The Disaster and the Displaced
2020 has enforced upon us a crash course on the human and economic cost of disasters. The pandemic and the lockdown have exposed the horrors of the worst-case scenario for India’s internally-displaced migrants. We need to be better prepared for the disasters looming ahead. By Shefali Saldanha
Short story by Debi Mukherjee: “Unlike the little girls I see outside temples, draped in their pano bhaju’s stringing garlands of Marigolds, I dare not play with the flowers in our garden. Papa cautions me against the rows of Mogras, Shoe-flowers, Frangipanis and a multitude of others. He says that I must not be lured by a flower’s fragrance.”