Our constitution calls for right to life for every citizen. Right to life means right to survive, right to dignity, and all that goes along with it. The government must meet its constitutional obligations. Citizens must perform their moral and ethical responsibilities.

Throughout our brief independent history, whenever our people have faced natural calamities, the army, our well-organised NGOs, the students, and the international community have stood with us. The ordinary citizens have always been in the forefront.

What can we do to mobilise ourselves and our partners this time? We must not let our general pessimism about national life keep us from doing what we can and must do to meet this emergency. Nor should our confrontational politics get in the way.

The first step is to remind ourselves of the greatness of our people. We receive generous and committed support not merely because of our plight, but because our people possess the resilience and courage to overcome disasters when given the chance. They did so in the past.

The second is to recognise that each of us has an urgent role to play right now.

People desperately need to protect themselves against water-borne disease -- treat children suffering from diarrhea -- and secure enough food.

The highest and the most urgent priority is information. We need to inform our people through every medium -- radio, television, newspapers, NGO field workers -- how to purify water where there is no safe water (one iodine tablet per litre), where to get water purifying iodine tablets (health clinics or NGO workers), and how to make oral saline if there are no packets available with sugar (four level teaspoons) and salt (one-half spoonful) per litre. When people are armed with information, they will do what's needed to protect their families.

By now, there are probably privately-owned water filters of some sort in middle-class homes in every district where water supplies are disrupted. Let's run them around the clock -- providing millions of gallons of purified drinking water.

Of equal priority is distribution of emergency supplies. The government functionaries cannot deal with

this emergency alone. They must set aside their distrust of elected local representatives. In emergencies, people naturally go to their neighbours and local leaders. This is one critical reason we have Union Parishads (UPs).

Our nation has roads, and we have helicopters to reach those places where there are no roads or roads are washed away. Emergency supplies must be moved quickly to Upazila headquarters in affected districts, and from there the people can ensure their UP representatives move them quickly throughout the population.

All NGO and voluntary organisation workers should gather in every Upazila and work with UNOs as one unified team to empower the people and mobilise relief efforts. They must catalyse the leadership and creativity of the people at the local level. All UN and bilateral agencies should use their channels, expertise and infrastructure to get emergency supplies to the Upazila teams.

People who have lost homes need dry shelter now, and support to rebuild their homes. Let's throw

open the schools and other institutions for temporary shelter. Let's empower the UP of every affected area to guarantee reconstruction funds for rebuilding homes. Our development partners can afford to provide the necessary funds.

Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) corners must set up right now to prevent diarrheal death when the water recedes. Planning must also start immediately to provide the farmers the seeds for plantation as they will be needed.

None of this can happen effectively if politicians interfere. There must be a total moratorium on party

rivalry declared by both major party leaders and a total ban on all forms of corruption, publicly declared by all government officials and non-government functionaries. Relief activities are a magnet for crooks -- at least during emergencies. Let's empower our people to not tolerate corruption. We can all declare ourselves to be news reporters -- ferreting out corruption and reporting it -- as we also report on the heroic successes of the people.

So my plea to those of you reading this article is to think about what it is that you personally can do to help the situation. Do not think that this is a crisis only for other people to resolve. There are many things -- from donating food or safe drinking water to helping build barricades to helping drain floodwater from our neighbourhoods -- that we can all do. Drop what you are doing -- or if that is not possible give an hour or two after work -- and join all of us in this struggle for survival. Lend a hand. Meeting this crisis can become our finest hour.

Dr. Badiul Alam Majumdar is Global Vice President and Country Director, The Hunger Project-Bangladesh.