Political Diary

New Delhi, 22 June 2013

Death Ravages Uttarakhand, Himachal

DO NETAS KNOW MEANING OF DISASTER?

By Poonam I Kaushish

It was a humungous human tragedy waiting to strike, of anger and anguish, despair and desperation, morbidity and mortality. Words fail one as India was rocked by devastating flash floods in Uttarakhand and Himachal which have left a trail of death and destruction, over 5000-10000 feared dead, scores of bodies strewn across the 40,000 sq km affected area, 50,000 still marooned, not a few dying of starvation and de-hydration and many  leaving it to God. All cursing the Government.

Come to think of it if it weren’t for the Army, IAF and ITBP carrying out the biggest rescue operations on a war-footing in Indian history there might not have been any survivors to tell the horrifying tales of survival: of washed highways, crashing boulders, surging waters, landslides, damaged bridges, trekking dense forests for days without water and food et al.

As the people grapple with this man-made calamity which has set back the State by a decade, our netas go through the ritual political circus. All lament the deaths. The Prime Minister calls it a Himalayan Tsunami, makes an aerial survey and earmarks Rs 1000 crores as relief. Congress President Sonia asks her MPs and State MLAs’ to donate one month salary.

The Government sets up a crisis management team. Babudom analyses the situation over official lunches and dinners!  Rations are air dropped.  Everyone is satisfied that they have done their bit for the nation. So what if the temple town Kedarnath is in ruins, or that building have collapsed like a pack of cards, big deal if Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna shrugs it off as nature’s fury.

The basic question is: Does anyone really care?  Not at all, given that cloudbursts, landslides and flash floods are an annual affair in Uttarakhand and other hill States wherein thousands die, lakhs are rendered homeless and property worth crores is lost. Millions of words have been written and millions more will continue to be written. But it’s like water off a duck’s back.

Undeniably, the Government’s approach is one of criminal casualness. It only reacts after people and cattle have either lost their lives. Why can’t the powers-that-be implement basic suggestions? Why do they not develop a long-term response to floods, which is an annual predictable crisis? 

Moreover, why do politicians feel that mere sanctioning of hundreds of crores will solve the problem? Little do they realize that funds doled out instead of helping the people, are used by most State Governments for purposes other than disaster management. Bluntly, neither the Central Disaster Management Authority nor the State Disaster Boards implemented any project properly.

Everything is kaam chalao! Busy as are netagan are enlarging their respective “relief empires” and pointing accusing fingers at each other. Their ideas and remedies as water-logged and diseased as the floods under discussion. Tragically, exposing the political and administrative callousness towards human life. India’s millions, now a billion, don’t seem to count for much apart from a sterile statistic. Emblematic of our rulers’ broken promises.

Shockingly, the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report three years ago had lamented the country’s disaster management preparedness and warned of impending disaster including severe natural ecology hazards. Resulting from de-forestation and erosion of hill slopes along the river-bed alongside mushrooming of 42 hydel power projects and 203 under construction on the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda rivers which could result in flash floods and lead to huge loss of lives.

More scandalous, as recently as April, the CAG had indicted Uttarakhand for not having a disaster management plan worth its name despite the region being highly disaster prone due to fragile mountains, tectonic activity and climatic events.

Worse, the State Disaster Management Authority set-up in October 2007, has never met till date, nor made any “rules, regulations, policies or guidelines, a preliminary step for the authority to have any functional meaning. The State authorities are virtually non-functional,” the report underscores.

This is not all. The Central Government released no funds for the State's disaster management in 2011-12 because there was no accounting of previous funds. Add to this, glaring irregularities in the State Disaster Response Fund whereby the State Government did not make the requisite investment ranging from Rs.5.9 crore to Rs.67.2 crore during 2007-8 and 2011-12 resulting in a loss of Rs.9.96 crore.

Let alone utilizing funds, the State Disaster Management Authority did not even have basic personnel in place. At the district level 44% posts in the District Emergency Operations Cells were lying vacant, thus paralyzing emergency response efforts. There were no master trainers to train staff at the district, block and village level for prevention and mitigation of disasters. No medical personnel were trained in hospital preparedness.

The height of mismanagement was that the State ignored the Geological Survey of India report identifying 101 villages as 'vulnerable' in June 2008 and failed to take any measures for their rehabilitation till date. Alarmingly, there is no effective coordination between various rural development programmes.  The Agriculture and Water Resources Ministries work in opposite directions. Each Minister and his babus guard their fiefdom with zealousness. Let alone coordination, every silly information is shrouded in secrecy.

Sadly, in a nation natured on short-cuts and quick-fix solutions, none is willing to learn the ABC of disaster management or finding lasting solutions.  Importantly, words like preparedness, mitigation and rehabilitation do not exist in our netas dictionary. Preparedness entails focusing on the most vulnerable areas, educating the people how to handle a flood, setting up an effective communication network and carrying out a safety drill from time to time.

Mitigation involves construction of safe shelters and houses to reduce the effect of the impeding disaster. Also, villagers should be made to undergo training at centres about safe building procedures. Rehabilitation work entails replacing implements and tools to carry on with their life post-disaster.

In sum, there are no short-cuts. We need to highlight our priorities, formulate policies based on needs and find solutions. It is now imperative to re-think our strategies and approaches to safeguard the environment, build infrastructure, improve service delivery, establish close links between policy, research and service with the aam aadmi at the centre of development.

The powers-that-be need to involve experts and environmentalists with a genuine track record of research and policy making. Who would evaluate the ecological problems, study its context and be involved in decision and policy-making. With special emphasis on problems created by burgeoning population and its impact on the local eco-system, growth of hap-hazard housing, environmental  insanitation and decay.

It is high time our polity pull up their bootstraps. They need to focus on long-term rather than short-term planning and shed their passion to pander to vote-banks. You need neither a bleeding heart nor blindness to know what should be done. Decisive indecisiveness will not do. It only holds out promises of more misery, more wrenching news bulletins and more cries for the Government to act. The time is far gone to play the pied piper and aver, disaster management never heard of it. Its’ only life, stupid! ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)