In the northern Bangladesh district of Kurigram, disaster had struck in late July 2002. Hundreds of kilometres to the west, in Rajasthan, drought stalked the land, but northern Bangladesh was flooded with excess water pouring in from the Subcontinent's northeastern stretches. Millions of survivors abandoned their homes for the relative security of marginally higher ground. The death toll, at that point reaching only into the low hundreds, included nearly as many deaths by diarrhoea as by drowning. Several people had died of snake bites, and relief workers were wading through submerged villages delivering what little aid there was. There was not nearly enough food or medicine for all those in need. "We could provide relief to only a small number of flood victims", explained a relief worker in Sirajganj.
Yet while the mounting human toll of Asia's swollen rivers daily added new names to its death registers, the world's rich averted their eyes, preferring to see instead the threatened historic districts and city centres of the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria. In scenes made familiar through up-to-the-minute satellite coverage, floodwater filled subway stations in Prague's old city, endangered postcard landmarks such as the Charles Bridge and the National Opera, and devastated corners of the city dubbed by BBC World "a jewel of Central Europe". Just across the north-western Czech border, one of the German cultural capitals, Dresden, mobilised thousands of emergency workers and volunteers to save famous architectural landmarks like the Zwinger Palace and the Semper Opera House. Czech officials also organised the populace for flood fighting, and went so far as to airlift animals from the Prague zoo to safety. The summer floods, now safely in recess, claimed about 100 lives in the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Russia and Romania together.
Without delay, the wealthy world stepped in to set things right in Central Europe. The US and several Scandinavian countries descended on Prague with heavy pumping equipment. The White House pledged generous financial aid and President George W Bush even called his Czech counterpart, Vaclav Havel, to assure him that the United States would rush supplies and monetary assistance to the Czech Republic for areas devastated by flooding. Not to be outdone by transatlantic generosity, the EU, which the Czech Republic may join as early as 2004, stepped in with USD 516 million in advance aid for German farmers, and another USD 55 million for the Czech Republic. The Germans, in turn, dug deep to find USD 500 million in immediate aid, and a whopping USD 6.9 billion in long term assistance. Down in Rome, the Pope offered prayers for the displaced of Central Europe, and European Commission president Romano Prodi vowed to raise USD 500 million for a natural disaster fund available to "EU states and those negotiating entry" – and then pledged to double that amount to an even billion within a few years. The Czech Republic, the most prosperous country of the former Soviet block, has a per capita GDP (purchasing power parity formula) of USD 12,900; Germany's is USD 23,400.
While the economic details of the European floods may be unfamiliar to many, the stories of heroism to save threatened museums, music halls and zoo animals are hardly unknown, even in the ignored corners of the South. All the international news channels (including BBC World, Deutche Welle and CNN International) continuously offered in-depth coverage of the tragedy on their global broadcasts. CNN has even gone so far as to establish a special European floods section on its website, an honour typically reserved for US presidential elections and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.