I met 137 freedom fighters from 27 States and Union Territories on 9th August 2005 at Rashtrapati Bhavan. I saw their enthusiasm even at their ripe age, to bring back the nationalism as a living movement. Today our country is free, because the freedom fighters gave their best to the nation in their prime of youth. Honouring the freedom fighters is honouring the independent nation and its spirit of nationalism. We must thank them with respect and make their lives happy.

Nature's Fury and its Management

While we are celebrating 59th anniversary of our hard earned political independence, we have to remember the sufferings of our people affected by the recent rain and flood in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Orissa. The city of Mumbai and other areas in Maharashtra bore the brunt of nature?s fury. The people of these areas are meeting the challenge with courage and fortitude. The Prime Minister had visited some of the affected areas. I spoke to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra while he was visiting various places affected by the floods and I also shared my concern with other Chief Ministers. Maharashtra needs help at this critical juncture to mitigate the sufferings arising out of loss of life and properties inflicted by the fury of rain and flood. All the States need to express their solidarity with the people of Maharashtra in their time of distress and suffering, and collectively help in removing the pain of the people. Mumbai needs an urgent reconstruction to face unexpected heavy rain, as it happened this year.

Rainfall and Floods: Rainfall and floods are annual features in many parts of the country. Instead of thinking on interlinking of rivers only at times of flood and drought, it is time that we implement this programme with a great sense of urgency. We need to make an effort to overcome various hurdles in our way to the implementation of this major project. I feel that it has the promise of freeing the country from the endless cycle of floods and droughts. Also, as a measure for preventing flooding of the streets in the cities due to heavy sustained downpour, I would suggest the Ministry of Urban Development at the Centre and the State governments to mount a programme to rebuild and modernize the infrastructure and storm-water drainage systems including construction of under ground water silos to store the excess water. This water can be treated, processed and used at the time of shortage as practiced in many other countries. Fortunately India has adequate technology and expertise in making underground tunnels for metro rail system. This technology can be used for constructing underground water storage system.

Earthquake Forecasting: Another natural phenomenon that affects and causes damages of high magnitude without pre-warning in many parts of our country is the earthquake. To prevent heavy damage to the people and property, we need to accelerate research for forecasting earthquakes. Research work on earthquake forecasting is being done in many countries. We in India should have an integrated research team consisting of experts drawn from academia, meteorology and Space Departments for creating earthquake forecast modeling using pre-earthquake and post-earthquake data collected from various earthquake occurrences in our country. This can be validated periodically with the proven forecasting data available from other countries.