Disaster on Boxing Day

Tsunami, as probably most people in India have come to know under unfortunate circumstances in the last week, means "harbour wave" in Japanese. It can be tremendously destructive if coastal regions are heavily populated(as they usually are because of fishing). Still, the destruction caused by the tsunami wave in South Asia is hard to imagine, even more so because possibility of a Tsunami wave striking India was so low and therefore its capacity to cause destruction is not understood by most people.

Earthquakes occur more frequently and the images of the trail of destruction they leave behind have been shown countless times on television. So there is some understanding of the earthquake's power. While it might be convenient (and human nature) to blame someone for this massive loss of life, the blame is to be shared universally. But the time for the blame game (over preventing loss of life and evacuation of people in coastal areas) is not now (and probably never).