Amit Sharma
It is often seen that natural disasters strike in different corners of world for a specific period but the aftermath of such calamities viz., floods, earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, cloudbursts, etc. evolves a panic-driven situation which requires specialized handling skills. The biggest challenge before the administration is the initiation of relief and rehabilitation process at the earliest but at the same time, another important step needs to be taken simultaneously. This step, sometimes undermined, but holds a great importance relates to finding out persons which have gone missing as a consequence of a natural disaster such as floods or landslides. Usually, it is a very daunting task as it becomes almost impossible to locate the victims of this nature’s fury due to various reasons. But there is tremendous pressure upon the authorities to act swiftly and find out the nears & dears of the survivors.
It is at this point that some immediate steps are required to be taken with the use of technology, human skills and investigative acumen so as to find out the missing persons in this tragedy. But the larger challenge arrives when even technological advancements also become a victim of this disaster and system collapses. A contemporary example of this kind of situation and how immediate steps were taken to connect the missing persons was seen in the recent devastating J&K floods in the month of September 2014.
During first week of September, unexpectedly heavy rainfalls hit the state of J&K which resulted into overflowing of all major rivers of state and as a consequence, floods hit lot of cities of the state and lot of devastation took place. This devastation had a major impact upon Kashmir valley and to be precise, it led to major losses to the winter capital of state i.e., Srinagar city in particular. These losses included enormous losses to the human lives as well as property in the Kashmir valley.
Although the State Government along with support of various Central Government agencies set the relief machinery into motion immediately but the task of finding out people who went missing in the floods became a big challenge before the authorities especially due to total collapse of communication networks, flooding of Government offices including flooding of two stories of fully functional Civil Secretariat in Srinagar and failure of essential supplies such as electricity, water and food-items in most of the areas of Srinagar city.
An innovative decision for locating the missing persons at the earliest was taken at the top level to set-up a Connect Centre or Missing Cell which would play the vital role of finding out the missing people in devastating J&K floods. A pattern of Uttrakhand was to be adopted in this behalf for a similar kind of Connect Centre was set-up there for locating missing persons in last year’s floods and landslides there. A specialist IAS Officer from Uttrakhand who headed this operation there Shri Ajay Prajyot was deputed to J&K on directions of Cabinet Secretary alongwith a team of NIC experts from New Delhi to guide, share and initiate the process of setting-up J&K Connect Centre. Since the systems had almost collapsed in Kashmir, it was decided to operate this Centre from Divisional Commissioner Office Complex Jammu with a 24×7 dedicated helpline in J&K to connect the missing persons with their loved ones all across Jammu & Kashmir in recent floods.
I was delegated the role to lead this J&K Connect Centre in Jammu by the Government which had four dedicated telephone numbers out of which two were toll-free numbers. Apart from this, a facebook page was created with the id ‘operationconnectjk’. Various kinds of channels and media were used to receive information of missing people from their relatives/friends/family members which was being entered into our database on a fixed 14-column format with several details such as name, contact address, last seen place, mobile number, details of calling person, etc. Apart from this, wide scale publicity was also being given to this initiative of J&K Connect Centre through raising of hoardings and banners for same at prominent places such as Railways Station, Airport, Bus Stand, major crossings, etc. Regular radio appeals through All India Radio, BIG 92.7 FM, Doordarshan, etc. was being made to utilize this platform to find out the flood-affected missing people. Apart from this, databases were procured from all District Headquarters, Police, Army, NDRF, Railway Stations, Hospitals and all other concerned agencies involved in the process of rescue and relief during flood rescue operations.
The J&K Connect Centre had 8 dedicated PCs with 4 telephone lines in which we had attached staff from various departments such as agriculture, police, planning, NIC/IT, secretariat services, revenue and other allied departments. This staff was working day and night on roster basis wherein specialized role of data entry, communications sorting, uploading and downloading, facebook page maintenance, information dissemination, public dealing, etc were being performed. Apart from this, daily reporting to all concerned authorities about progress made by J&K Connect Centre thrice a day was being sent on regular basis.
The Centre worked for almost two weeks in which reporting of more than 500 missing persons took place and we were able to trace more than 350 persons through this missionary project. We can attribute our success to total team work, professional approach, dynamic leadership and many other factors but one novel mechanism which require worth a mention is ‘reverse calling’ process adopted by us in which we were making reverse calls to the relatives of those persons who were registered as missing persons earlier with us and other agencies. This process helped to find out latest whereabouts of previously missing persons. Apart from this, the team of helpline operators was guided and motivated to take regular initiatives to receive/pass information to all concerned quarters such as Police, Revenue authorities, Army, NDRF, hospitals, etc. and follow-up same with them for locating the missing persons till the last day of the functioning of this Connect Centre.
Here I am sharing few success stories which are worth-mentioning regarding the commendable feats achieved by our J&K Connect Centre teams relating to tracing out missing persons within a couple of hours of receiving their missing reports. One relates to a Brazilian lady, namely Lucy Azarau, who was located within couple of hours of reporting her missing report and it was done through usage of professional connectivity skills by flashing of same information in Pahalgam area of Kashmir by our agile team. Similarly, a family of around 10 local Kashmiri persons was located and rescued with the efforts of our Connect Centre team. In another instance, relatives of persons from Rajasthan who had visited Kashmir as tourists were located in Tral area of Kashmir and they were ensured a quick and safe passage to Jammu to board train for travelling further back to their homes.
We had adopted a system for real-time reporting and updating of information for activities of J&K Connect Centre and hi-speed broadband connectivity was ensured for the same in the Centre for proper dissemination of all kinds of information to respective concerned quarters. One best thing about this initiative was that all forms of media, whether print, electronic or internet, supported this cause of our J&K Connect Centre and daily, a lot of coverage of the performance/achievements of this Connect Centre alongwith display of helpline numbers was done. It infused lot of confidence in connecting missing people in various parts of valley with friends and relatives located all across the world, different states of nation and also to the people within the state itself. Moreover, it was also ensured that our telephone operators did not face any linguistic barriers as they were well-versed with vernacular languages such as Dogri, Kashmiri, Pahari, apart from being fluent in speaking and comprehending Hindi and English.
To sum up, I would say that such initiatives are highly useful in facing crisis situations arising during various natural disasters and such Connect Centres can be used as a powerful tool of connecting missing people during various natural disasters. Moreover, it helps in re-building faith of general masses in Government machinery and it can also be used as a powerful goodwill-generation tool for establishing PR in such moments of crisis. Although it was a maiden innovative attempt of setting-up a Connect Centre in J&K for missing persons but it seems, it will go a long way in future whenever such kind of disasters strike in different geographical locations of state or the whole of the nation.
{The writer is a Senior KAS Officer of J&K Government and a specialist in e-Governance who can be reached at his blog: amit1kas.blogspot.com or amit1kas (facebook id) or amit1kas@gmail.com for comments/suggestions}
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