Through last week, the national media has been preoccupied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's schedule of events: first, the launch of the Make In India campaign and then, his trip to Manhattan.
Breathless commentary has followed every step that he's taken since his plane touched down in America on Friday.
But few have cared to report that just hours later, the minister of state for home Kiren Rijuju was flying over Meghalaya and Assam, surveying a grim landscape where 85 people are dead.
The people of Meghalaya say this is the worst flood in recent memory. It began with a torrential downpour on September 20. Then, a cloud burst in the Garo Hills on Sunday triggered landslides and flash floods. The devastation soon spilled over to neighbouring Assam.
According to officials of the National Disaster Response Force, 46 people have been killed in three districts of Meghalaya and 39 people in four districts of Assam. Three lakh people have been affected and nearly a lakh have been displaced.
Barring an exception or two, national TV news channels failed to send reporters to cover the floods – those that did barely carried the reports. The newspapers fared no better. This is the column space that the floods got in the Delhi edition of India's largest English daily The Times of India.
Here are some images by Biju Boro that the national media should have shown you.
Villagers wade through the submerged National Highway-37 in flood waters in Chaygoan village.
A villager salvages a plank in Bejengdola village, some 165 kms from Shillong, in Meghalaya.
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Breathless commentary has followed every step that he's taken since his plane touched down in America on Friday.
But few have cared to report that just hours later, the minister of state for home Kiren Rijuju was flying over Meghalaya and Assam, surveying a grim landscape where 85 people are dead.
The people of Meghalaya say this is the worst flood in recent memory. It began with a torrential downpour on September 20. Then, a cloud burst in the Garo Hills on Sunday triggered landslides and flash floods. The devastation soon spilled over to neighbouring Assam.
According to officials of the National Disaster Response Force, 46 people have been killed in three districts of Meghalaya and 39 people in four districts of Assam. Three lakh people have been affected and nearly a lakh have been displaced.
Barring an exception or two, national TV news channels failed to send reporters to cover the floods – those that did barely carried the reports. The newspapers fared no better. This is the column space that the floods got in the Delhi edition of India's largest English daily The Times of India.
Here are some images by Biju Boro that the national media should have shown you.
Army personnel transport residents in flooded Chaygoan village, some 30 km from Guwahati.
Villagers wade through the submerged National Highway-37 in flood waters in Chaygoan village.
A man looks at the remains of his home in Krishnai village, Goalpara district, Assam.
A villager collects belonging from his home in Mendudam village, around 165 km from Shillong, in Meghalaya.
A Garo tribe man rescues his furniture, as his car lies submerged, in Mendudam village in North Garo Hills, Meghalaya.
A villager salvages a plank in Bejengdola village, some 165 kms from Shillong, in Meghalaya.
A woman carries a child near her home in Mendudam village.
Villagers look at the bodies of a woman and her son, found dead in floodwaters in Balbala village, in Assam's Goalpara district.
