NITISH device to alert farmers on flood, lightning, heatwaves, coldwaves

The device was recently launched in presence of the CM in Patna earlier this week. When the CM learnt about the name of the device, he smiled and said the state government has its eyes fixed on strengthening its disaster management system.

“The state government has built a high-tech disaster management system inside a building on the premises of Sardar Patel Bhavan (police headquarters), which can withstand an earthquake of over 8.0 magnitude on the Richter scale,” Nitish had said.

Bihar State Disaster Management Authority Vice-Chairman Uday Kant Mishra said: “The NITISH pendant will sound an alert to its users half-an-hour before lightning or flooding. The pendant will get charged from body heat. The device will sound an alert in three ways: it will send voice messages; its colour will change from green to red; and the device will keep warming till its user switches it off.”

Mishra said the NITISH device is waterproof and is designed keeping in mind farmers. He said recurrent deaths because of lightning and flash floods had been the trigger for the disaster management authority to design it.

A disaster management department official explained that though there’s an App called Indravraj to sound similar alerts, it has been only helping in minimising deaths and injuries caused by lightning and thunderstorm. “We have kept in mind agriculture workers,” he said.

Since 2020, roughly 1,000 people died of lightning strikes in Bihar, including 459 in 2020.

The name of the device has invited sharp political reactions, especially at a time when Nitish switched sides to prove his supremacy in Bihar politics despite the JD(U) witnessing a decline in the number of MLAs from 117 in 2010 to 71 in 2015 to 45 in the 2020 state elections.

RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari told The Indian Express: “Naming a device after Nitish Kumar is the height of sycophancy. Government officials and bureaucrats should have at least stayed away from it. Nitish Kumar calls himself a socialist. Does socialism teaches such traits?”

JD(U) national spokesperson Rajib Ranjan, however, said since it was Nitish’s brainchild of having a device like this, it was befitting to name the device after him. “People should not try to find political meaning in it,” he said.