Political Diary

New Delhi, 8 December 2015

Delhi Choking, Chennai Drowning

DISASTER MANAGEMENT, WHAT’S THAT?

By Poonam I Kaushish

Delhi is choking due to pollution and Chennai is drowning under unprecedented devastating floods. Both standing mute testimony to a callous, heartless and selfish polity and administration bereft of cure and consolation. After all the aam aadmi translates only into mere sterile statistics to be manipulated at will. All cursing the Government!

Whoever said when it rains, it pours miseries, was dead on! Chennai resembles a disaster zone as water seeps into homes, marooning thousands sans food, water and electricity causing massive destruction and death, breaking a 100 years record. Schools and colleges remain shut, flights and trains cancelled and the airport shut till Sunday leaving thousands stranded.

As Chennai battles hard to pick up the pieces of its life grappling with shortage of boats, shelters, food and medicines, stickers showcasing  Chief Minister Amma Jayalalithaa ‘single-handedly’ saving the city from drowning appear on relief materials fueling outrage and her bête noire DMK’s Karunanidhi yelling blue murder.

Notwithstanding, the credit for rescue and reprieve goes to the Army, IAF and people across the country who use Twitter, Face book and various apps to communicate and provide succor and support.

In Delhi, Chief Minister Kejriwal’s remedy to alleviate his janata from living in a gas chamber is to have alternate days of exclusively even/odd numbered cars on roads. Clearly, seems aimed at only earning brownie points. No matter it would create more harm than good. One, he has not espoused how he will implement this as the police is under the Centre, not him.

Two, there is not enough public transport to cater to millions of additional commuters. Three, by adding another 5000 buses, how will it bring pollution levels down? Four, how will he cry a halt to VVIPs traversing across the city in cavalcades of a minimum of 6 cars?

Raising a moot point: Does anyone really care? Why do our netagan prioritise something as crucial as floods only at crises time? Why is so little done to develop a long-term response to what is an annual predictable problem in various States, wherein many die, lakhs are rendered homeless and property worth crores is lost.

Who will be held accountable? And which head will roll? Remember, similar floods struck Mumbai in 2005, Delhi 2013, Uttarakhand 2014 and Srinagar last year. Millions of words have been written and millions more will continue to be written. But it’s like water off a duck’s back.

Shockingly, Chennai’s floods is not a natural disaster but solely man-made! The problem lies with the city’s original terrain consisting of many lakes and marshes being covered with innumerous buildings, illegal construction, industries, and rampant encroachment of river banks due to unplanned and improper development. Thereby, leaving little space for flood-rain water to drain which in turn settles on the road. Worse, over 300 water bodies have disappeared due to this.

Why only Chennai, the story is the same in every large metropolises. Heavy development had destroyed green spaces and mangrove forests, its natural flood protection resulting in inadequate drainage system as no amount of man-made storm water drains can make up for natural drains.

Undeniably, the Government’s approach is one of criminal casualness. It only reacts after people have either lost their lives or stranded. Why can’t the powers-that-be implement basic suggestions? Why do they not develop long-term responses? 

Think. Around 76 per cent of India's coastline is prone to floods and cyclones, 59 per cent of the country is vulnerable to earthquakes, 10 per cent to floods and river erosion and 68 per cent to droughts.

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.

Primarily because flood policies are based on the assumption that flood disasters result from nature's actions and are not man-made. Whereas, in actual fact the damage and misery are mostly caused by human error. Mainly, poor land management and myopic flood-control strategies. Said an expert, “The only way to tackle the growing menace of floods is to control deforestation, denudation and soil erosion in the watersheds of rivers.”

Shockingly, the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report some years ago had lamented the country’s disaster management preparedness and warned of impending disasters including severe natural ecology hazards. Resulting from de-forestation, construction on river-beds et al.

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.

Experts aver that thanks to global warming more frequent and intense extreme weather events means India must improve their planning and reduce the potential impact of disasters before they occur. Till date urban planning has excluded or remained oblivious to hydrological concerns of coastal cities they need to learn its water management.

What next? The Government has grand designs to build 100 futuristic ‘smart’ cities in India, but as this week’s devastating flooding in Chennai shows, fixing today’s accident-prone metropolises appears to be the more pressing task.

There are no short-cuts possible. It is now imperative to re-think our strategies and approaches to safeguard our environment, plan infrastructure keeping in mind local realities, improve service delivery, establish close links between policy, research and service with the aam aadmi at the centre of development.

Towards that end, the powers-that-be need to emphasis on national priorities, take into account local realities and 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, drainage and  stagnant water bodies.

If there are trees, plants and open areas around, rain water will be absorbed by the Earth, but if we continue to build concrete jungles, flooding should not surprise one. Undoubtedly, this will come at an enormous cost. India would need thousands of crores to deal with national calamities like the annual kahein-sukhaa-kahein-baaarh ritual.

In the ultimate, the time is far gone for the Government to play the pied piper. Decisive indecisiveness will not do. It only holds out promises of more misery, more wrenching news and more cries for the Government to act. To foresee is to govern. No longer can we ostrich-like bury our heads in the sand and wail, disaster management, what’s that? --- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)