It is clear that the Uttarakhand Government has failed to provide an effective and coordinated direction to the relief and rehabilitation of the survivors of the recent calamity. But for the brave efforts of the Armed Forces, things would have been worse, writes Manoj Misra
Cries of deprivation and neglect from the thousands of survivors of the Uttarakhand deluge point, among other things, to an almost complete breakdown of the civil administration not only immediately following the disaster on June 16 and 17 but well into the following days.
Almost every survivor who spoke to the media is on one hand full of praise for the Armed Forces and the help extended by local villagers who came forward despite their own hardships, while on the other there is criticism for the civil administration. WhyIJ And, what could have been done differentlyIJ
Once a quick assessment of the situation had revealed a state of real emergency, a purposeful brainstorming by the political leadership with the official and political advisers should have put the civil administration in a state of full readiness, despite assistance having been requested from the Armed Forces.
Realising that persons in need would wish to look for a place to stay and access food and water; would wish to get in touch with their folks back home; would want to receive medical aid for wounds received or illness; would like to be reassured by someone in authority that they are in safe hands and would soon be helped out to a secure place and back home, the priority civil action should have been:
>Focussed Field Action groups under senior civil and police officials should have been put in charge of well-identified units (not necessarily a district) for dealing with the rescue and relief operations in conjunction with the Armed Forces
>These FFAs — armed with satellite mobile phones, radio sets and back-up battery systems; medical teams and medicines; food supplies, blankets, tents etc, should have gone in with the initial batches of chopper sorties and set up civil command bases at strategic locations to reach out and reassure victims that they are in safe hands.
>Their first priority should have been to document and attend to the injured and the elderly and the very young, and enable all those stuck to get across through satellite phones to their near and dear ones. These action groups should also have encouraged the local people to take care of the ‘guests’ from different parts of the country and discipline and keep under check possible mischief.
>These FFAs should have been responsible to priorities the rescue work as per the urgent needs of the injured, the elderly, the women, kids and able bodied men in that order. This would have facilitated speedy evacuation. Families who thus got temporarily separated could have been carefully documented for later reunion.
>The FFAs could have been required to report on an hourly basis (for initial few days) to a specially created cell in the Chief Minister’s office about the status of their station including the number and names of people they were taking care of and who all had been evacuated till that hour. This information could have been immediately fed into a computer data base and made available online (on the state website) as well as informed through an hourly media bulletin.
>The Chief Minister should have been holding daily de-briefing sessions with the senior officers of the Armed Forces involved in the rescue and relief as well as the ‘emergency response team’ in his office relating to the regular feed back being received from the FFAs as well as on the weather situation, and the extent of the damage and change, if any, in the rescue and relief strategy in light of changing requirements of the field operations.
>The Chief Minister ought to have initiated an expert internal inquiry to go into the factors (systemic, environmental and technological) that resulted in the State having been caught by surprise and to ensure that the latter never recurs.
The massive outcry from the victims of neglect and despair indicates that many of these measures have not been taken. What prevented the State regime from being proactiveIJ And what, if anything, is being done to fix this callous and unresponsive systemIJ
(The writer is convener of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, a Delhi-based civil society campaign for the restoration of river Yamuna)