must reserve the conclusion of the topic till we have seen both the sides of the coin. Thats the point I wanted to make.

The original Email :
Subject: Mumbai Rain Vs. Katrina Hurricane in New orleans
18 inches of rain in new Orleans due to hurricane katrina...
37.1 inches of rain in Mumbai (July 27th)

population of new Orleans... 484,674
population of Mumbai.... 12,622,500

deaths in new Orleans within 48 hours of katrina...1000s
deaths in Mumbai within 48hours of rain.. 370

number of people to be evacuated in new Orleans...
entire city.
number of people evacuated in mumbai...10,000

Cases of shooting and violence in new orleans...Countless
Cases of shooting and violence in mumbai.. NONE

Time taken for US army to reach new orleans... 48hours
Time taken for Indian army and navy to reach mumbai...12hours

status 48hours later...new orleans is still waiting for relief, army and electricity
status 48hours later..mumbai is back on its feet and is business is as usual

USA...world's most developed nation
India...third world country..

JAI HIND.

My reply :

Its easy to forward emails like this. You should do some more
research before sending this thing out.

Lets see what happened in Mumbai and then in NO. Mumbai got
rains. The record before July 27th was 300* mms per day. On
July 27th it was 900* mms. Thats a lot of rain-water. All
drainage systems choked and water level raised on the streets.
It was unplanned, unknown and shocking. Thats why lives were
lost on the streets.

On the GUlf Coast in the US there was a STORM. It was a
hurricane. Not just rains. What that means is very high wind
speeds. Winds that uproot houses. Winds that break glasses of
most of the buildings. Winds that carry with them (to a height
of a few meters) cars, trees, whatever they find. And worst of
all, winds that drive the sea water into the coastal cities.
It was known, planned and hence many people evacuated the
city. Those who were rich and had cars left the city before
the hurricane hit. The poor ones stayed and were drowned.

New Orleans has these Levis (I don't know the correct spelilng
but basically they are some very powerful and force-resistant
walls which protect the city from the sea water). These are
needed because NO is located BELOW sea level. Probably whether
or not - and how much if at all- Mumbai is below the sea level
and how much is NO below the sea level would have been an
interesting stat but not surprisingly, it is missing from the
email! So the Hurricane broke these Levis and the water from
the Sea entered the city - a city which is below sea level.
Note, this is not just the rain water, it is water from the
sea, driven by storm winds moving at a speed of hundreds of
KMs an hour. In Mumbai, there were only rain waters.

This email is a classic example of how to fool readers using
irrelevant stats. The stats are correct but they are not
enough and have been interpreted in a wrong way.

Please tell me the address of the authour and the source of
this email. And do not draw conclusions unless you see both
sides of the coin.

Apologies for marking a reply-all but I just couldn't resist it.

- Ashutosh