• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Gujarat: Compounded by human failure

D. S. Soman

THE NATION has been going through traumatic times since the January 26 earthquake in Gujarat, a calamity that caused the worst havoc since Independence. The nation is familiar with tragedies, experiencing its fair share every year in the form of floods, heavy rainfall in unexpected regions, cyclones, drought and, occasionally, an earthquake.

What is different in Gujarat is the scale and intensity of the tragedy. Entire villages have been razed to the ground, thousands of people have been killed in their houses, and the damage to property can only be very roughly estimated at this point in ti me. It must be conceded that the calamity came at a time when it was least expected.

But what stands out are the confusion and the lack of leadership in such crises. The scenes one saw on television depicted only confusion and the deafening din of people scurrying about in search of help. They lacked leadership in their time of trial. Th e so-called leaders, always prominent on ceremonial occasions, were conspicuous by their absence. Obviously, they believed in looking after themselves, leaving their fellow-men to fend for themselves. There were repeated cries among the people for govern ment help. Everybody expected that only the government could and would help.

Undoubtedly, only the Government could provide certain kinds of help. For instance, only the Government could commandeer the heavy equipment required to clear the concrete slabs that had collapsed, burying thousands of people. But, in this case, the diff iculty was that there were no roads that could facilitate the movement of machinery, as many of them were strewn with concrete and steel from fallen structures. Moreover, organising the machinery itself took time.

The lethargic Gujarat Government compounded this problem. The Chief Minister, Mr Keshubhai Patel, took five days to call a meeting of the emergency committee in the police control room, disturbing the relief work in which the police department was engage d. There was a near-total failure of communications from the affected parts of the State, such as Bhuj and Anjar. India's second-most industrialised State was a picture of chaos. The Chief Minister himself acknowledged that the administration was slow to react.

Another striking factor was the absence of a central organisation that could swing into action within minutes of the tragedy. A number of teams from foreign countries rushed to India to help. There were well-equipped flying hospitals with the necessary m edical support, and a team from Switzerland flew in with sniffer dogs. The calm and quiet way in which they went about their relief and rescue work made a favourable impression. They received wide publicity. The only local organisation that got into acti on was the RSS, whose volunteers displayed discipline.

It is now more than 53 years since India became independent. It is tragic that it still does not have a set-up to cope with disasters. Even a small country such as Turkey sent a team for rescue operations. Every time there is a tragedy, we fall back on t he Defence forces. This seriously disrupts their training that is essential during peace time. As it is, more than half the army is deployed for internal security duties. This additional burden only aggravates their problems.

In recent times, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) of the Central Reserve Police has always rushed in to help but it is basically a force to help the law-and-order machinery. It is always on call somewhere or the other. The Army and the Air-Force, no doubt, c ome to the aid of the local authorities in times of a calamity. But there must be an organisation, central or local, that will rush to help at the first sign of a disaster. Hardly a year passes by when India is not hit by one natural disaster or the othe r, but no plans are ever made to tackle them as a matter of course. Our politicians, long on winding speeches, are terribly short on taking concrete action.

The need for an organisation to tackle emergencies such as earthquakes is all the greater in view of the fact that, according to seismologists, 60 per cent of the Himalayan region is overdue for an earthquake of magnitude 8 or more. That means the worst is yet to come. An earthquake of this intensity, according to reports, would threaten built-up areas in the Ganges valley, including New Delhi. The havoc such a catastrophe can wreak can only be imagined.

The Gujarat earthquake also exposed another weakness to which Indians are always prey -- compromising with standards in construction. There is always a tendency to take short-cuts, even though those who take them are conscious that they are risking human lives if a calamity were to strike. The Government circulated, some two years ago, certain important guidelines to ensure that structures in certain areas were quake-resistant.

Hardly any State government has taken the steps to circulate these guidelines among architects and builders, much less enforce them. Whatever guidelines there are are flouted with impunity, of course with the help of the local corrupt municipal machinery or with the intervention of a local politician who, in any case, has only short-term interests at heart. Thus, in the Gujarat earthquake, it was the falling concrete slabs, not properly reinforced, that caused more deaths than the earthquake itself.

The recent tragedy also highlighted two other shortcomings of the administration. It was not enough for the Gujarat Chief Minister to say that his administration took a little too long to respond. If he paused to consider the causes he would find that th ey lie among his own class -- the politicians. Over the years, the administration has been politicised, irrespective of the party in power. Thus, officers are openly identified as belonging to this faction or that, and experience has taught them that ali gning with the most powerful faction of the party in power helps further their interests.

With the politician-bureaucrat nexus, accountability has taken a back-seat. There is hardly any deal today that does not stink of corruption. The stock answers -- that the guilty will be punished, that nobody is above the law, and so on -- are given, but one hardly sees anything concrete happening. Hardly anybody in authority -- either a politician or a bureaucrat -- is brought before the court, much less punished. Most of the cases fizzle out.

This has resulted in governments, both in the States and at the Centre) not getting impartial guidance, particularly advice that may be unpalatable. Upright and efficient bureaucrats are sidelined, and those who live by their wits have a field day. This has resulted in a weakened administration.

A bureaucrat whose only claim to a coveted post is the powerful connections he has in political circles, understandably, does not rise to the occasion. He knows full well that he does not need to answer for his inaction. In the Bhuj tragedy, as reported in all the newspapers, the District Collector did not give an appointment to the head of a relief agency for three days. If the story was untrue, the Government should have contradicted it and not allowed the impression of indifference to grow.

The least the State and Central governments could do is to make a beginning to clean up the system. Governments have become lethargic, unaccountable and playthings in the hands of politicians. The politician, in turn, is in the hands of the mafia. Unless this vicious circle is broken, there is little hope of any improvement in the present state of affairs. That will not happen unless we wage a war on corruption and lethargy. Else, we shall just go from one tragedy to the next, becoming more and more hel pless, and dependent on outside agencies and help from abroad to overcome tragedies.

There is a lot of talk of exploiting human resources. We have abundant manpower -- the third largest pool of trained scientists and technicians in the world -- and we claim to be leaders in information technology. If we consider whether we have put this pool to good purpose, the honest answer will have to be `No'.

As for the sufferers, the people of Kutch, the nation will soon see that, enterprising and hard-working lot that they are, they will rise from the ashes like the proverbial Phoenix with redoubled vigour, and show what a self-respecting people can do when they are determined to help themselves.

(The author is a former Director General of Police, Maharashtra.)