State not doing enough?

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI, FEB. 1. Gujarat, especially Bhuj in Kutch, is now going through the same kind of post-earthquake throes that Maharashtra's Latur did in 1993 and yet, Maharashtra is merely content with sending doctors, sanitary workers, some engineers and a few senior officials to one town, Bachau, as help.

A question being asked, without much satisfying response is: should not have Maharashtra sent its top experts, especially those who dealt with the Latur crisis just seven years ago, to Gandhinagar to be readily available to share the rich experience? Maharashtra is the only State with a defined disaster management plan.

The World Bank, which helped fund the relief and rehabilitation programme for Latur, and triggered the outlining of the disaster management plan, found it so good that it was circulated to 156 countries as a model.

It was the largest such rehabilitation scheme. Now Gujarat is grappling with the calamity and the toll is higher here by at least a factor of three compared to the Latur deaths.

It is not that Gujarat is devoid of skills among its bureaucracy but admittedly, there was some noticeable slack in relief work in Kutch where, as the Union Minister of State for Power, Mrs. Jayawantiben Mehta, said on her return from a trip to Kutch with the Prime Minister, Mr. A.B. Vajpayee, that ``some officials were themselves killed and some had several of their kith and kin killed in Kutch.''

That explains the delay, but the pace of relief picked up, she said, after the Prime Minister had made a pointed enquiry about it following his survey of the region. If Maharashtra had sent a team and helped the Gujarat machinery with advice on how to route relief, avoid duplication of efforts and list items for providing relief, the story there could have been a shade more different.

But, asked a senior official on condition of anonymity : ``Would a self-respecting Government and its officialdom allow such neighbourly help if it is unsolicited?''

The point is that Maharashtra did not keep such officials ready to help deal with macro-level planning in the hour of crisis but sent, admittedly a team of seven, by the evening plane, to Bhuj to help in Bachau.

There are a lot of aspects to the current crisis in Gujarat that could have been avoided, though there is much that is different between the Latur and the Gujarat earthquakes.

Like the focus of ill-informed do-gooders who are sending relief indiscriminately to Bhuj when it is most needed in the outlaying areas. Tents, plastic sheets and drinking water are badly needed and they are scarce among the relief materials.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Other States
Previous : Website on peace initiatives in J&K
Next     : Survivors lament lack of debris clearance