Killer Katrina and Bush Bash

The past week has witnessed Katrina ravages dominating media highlights.President Bush has been criticized left,right and centre for all his actions right from the availability of helicopter and security personnel to his administrative preparedness for this natural clamity which many claim was predicted way back in 2002.Paul Krugman one of the most celebrated economist and prolific writer wrote :

Experts say that the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the crucial window during which prompt action can save many lives. Yet action after Katrina was anything but prompt. Newsweek reports that a "strange paralysis" set in among Bush administration officials, who debated lines of authority while thousands died.

What caused that paralysis? President Bush certainly failed his test. After 9/11, all the country really needed from him was a speech. This time it needed action - and he didn't deliver.

The New York times carried an article about Clinton's effort in helping the destitutes and Katrina struck families.

Mr. Clinton was at Reliant Center next to the Astrodome in Houston, where about 3,800 homeless New Orleans residents had decamped, standing next to former President George Bush as they announced the creation of the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to help hurricane victims. After that, the two former presidents, along with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, toured the shelter, while President Bush visited storm-struck areas of Mississippi and Louisiana, providing a flow of television images suggesting a concerned White House on the march.

Mr. Clinton's visit to the Houston shelter on Monday is the latest time the former president has come to the current president's aid in his second term, from early in the year when Mr. Bush was criticized for his slow response to the tsunami, to initially defending the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina at the White House last week, to praising the credentials of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., Mr. Bush's choice for the Supreme Court. And it offered what many Democrats described as a vivid, if slightly disconcerting, insight into the complicated and increasingly transactional relationship between the Bush and Clinton families.

Often it makes me wonder if at all our Indian administration will realise the worth of each citizens life.We have become inured to the ravages of natural disasters and no amount of damage seems to make any dent to our phlegmatic administrative disaster management system.