O P I N I O N S

Guest Column
It is not nature, but our disrespect to it that kills us
Contrary to popular perception, preventive disaster management doesn’t involve heavy expenditure. It involves zero tolerance to illegal construction and eco-sensitive analysis before every big project.
It was shocking to see images of K.S. Pannu, a Punjab IAS officer with an impeccable reputation for honesty and hard work, being assaulted by an angry mob at Govindghat in Uttarakhand. What exactly happened and why is currently a matter of investigation.

Touchstones
Paying for the sin of pilgrimage by SUVs
I realise now that what many regard as
superstition was the distilled wisdom of the ages that was codified into taboos to make even the simplest person understand the gravity of the message.
As a Kumaoni, I can write of nothing but the devastating tragedy that has struck the Himalayas and wrought havoc on Uttarakhand.

ground zero
In grief, let’s not forget the heroes that did us proud
We must learn the hard lessons so that we do not repeat our mistakes. But most of all let us not forget to say a big THANK YOU to the personnel who did a splendid job of the rescue in Uttarakhand.
Raj Chengappa
Why is it that whenever there is a major tragedy, as the one in Uttarakhand, our first impression is that the state and Central governments have bungled? That we have no faith in their ability to act speedily in a crisis situation? That everything that will go wrong, will go wrong wherever government action is called for? That we as a nation are conditioned to first feel bad — like a kangaroo court that decides that the accused is guilty, irrespective of the facts.

Guest Column
It is not nature, but our disrespect to it that kills us
Contrary to popular perception, preventive disaster management doesn’t involve heavy expenditure. It involves zero tolerance to illegal construction and eco-sensitive analysis before every big project.
Manpreet Badal

It was shocking to see images of K.S. Pannu, a Punjab IAS officer with an impeccable reputation for honesty and hard work, being assaulted by an angry mob at Govindghat in Uttarakhand. What exactly happened and why is currently a matter of investigation. But the incident does bring to fore the frustration and anger that people feel due to the inability of their governments to protect them. Sitting in the comfort of our homes, it is hard to imagine the despair of the pilgrims who had been stranded there for days.

It is very tempting to portray this catastrophic loss of human life and property as an instance of nature’s fury, and simply dismiss it as a ‘natural calamity’. Heavy rain, earthquakes, forest fires, volcanoes, flash floods, cloudbursts, storms, tornadoes, tsunamis — all are part of nature. They have been taking place since the creation of this planet, and would continue to do so. Equally certain has been our successive governments’ unpreparedness — irrespective of their political affiliation — in handling such situations.

Any such event in India is followed by a predictable pattern. Losses are severely exacerbated due to unpreparedness, a political blame game follows and an effective relief operation by the Indian Army is usually the saving grace. Of course, not much time passes before all this is forgotten and a fresh tragedy destroys us again. For all our pretence of being a superpower, our ability to cope with natural events is medieval. An unfortunate fatalistic mindset, which for various reasons is part of our psyche, only makes it convenient for the authorities to evade responsibility for their dereliction. Has there been a single year when India has not been ravaged by a natural calamity? Floods in Bihar and West Bengal, typhoons on the eastern coast, cloudbursts in the Himalayas, deluges in Mumbai, earthquakes, tsunamis continue to take their toll every year.

To suggest that India’s topography makes it vulnerable to natural disasters would be disingenuous. The Japanese archipelago sits atop a part of earth’s crust where several continental and oceanic plates meet. This results in frequent earthquakes and tsunamis. The Japanese governments learnt pretty early that earthquakes don’t kill people, but poorly constructed buildings do. This explains the immense preparedness that the country shows — through strict building laws, continuous training, early warning systems and a well established relief mechanism. In Australia, drought and associated heat waves occur every three years (on an average), and the government is now well equipped to handle these situations.

Experts tell us there are four pillars of an efficient disaster management system — known as the four ‘R’s, viz., reduction (prevention), readiness, response and recovery. Courtesy the superb Army and an indomitable resilience of the Indian people, we fare well partially on the last aspect, recovery. As for the other three, we fail miserably. Take the latest case — one need not be the Comptroller and Auditor General of India to know what has been happening in the hills. Haphazard building activity and reckless construction of hydel power projects (whose effectiveness in allaying the power crisis of this country remains unproven) has left the people in the regions exposed to floods and quakes. Add to it the ill-equipped hospitals, poor public transportation system, lack of training in dealing with such events and a non-existent information dissemination mechanism; the people caught in the maelstrom are sitting ducks.

Contrary to popular perception, preventive disaster management doesn’t involve heavy expenditure. It involves zero tolerance to illegal construction, i.e., the land mafia, proper eco-sensitive analysis before every big project, an appreciation of the fact that 50 per cent of our population lives in informal settlements that makes them susceptible to elements of nature, fierce protection of natural vanguards such as trees and river embankments, public education, well stocked and functioning dispensaries, and a state-of-the-art warning and response mechanism.

