Blog

Just as life and times change every moment, the needs and requirements of day to day living change too. Safety and security is a fundamental right. The right to life and by extension, the right to limb must be the dearest thing to each one of us. We need to take many steps to protect ourselves from dangers. Wearing helmets, obeying street signs, wearing PPF in place of work, burglar alarms, fire alarms, emergency lights, photoluminescent signs or even a simple act of turning the gas cylinder off when we sleep at night or go out are examples of safety measures we are used to. But what if the nature of dangers themselves change?

We know that every enclosed space necessarily needs to be secured with tools and in-place escape mechanisms as per laws of any land globally. In India, the NBC is clear that no builder, developer or architect can complete any project unless all these are in place FIRST. However, the alarming fact is that even now, most old and new constructions don’t measure up and there have been many cases of fire or similar mishaps where people have died because the original creators cut corners, but that is an argument for another day. The topic today is that even if all that was in place till yesterday, today, the nature of the beast has changed. And the primary reason for that is environmental decline due to climate change.

Alaskan glaciers, some the size of continents, are breaking away due to global warming. Polluted seas and rivers due to indestructible human waste like plastic or polythene and oil spillages have destroyed flora and fauna in gigantic volumes and produced massive ecological imbalance that threatens the very existence of human life on the planet. A simple google search on any topic related to climate change will produce results that could really scare anyone and force him or her to relook priorities and change safety and security protocols at their personal levels immediately.

We recently saw what happened at Joshimath and if you look around, unseasonal rains spoiling crops, unexpected earthquakes and weird quirks in weather patterns causing death and destruction is a global phenomenon we see occurring every day. No doubt the disaster management teams are doing great work and we need to thank them for their commitment and hard work, but unfortunately, we alone need to work at the micro level to add-on to their achievements to actually change the pattern, a little at least. The flawed belief that my contribution does not count as it is too small, is a huge, huge mistake. Just as each one of us thinking like that is adding to the global misery, the exact opposite will work wonders. Try it and be sure that unseen acts of small good can lead to hugely visible volumes of greater good. If a spark can start off a forest fire, a drop of water can put out the spark and prevent it.