Following Christiano Junior’s death the Football Federation is insisting on ambulances at all grounds. This could make more of a difference than the Government of India’s promise to establish a tsunami warning system. If that sounds cynical there is some excuse.

The scale of the disaster — 150,000 lost so far — should not blind us to the rarity of a tsunami in the Bay of Bengal. When did one last batter India’s coasts? Some say tsunamis swallowed the legendary Chola capital of Poompuhar, others of a mysterious wave that might have struck as recently as 1941. Let us not mistake unsubstantiated fact and speculation for historical fact. Glean the records and you find that the last tsunami to strike South Asia was caused by the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.

To quote Simon Winchester’s book Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded: “By the time the long waves reached India they were diminishing fast —fourteen inches high in Madras, a series of ten or so six-inchers at Calcutta...” Galle in Sri Lanka — where thousands died in 2004 — witnessed a solitary casualty in 1883. Given this record, which finance minister would have seen any justification in shelling out the millions of dollars it would take to set up and maintain an early-warning system in the Indian Ocean?

There is no such system in place even in the Atlantic Ocean, though the nations on its rim include the wealthy European Union and the United States. This is despite the fact that the 1755 earthquake in Portugal caused a tsunami which devastated not just neighbouring Spain but even northern Africa. Why is everyone trying to pin down Indian ministries if Europe, despite this history and for all its money, saw no reason to establish a warning system?

That said, the events of December 26 and the immediate aftermath did throw up some questions. These are nothing to do with ministers of any particular persuasion, they should be answered by the bureaucrats and the scientific community.

First, the Meteorological Department operates by archaic rules. One outdated regulation says the department needs to alert ministers only if a quake strikes Indian territory. Since the convulsion of December 26 had its epicentre well away from Indira Point, nobody disturbed ministerial slumbers on a Sunday morning. But no matter how nutty the rule, why didn’t anyone in the scientific community show some initiative when a quake so near India measured 9.0 on the Richter Scale?

Second, the establishment gave a marvellous exhibition of running around like headless chickens after the first reports of the disaster reached Delhi. Stupidity reached a crescendo when the warning report was sent to the residence of M.M. Joshi, who held the science and technology portfolio in the Vajpayee ministry, rather than to Kapil Sibal, the present S&T minister. If news of a change in government takes over seven months to percolate, did anyone expect India’s bureaucrats to respond quickly to an earthquake several thousand miles away?

Third, the tsunami revealed a hole in India’s defenses. Believe it or not, the Indian Air Force base in the Nicobar Islands was not equipped with an emergency communications device to alert Delhi. The station is the first line of defence, and the first target of an enemy attack would be the communications network (including the power plants). Had a human agency struck there was no way to tell Delhi.

Distributing a couple of satellite phones — hand-held devices operating on battery power — would have done the trick. Delhi could have been informed long before the tsunami struck Tamil Nadu, opening a window of opportunity for emergency evacuation. (At the very least, children playing cricket on Marina Beach could have been hauled to safety.) And if the Nicobar base isn’t worth the cost of a few satellite phones why put up any air-strip over there at all?

If Delhi chugged along on December 26 it zoomed off on December 30 without even thinking. I was in Kerala when the Kerala chief minister appeared on television to warn of a tsunami that might strike at noon. There was panic as everyone made tracks to higher ground. The warning was sent to all coastline states by the Union home ministry on the basis of a rumour which the S&T ministry had dismissed as hogwash. (The home ministry put the uppity science ministry in its place, sending a joint-secretary to inform the media that the tsunami warning stood up to the New Year.)

Kapil Sibal is an eloquent man but he must be hunting for other equivalents of “hogwash” given the demands being made. Tamil Nadu wants a sea-wall along the length of its coast, a demand sure to be echoed from West Bengal to Gujarat. December 26 saw waves over 40 metres high, well over the halfway mark of the 73-metre Qutub Minar. Is anyone proposing a Qutub-sized wall on India’s coasts? The Swaminathan Committee’s suggestion of mangroves has no takers presumably because no contractor benefits from planting trees.