on the spot
Tavleen Singh
It is time to start asking hard questions about the horrible tragedy in Uttarakhand. The question that has remained uppermost in my mind is why there has been no sign at all of civilian governance ever since the disaster began? I can understand why the government needed help from the army and air force to bring down people trapped by landslides and ravaged roads in the higher reaches of the Himalayas. And, I can go no further without saying first that every man who risked his life to save the lives of others deserves a Bharat Ratna. The helicopter crash that killed rescuers last week underlines, if there was any need for underlining, the life threatening risks that came with every sortie. To come back though to what I believe is a question we must start asking now is why have we seen no sign whatsoever of the elected representatives of the people of Uttarakhand in the past few days? Television reporters have managed to reach villages to which there were no roads left and have reported that there was no food and clean water left in these villages.
They have reported that disease has begun to spread because there have been dead bodies and the carcasses of animals left un-cremated. They have sent pictures of half dehydrated children lying in small clinics and talked to doctors who admit that there could be epidemics in the hills. But, in almost not a single story that I have watched on television have I seen an MLA or MP interviewed. Where are they? Why are they not in those villages helping the people who elected them? If ordinary teashop owners can undertake the task of feeding 800 stranded pilgrims in a village near Uttarkashi surely every MLA can do the same and every MP can do more. Where is the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand? Where is the leader of the opposition? Why do we no sign of their involvement in relief work? And, incidentally, since these are hills in which exist the most sacred pilgrimage spots of the Hindu faith where are the Hindutva types? Where are the owners of ashrams? The supposedly dedicated public servants of the RSS?
The real responsibility though has to be laid at the door of the Government of Uttarakhand because after those initial interviews to visiting television anchors there has not even been any sign of the Chief Minister. This leads inevitably to the real reason why disaster struck so horribly: criminal negligence on the part of the governments that have ruled Uttarakhand. As someone who visits the state at regular intervals, because I have close family living there, I can say with firsthand knowledge that before my eyes I have seen how this criminal negligence works on the ground.
Having spent my school years in Dehra Dun I remember the towns of Uttarakhand as they used to be before corrupt politicians allowed reckless urbanization to ruin them and pave the way for the disaster that has now ruined so many lives. Reckless, unplanned urbanization was allowed in towns all the way up to the sacred temple towns up in the higher reaches and so, as most experts have pointed out, this was a disaster waiting to happen. And, it was only when it did that we noticed that the Uttarakhand government had not even the faintest trace of a contingency plan. Pilgrims come every year at this time.
The numbers have increased hugely in recent years so that according to one estimate more than 2 crore pilgrims and tourists visit a state whose population is half that size. Why are permanent special arrangements not in place? Or even temporary arrangements of the kind that are made whenever there is a Kumbh Mela? Before these special arrangements it was routine for disasters of one kind or another to happen during the Kumbh. They rarely happen now.
Environmentalists have called what happened in Uttarakhand a ‘manmade disaster’. They are right but for the wrong reasons. They would like all dams on the Ganga stopped and all development stopped as well. Not only is this not possible but it was the dams on the Ganga that have prevented the flash floods from flooding the whole of Uttarakhand. The reasons why the disaster is ‘manmade’ are because politicians have closed their eyes to what was happening either for reasons of greed or some other form of self-aggrandizement. When it comes to this it would be true to say that the BJP and Congress compete for first prize. If we needed proof that our two main political parties are bringing the wrong kind of people into politics it stares us in the face in the wreckage of Uttarakhand. For my part every time I turn on the television news I find myself asking why if reporters and cameramen carrying heavy equipment can walk seven hours to get to remote villages Uttarakhand’s MLAs cannot do the same? Sonia Gandhi ordered every Congress MLA to donate a month’s salary to the relief effort which in the end will be no more than tokenism.
Instead, why does she not order every MLA to go to his constituency and provide relief in villages where there is no food and water? Why should we need the Air Force to ferry firewood for mass cremations when it should be much simpler for local officials to make arrangements? But, then is this not exactly what always happens? In Mumbai after 26/11 the first people to vanish were local officials and political leaders. Not one of them organized even the smallest little tea stall or soup kitchen for those rescued from the city’s hotels after several hours of terror. And, long ago in Bhopal when poisonous gas spread across the city in the dead of a cold, winter night the first people to flee was the elected Chief Minister and his staff. What makes the Uttarakhand situation more poignant is the manner in which soldiers and pilots from our armed forces have risked their own lives to save people while the civilian administration disappeared without a trace. It is time for all of us to start asking why this happened or it will continue to happen. Again and again and again.
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