Most Forwarded Email to me in the last week
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I couldn't stop making this comparison..
inches of rain in new orleans due to hurricane katrina... 18
inches of rain in mumbai (July 27th).... 37.1
population of new orleans... 484,674
population of mumbai.... 12,622,500
deaths in new orleans within 48 hours of katrina...100
deaths in mumbai within 48 hours of rain.. 37.
number of people to be evacuated in new orleans... entire city..whoa !!!
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 electricty
status 48hours later..mumbai is back on its feet and is business is as usual
USA...world's most developed nation
India...JUST A DEVELOPING NATION..
oopss...did i get the last fact wrong??? Or am I just being proud of being an INDIAN?
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No offense anyone else who forwarded this email to me ( i got this from a dozen odd people) but this was one of the most blatantly jingoistic emails I've seen in some time....you're comparing apples and oranges and concluding that oranges are sour....well apples simply CAN'T be sour, can they??
And taking glory in the fact that only 10,000 odd people were evacuated in a city of about 13 million is absolutely shameful. Much more people SHOULD actually have been evacuated. I dont know if its because of our perennially surging population but we've not quite learnt to place a premium on loss of life yet.
3 comments:
"we've not quite learnt to place a premium on loss of life yet."
Don't worry. No society places premium on lives. Atleast lives of poor people. Everybody likes to make hypocritical claims about how much they value human life. Yeah, right, tell that to the DEAD IRAQI CIVILIANS!!
Unfortunately, the fact that we don't know how to (or want to) place a particular value on human life is one of the key reasons why it is so difficult to evaluate the benefits of measures to thwart life-threatening events. However, I would not want to be the one to assign such a number...
And, BTW, you can delete the SPAM. Just be sure to hit the "delete forever" button. No one likes SPAM that comes back to haunt :)
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