Quake relief and politics

By V. Krishna Ananth

``I FEEL no despondency in me... I am not feeling helpless... The nation has got energy of which you have no conception but I have.'' This was Mahatma Gandhi's response to a group of Congressmen (the Indian National Congress) who in April 1934 went to him in one of those moments of despondency. Even Jawaharlal Nehru (in jail then) declared ``with a stab of pain'' that his long association with Gandhiji was about to come to an end. The context was Gandhiji ``ordering'' withdrawal of the Civil Disobedience Movement.

There was, at least as it appeared, some basis for this sense of despondency among the rank and file of the nationalist movement. Lord Willingdon even declared (in 1933) that ``the Congress is in a definitely less favourable position than in 1930 and has lost its hold on the public''. But the turn of events in a few years - the anti-war protests and the heroic deeds by the ``ordinary'' masses soon after August 9, 1942, the demonstrations against INA trials, the solidarity action with the RIN ratings and all those agitations - established that everyone except Mahatma Gandhi was wrong. The national movement grew in strength. The hold of the Indian National Congress (and Gandhiji) over the people was not lost; it only grew stronger.

While others in the Congress needed a movement to sustain their sense of political activism, Gandhiji alone realised the significance of ``constructive work'' in the political arena. Constructive work, indeed, was not just a complementary agenda in his scheme of things; instead, the programme was integral to the political agenda.

This historical truth has a lot of relevance in the context of the killer earthquake that ravaged part of Gujarat and how the political establishment behaved (and continues to behave) in the aftermath of the disaster. Members of the political establishment (barring a handful) showed how obsessed they were with their own partisan and self-preserving needs in Gujarat or when parts of Orissa were washed away by surging waves some time ago.

There, indeed, was a difference in the sense the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, took time off from his busy schedule to visit some parts of the ravaged Gujarat; one does not remember his sparing time for Orissa. And when the Prime Minister's schedule (visiting the earthquake-affected parts) was announced, could the Leader of the Opposition resist the temptation? Ms. Sonia Gandhi too had to do a survey (from the air) to make sense of the gravity and send a three-member delegation (led by Ms. Ambika Soni) to Gujarat.

It is another matter that the victims and their interests would have been served better had these luminaries kept out of the area. They were responsible for blocking the airspace for so long and preventing the IAF from flying relief material to the Bhuj airstrip.

This insensitivity was not restricted to the visible lot in the political establishment - all those who hover around dressed in spotless white - but was seen even among those engaged in public life such as unionists in banks, public sector undertakings and Government departments. That the organised unions or their leaders were hardly seen involved in mobilising relief, even while the rest of civil society was collecting medicines, clothes, tent material and anything it could think of, is a sad commentary on the state of the trade union movement today.

There has been no news of any of the various federations of employees in the nationalised banks organising relief work; some members of these federations (a good number indeed) were busy calculating the ``benefits'' that would accrue to them in the event of voluntary retirement. The last one heard (and this in the course of a conversation this writer had with a union leader) was that they were waiting for a decision by the central committee of the federation!

The issue involved is not merely insensitivity. After all, the pace at which ordinary people moved and the fact that society found leaders among itself (due to which relief material from all parts of the country began to be clog the railheads closest to Ahmedabad and the Bhuj airstrip) must serve as a pointer that the democratic spirit and the sense of belonging to one country are not just alive but thriving.

But the inability of the leaders of these platforms to wake up and put their organisational apparatus into action points to a retreat or alienation of the political set-up from civil society. It is pertinent to recall an instance of the leaders of a left- leaning union in the Railways showing a sense of responsibility in the past. Just a couple of months after the union headquarters at Golden Rock (in Tamil Nadu) was ransacked by the police and five members were shot dead in a firing incident, as many as 46 associates (many of them drivers and guards) went to the North Western Frontier Railways, on special duty, to help in running the trains ferrying refugees from the other side of the border; the Partition riots led to staff shortage in the Railways.

There were many such instances of the trade unionists, who were also important members of the Communist party at that time, being able to think as human beings. Even when they were involved in organising the workers and other sections against the establishment, they remained sensitive human beings. Indeed, this was how they managed to find a space for their political campaign. And hence they could surmount all repression (by the colonial rulers as well as the Nehruvian administration after July 1946) and build a support base.

But now, the union leaders (whether of the left or the right or free from any leanings) were hardly seen in the couple of weeks after January 26, when Gujarat was struck by the earthquake. Such insensitivity looks stark when the rest of civil society was seen mobilising relief for the victims.

Add to this the manner in which the Left-led Government in Kerala acted. Mr. E. K. Nayanar's administration dispatched a couple of days after the tragedy a five-member team (three doctors and two nursing staff), carrying Rs. 50,000 to Gujarat, with a brief that it provide relief to Malayalam-speaking quake victims. That the Government stated as much in a note to the media - the medical team along with three officials from the Secretariat would go to Gujarat to provide succour to the Malayalees - was indeed reflective of the fall. Much worse was the fact that such ridiculous propositions did not evoke any anger within the State.

It did not occur to the apparatchiks in the CPI(M) or the elderly leaders in the Congress to send a few hundred members of the youth organisations (whom they make full use of in all ``movements'' they organise at regular intervals) to Gujarat and involve them in relief and other activities on a long-term basis. In other words, ``constructive work''. This legacy of the Gandhian era belonged to the Congress as much as to the Left. And all those who put this prescription by Mahatma Gandhi into effect were able to create a space for themselves in the political life.

It is this experience which the Left as well as most other political platforms that must belong, going by what they profess, to the democratic political space are refusing to emulate. And the longer they remain so, the farther they will be pushed from the mainstream political space. Meanwhile, the right (in the political as well as economic sense of the term) will soon appropriate this space too. And that is the danger.

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