Dear readers

Our learnings about earth systems begin from pre-puranic times when man started working out the hows and whys of storms, eclipses, monsoon and so on. Modern earth science however has specialised its outlook with well defined study areas, which broadly encompasses geology, meteorology, oceanography and astronomy. In India each area of study falls under the purview of multiple government and autonomous institutes which, in events of disasters like the Uttarakhand tragedy believe in simply passing the buck as accountability is alien to our government setup.

Uttarakhand tragedy could have been minimised. Yes indeed it could—if only we took science seriously and if scientists took the aam admi seriously. ‘So far and no further’ attitude of the scientific domain, has made the science of prediction a farce. Scientific milestone without end-users is like having a lock but losing the key. Its people-unfriendly systems alienate the common man who would rather believe the conniving, corrupt politician than the rather ‘well read’ but totally incommunicado scientists. So we have tragedy after tragedy. The building heights in mountainous areas reach new highs each time, the fragile roads are relentlessly broadened, river systems increasingly burdened, etc. The vulnerability indexes, the micro zonations and more of all that, are all in place with crores being wasted to process them with consortium after consortium making brisk business—yet they never get past the haloed academia. We have in fact created a new world record where more than 10,000 people have lost their lives, yet no one in the decision-making system has been held accountable.

This issue of G’nY traces all the new happenings in the domain of earth science technologies. A safer future being the focus, the articles range from ocean related sciences to land driven ones contributed by renowned scientists from all over the nation.

Happy reading.