THE MALAYALA MANORAMA team, comprising Chief Reporter Joe Jacob and Picture Editor Josekutty Panackal, is in Nepal as this issue reaches you. Their words and images are heart-wrenching. Though it has been a week since the devastating floods tore through the mountain nation, how does one ignore the signs of what lies in store? Hence, this cover.
Joe and Josekutty were at Devighat in Nuwakot district, watching helplessly as survivors of the flood waded through the slush and wreckage to places where their homes once stood. They were looking for bank documents, degree certificates… some proof of a life that they once led. Some proof that they were alive. Joe summed it all up in one line: “They left carrying more grief than belongings.”
This is not Josekutty’s first time in the hills, capturing human grief and nature’s wrath. His image was on THE WEEK’s cover when Senior Assistant Editor Sanjib Kr Baruah reported the Silkyara tunnel collapse from Uttarakhand in 2023. He also covered last year’s floods in Dharali, Uttarakhand, walking 40km to reach the village, after roads were washed away.
Other than the ground report by Joe and Josekutty, we have four columns that look forward. Sadhguru has called for a Himalayan board to bring together the countries of the region and ensure the health of the hills. Nepali environmental activist Jasmine Ojha wants climate justice for the country.
S.N. Pradhan, former director-general of the National Disaster Response Force, says the Himalayas need to be effectively monitored for risks. Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People focuses on China’s megaproject—the Great Bend dam, which will be the world’s largest hydel power project. Arunachal Pradesh and Assam are downriver from the project.
Unless nations in the region come together and care for each other, we must expect more such events. And that is the point Sanjib raises in his article on the upcoming BRICS summit India is hosting. A fractured world is testing the BRICS bloc and all such organisations.
Doing the right thing is also a question of decency, and that led me to Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai’s interview-based article on Jill Biden and the vanishing age of decency, especially in politics. I had forgotten that Joe Biden first ran for the presidential office in 1988, and the campaign was derailed by a controversy. George H.W. Bush would become president in 1989, and Biden would bide his time until 2021.
This week, the United States and the world bade farewell to Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer who sowed words and reaped a harvest of essays, poems and novels. His works led readers to an everlasting love of the natural world. THE WEEK’s desk has at least one fan of Berry’s work, and it is not me.
Fan or not, it bodes well to embrace Berry’s wisdom: “Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than
we do.”
