GOVERNANCE FAILURE TAKES A HEAVY TOLL
We, the people of India, are not very exacting. By temperament and tradition, we do not expect much of our rulers and are quite happy to be left alone. Centuries of feudalism and exctractive foreign rule have instilled in us a high level of tolerance for high-handedness on the part of the ruling class. Nevertheless, we do expect our rulers to discharge the sovereign functions of defence of the country, administration of justice, maintenance of law and order, disaster management and relief.
Since Independence, when India opted to become a welfare state, there has been an exponential increase in the activities and functions of the state. However, the citizens of the country continue to judge its governments primarily by their performance on the parameter of good governance. They are generous in rewarding even a modest improvement in the standard of governance and capable of upsetting the elaborate calculus of identity politics and patronage to throw out governments for governance failure. At times, for want of a better alternative, the electorate is forced to give its mandate to a political formation with a lackadaisical record of governance. And that perhaps is the reason why governments across the political spectrum tend to adopt a cavalier attitude with respect to the basic issues of governance. They rest assured that if a frustrated electorate were to vote them out of power, they will return to it sooner than later, riding on the wave of anti-incumbency. They are also secure in the knowledge that the brunt of governance failure is to be borne by the general public and not by them.
Nothing brings home this stark truth more forcefully than major disasters, whether natural or man-made. Governance failure acts as a force multiplier, accentuating the impact of the disaster and aggravating the suffering of the victims. The political executive and the bureaucracies, however, remain untouched and continue to enjoy the privileges of office and the trappings of authority, which, paradoxically, have been conferred on them only because of their cardinal responsibility of providing good governance.
We do not have to delve into the distant past to illustrate this point. The succession of cloud bursts, landslides and flash floods, which struck Uttarakhand during 16-17 June and laid waste to the state's hallowed pilgrimage centres, took a staggering toll of hapless pilgrims and destroyed the lives and livelihoods of local residents. Are we to attribute their suffering to an act of God beyond the control of mere mortals? Can we overlook the role of the politicians and government officials who had allowed, and profited from, the reckless destruction of the forest cover and the illicit mining of boulders and sand from river beds? Or of those who had winked at the proliferation of structurally unsound ashrams, hotels and guest houses on the unprotected banks and flood plains of mighty mountain streams that are subject to violent fluctuations of water level and prone to changing their course? We know that no questions will be asked of them.
We also know that no harm will come to the policy makers, who, for short term gains, aggressively pursued a no-holds-barred model for the promotion of tourism in the state and blithely ignored the warnings of concerned naturalists screaming themselves hoarse that the ever increasing rush of pilgrims and week-end tourists was placing an unbearable load on the fragile equilibrium obtaining in the region.
One can ill afford to ignore the enormity of the primordial forces of nature that are still at work in the Himalayas. These forces brook no affront and command our respect. Having chosen to inhabit this forbidden space, we must abide by the region's time-honoured survival code and scrupulously observe the prudential rules designed for construction and exploitation of natural resources in its hostile terrain.
Situated in a region of intense mountain-building activity and vulnerable to extreme weather phenomena, Uttarakhand has known many a natural calamity in the last few decades. Dramatic earthquakes measuring over 6 on the Richter Scale have occasionally taken a heavy toll of human life, as in Uttarkashi (1991) and Chamoli (1999). Significantly, most of the casualties in the two tremors were caused by the collapse of poorly engineered "modern" structures; traditional dwellings built with local materials and technologies had fared much better.
The creeping tectonic activity along the numerous fault lines and fissures in the region has, more frequently, inflicted serious damage by inducing massive landslides in the unstable rock formations and unconsolidated glacial moraines. The descending masses of debris reduce the carrying capacity of mountain streams over time and raise the risk of floods. Every now and then, landslides create temporary dams that eventually burst, sending a pulse of flash floods downstream. The instability of the steep hill slopes, which characterize the Garhwal Himalayas, is aggravated by natural factors, such as heavy precipitation and thermal stress, and further exacerbated by anthropogenic factors, such as deforestation, unregulated construction and blasting of rocks for building roads and dams and for mining.