Also, here is my personal request to some of our religious leaders. Ours is a deeply spiritual nation and in attributing these events to God’s wrath, they are committing a gross crime to what the religions of this great land have taught us. I heard a self-appointed godman saying that the ‘Himalayan tsunami’ manifested the arrival of Kalki — an avatar of Lord Vishnu — and the waves epitomised his fierce horses! All our scriptures and holy books have taught us that God is the great benefactor, who never harms his people and absorbs their pain. Lord Vishnu, whose avatar is alleged to have wreaked the havoc, in his kind avatar Lord Krishna raised the Govardhan Parvat to save the people from rain. The same Lord Krishna also taught us in the Gita that God helps those who help themselves. It is time we reminded ourselves of that!

Touchstones
Paying for the sin of pilgrimage by SUVs
I realise now that what many regard as superstition was the distilled wisdom of the ages that was codified into taboos to make even the simplest person understand the gravity of the message.
Ira Pande

As a Kumaoni, I can write of nothing but the devastating tragedy that has struck the Himalayas and wrought havoc on Uttarakhand. Commentators of every hue have stressed this was a tragedy waiting to happen, that for years this fragile eco-region has been ravaged by mindless construction and deforestation, that climate change was a reality but did any one pay heed? So it is pointless to repeat all that we hear ad nauseam on television and read in our newspapers. We had been warned and pretended it would never happen.

This is why all of us are responsible for what the hapless villagers are now forced to suffer. Nothing the state and aid agencies can do will ever bring back the dead, nor the precious trees and livestock that were swept away. As a native and a proud Pahari, I feel ashamed we all turned our back to our natal homes and left the hills unguarded against human greed.

For years, the hills were our home. My family and its extended clan lived in small hill towns among the most beautiful mountains and lakes. Life was hard then, there were no motorable roads and only the Laat Sahib’s motorcade was allowed to ply on Nainital’s Mall Road. We walked to school and left home an hour earlier whether it was raining or hailing or snowing outside. Gumboots and raincoats were a necessary part of school gear and we all carried salt with us to sprinkle over leeches when they sucked our blood. I remember the sharp sting of hailstones on our legs: it was like a bee-sting. If occasionally we yearned for the forbidden delights of the plains, we were told we could go live there in the heat and dirt. So only when we had to go out for university education, did we step out of our Arcadian paradise.The long and short of this nostalgic recall is that if you lived in the hills, you obeyed the time-honoured rules Nature had laid down.

Over time, all this has changed. No child now walks to school: they are driven in SUVs and mini-buses that zoom up and down all day. Multi-storeyed apartments have come up where once modest cottages stood, nestled among apple and plum trees. The eponymous Naini Lake has become the town’s favourite dumping site for sewage. In the rains, when the lake (dangerously silted over now) overflows, the sewage that is dumped there round the year floats over onto the Mall Road. As a wag said recently, what was once our Jal Vibhag (Water Department) has now become the Mal Vibhag (Sewage Department)! The people of Nainital are literally forced to wallow in their own s***t. My grandmother once told us a story of ‘Samudri Nyaya’ (literally the justice of the sea). It was said the sea throws back what you throw into it: so a man decided to test it. He went for his morning ablutions to the seaside and dumped his load there. He had barely walked a few steps when the sea hurled his muck back at him and a scorpion bit him on the ankle. The moral of the story was you do not violate Nature.

And yet this is exactly what we have done. For years, we have dumped our garbage and waste into the rivers and streams. Is it surprising then that the angry river decided to strike back? I cannot help thinking that what happened in the Badri-Kedar region is a sort of Samudri Nyaya and a furious tandava by Pashupatinath, or Lord Shiva, who rules over the flora and fauna of this land. I realise now that what many regard as superstition was the distilled wisdom of the ages that was codified into taboos to make even the simplest person understand the gravity of the message. All of us who were daughters of the Himalayas were related to Parvati, we were told. And as no self-respecting Hindu will spend a night at his daughter’s ‘sasural’, no one was allowed to stay overnight at Kedarnath, which was regarded as Shiva’s territory. Similar stories abound in Mathura where certain temples are locked up before sunset because Lord Krishna and his ‘gopis’ play ‘raas’ all night and if a human witnesses this divine orgy, he is struck with madness. Who is to say that this is a scientific fact? Yet no one violates this law for fear of divine retribution.

Perhaps it is time we used this powerful pull of religious faith to place certain deterrents once again. Tell an Indian ‘paap chadhega’ if he commits a certain act, and in nine times out of ten, you have placed a bogey of fear even in the stoutest heart. It was how the Egyptians prevented tomb-raiders from vandalising their precious burial sites for centuries. Government laws and ordinances are meant to be broken or circumvented: there is no way that one can bribe God. I vote that we blast every road to pilgrim towns and once again go back crawling to our gods. Perhaps only then will we be able to appease the wrath of the furious Himalayas.