Centre to install wave warning system soon

The Government has announced that India would soon install a sea floor pressure recording system to detect tsunamis, but key officials invol...

The Government has announced that India would soon install a sea floor pressure recording system to detect tsunamis, but key officials involved in this morning8217;s deliberations said this might take anywhere between two to five years to materialise.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said India was not looking for an 8216;8216;urgent solution8217;8217; but a precautionary system which would give advance notice in case of an impending disaster.

8216;8216;When the drought happened, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said no lives should be lost due to lack of technology. This will be the guiding philosophy while mounting the advance warning system,8217;8217; he said.

Professor V.S. Ramamurthy, Secretary of the Department, added, 8216;8216;Installing such a system is not like switching on a television set. It is far more complicated. It may take anywhere between two to five years. But we will immediately get in touch with countries like the United States and Japan and see whether the module used in the Pacific Ocean rim can be replicated in the Bay of Bengal.8217;8217;

Ramamurthy said that at the outset, it was clear that the Pacific Ocean was much deeper than the Bay of Bengal. 8216;8216;We have got a clear signal from the Government to go ahead, and we will spend most of the department8217;s budget for international research in this project.8217;8217;

The department has an annual budget of around Rs 15 crore for international research. 8216;8216;The budget is not a problem, now that we have decided to do it,8217;8217; Sibal added.

Asked why India had not gone in for such a system till now, the minister said, 8216;8216;The last time a tsunami hit the region was in 1883. After that nobody heard of tsunamis. We have ample time to get things in place. While a country like Indonesia had a warning system in place, we did not.8217;8217;

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More