The list of major disasters caused by landslides and flash floods, which tend to feed on each other, is long indeed: Belakuchi (1970), Kanodia Gad (1978), Malpa (1998), Okhimath (1998), Fata (2001), Gona (2001), Khed Gaon (2002), Budhakedar (2002) and now Chaurabari (2013). It was a massive landslide that caused the Chaurabari lakeburst upstream of Kedarnath and triggered the deluge that left a trail of unprecedented destruction along the Mandakini and the Alaknanda.
The response of an improvident and unprepared state administration to the latest tragedy to hit Uttarakhand has been woefully inadequate. Evidently, the state authorities did not learn any lessons from past disasters. They continue to be totally dependent on the Defence forces and the paramilitary organizations for mounting rescue and relief operations. There is no localized plan for disaster management and mitigation worth the name. The coming into effect of the Disaster Management Act of 2005 and the creation of the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) in 2007 do not seem to have made any difference to the level of preparedness on the ground. A report submitted by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India to Parliament less than two months before the calamity has highlighted the multiple lapses and inadequacies of the SDMA.
In six years of its existence, the SDMA, headed by no less a person than the Chief Minister, has not bothered to formulate any rules, regulations, policies or guidelines for disaster mitigation and management. The state executive committee constituted five years ago to advise the SDMA has not met even once. The mandatory disaster management plan prescribed by the Disaster Management Act of 2005 has not been prepared. The central assistance to which the disaster-prone state was entitled could not be drawn for want of annual calamity reports and utilization certificates. The SDMA has not taken any effective step to relocate the vulnerable villages identified by the Geological Survey of India. The management information system of the SDMA is inoperative and a large number of posts in the district units remain unfilled. However, it can safely be assumed that the worthies enjoying their sinecure in that dysfunctional body will not be called to account for their somnolence and ineptitude.
Springing to the defence of the beleaguered SDMA, the Chief Minister assured the nation that a few hundred trained personnel could hardly have made any difference to a calamity of this magnitude. The state authorities also tried, in vain, to shift the blame for their total lack of preparedness to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), claiming that the warnings issued by the IMD before the skies opened up were of a generic nature and hence not actionable. The hollowness of the claim was promptly exposed by the disclosure of progressively escalating flood alerts along with a specific advisory to the state government and the district magistrates concerned for halting the `Char Dham Yatra' for a few days.
Let us not carry the impression that the National Disaster Management Authority is the picture of effectiveness. It is a high profile body headed by the Prime Minister and manned by a Vice Chairman in the rank of Cabinet Minister and eight members enjoying the rank of Minister of State. The C&AG report has exposed numerous loopholes in the disaster management mechanism at the national level and critiqued the NDMA's failure to ensure the preparation and implementation of disaster management plans and guidelines at state and district levels. Not a single meeting of the NDMA was held from 2008 to 2012, although major natural disasters such the Ladakh flash flood (2010) and Sikkim earthquake (2011) occurred during this period. The NDMA did not consider it necessary to frame any rules for the conduct of its business, either. Predictably, this disinterest did not extend to study tours abroad which were assiduously undertaken by the NDMA functionaries in accordance with the established pecking order.
Now that the phase of rescue and emergency relief is all but over, the much more challenging task of reconstruction has to be taken in hand. The restoration of the devastated physical infrastructure will need sustained efforts and vast resources, but the enterprise of reconstruction of the lives and livelihoods of the local residents, many of whom eked out a living by catering to the pilgrims' needs, will in addition require a new development paradigm that is in sync with the specific situation of the state and takes into account its vulnerabilities. Civil society will have to mobilize the untapped resources of the voluntary sector to this end and participate as an equal partner in the conceptualization and execution of the rehabilitation programme. This enterprise will also call for the utmost vigilance on the part of civil society to ensure that it is not compromised by official ineptitude and venality.
- Kamal Kant Jaswal
