THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary-July 13, 2017- Topic 1
Sorrowful song
On Assam's flood situation
Assam’s Bihugeet songs celebrate the many colours of the
Brahmaputra and its life-sustaining character, with stirring renditions by
Bhupen Hazarika in praise of the grit of its people in their most challenging
moment — when the river turns furious during the monsoon and floods the plains. That season is once again upon the State,
and the death toll has crossed 40. Lakhs have been put off their normal stride,
with tens of thousands displaced from their homes. The deluge has circled vast
parts of the Kaziranga National Park, dispersing its wildlife into towns.
There
are dramatic images of a rhinoceros walking through the streets. A return to
normality must now await abatement of the rising waters, and the drafting of a
comprehensive relief plan by the Assam government with help from the Centre and
the specialised units of the disaster response forces. Yet, short-term measures
can have no lasting impact on the Brahmaputra’s course each year, as several
factors influence its tendency to overrun its banks in the June-July season.
Studies done after the 2012 floods, which affected some 2.3 million people,
show that the river’s course from the Himalayan ranges has been bringing lots
of sediment, raising its bed above the level of the plains. The Brahmaputra has
the second highest sediment transport per unit of drainage area in the world.
With aberrant climate and intensive monsoonal flows, flooding poses a major
challenge.
Assam receives a massive amount of rain every year, and an estimated
average of 230 cm is recorded in the Brahmaputra basin. Combined with the
characteristics of the river — it enters the State as a single channel but has
a wide, braided course later and shrinks near Guwahati before expanding again —
such high precipitation produces aggressive floodwaters. Its course has been
studied extensively after the 2012 floods, providing insights into how remote
sensing can help identify the most vulnerable areas and where remedial measures
could work most effectively. Considering that the Assam elections in 2016 were
strongly centred on environmental concerns, and the BJP-led government in the
State has earlier spoken against big dams, getting a scientific understanding
of the flooding phenomenon to inform policy is vital. On the ground, previous
attempts at finding solutions appear to suffer from lack of attention to
longer-term measures, such as better river management. The focus of civil
society has been confined to immediate relief and rehabilitation. The
government, on its part, must go beyond the necessary restoration of infrastructure
such as embankments, bridges, buildings and communications structures. Relief
measures will have to sensitively handle the tensions around identity conflicts
between those claiming ethnicity vis-Ã -vis settled Bengalis.
Also, Kaziranga needs better
protection. Several wild animals have died in the
floods, bringing back memories of the dreadful losses of 2012, when over 500
hog deer, 19 rhinos and 22 sambar perished.
Vocabulary
Rendition: a
performance or interpretation, especially of a dramatic role or piece of music.
Example: A wonderful rendition of “Nessun Dorma.”
Synonyms: performance, rendering, interpretation, presentation
Grit: small,
loose particles of stone or sand.
Example: She had a bit of grit in her eye
Synonyms: sand, dust, dirt, gravel, pebbles, stones
Displaced: take
over the place, position, or role of someone or something.
Example: In the northern states of India, Hindi has largely displaced English
Synonyms: replace, take the place of, supplant, supersede
Deluge: inundate
with a great quantity of something.
Example: He has been deluged with offers of work
Synonyms: inundate, overwhelm, overrun, flood, swamp, snow
under
Abatement: the
ending, reduction, or lessening of something.
Example: Noise abatement
Synonyms: subsiding, dying down/away/out, lessening, easing off
Tendency: an
inclination toward a particular characteristic or type of behavior.
Example: For students, there is a tendency to socialize in the evenings
Synonyms: propensity, proclivity, proneness, aptness, likelihood
Sediment: matter
that settles to the bottom of a liquid; dregs.
Example: The ice freezes the wine and sediment at the base of the cork
Synonyms: dregs, lees, precipitate, deposit, grounds, residue
Intensive: concentrated
on a single area or subject or into a short time; very thorough or vigorous.
Example: She undertook an intensive Arabic course
Synonyms: thorough, thoroughgoing, in-depth, rigorous
Precipitation: the action or process of precipitating a substance from a solution.
Example: Acidic proteins are known to trigger carbonate precipitation via matrix
mediated processes in microbialites.
Aggressive: ready or likely to attack or confront; characterized by or resulting
from aggression.
Example: He's very uncooperative and aggressive
Synonyms: hostile, belligerent, bellicose, antagonistic, truculent
Phenomenon: a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially
one whose cause or explanation is in question.
Example: Glaciers are unique and interesting natural phenomena
Synonyms: occurrence, event, happening, fact, situation, circumstance
Embankment: a wall or bank of earth or stone built to prevent a river flooding an
area.
Example: There are 140,000 addresses in Hull relying on walls and embankments to
prevent flooding every day of the year.
Ethnicity: the
fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or
cultural tradition.
Example: The interrelationship between gender, ethnicity, and class
Perish: suffer
death, typically in a violent, sudden, or untimely way.
Example: A great part of his army perished of hunger and disease
Synonyms: die, lose one's life, be
killed, fall, expire, meet one's death
