Don’t expect the cyclone in Burma to have benign political side-effects

In the dark early hours of 12 November 1970 a tropical cyclone swung in from the Indian Ocean and made its way, to devastating effect, up the course of the world’s largest delta — the confluence of two huge river courses, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra — in what was then East Pakistan. The delta was heavily populated with subsistence farmers and, further, the overwhelming majority of East Pakistan lay on land less than 20 metres above sea level and was thus vulnerable to even a gentle breeze lapping the waters of the Indian Ocean. If you were asked to design the perfect country to be all but wiped out by a weather-driven natural disaster, this would be it: low-lying, densely populated, little or no preventative infrastructure, mired in poverty. If you then placed that country in the worst place in the world for serious ‘storm-surge’ problems — around the fringes of the Indian Ocean, preferably near the mouth of the Ganges (which will act as a natural funnel for the cyclone) — then, for lo, you have East Pakistan; the world’s unluckiest country.