“The rhetoric of governance in India has nowadays become pretty elaborate and sophisticated. Every government waxes eloquent about ‘good governance’ rooted in principles of accountability, sensitivity, empowerment, administrative efficiency, disaster management, transparency and so on and so forth. The current Chief Minister of Bihar too had been busy packaging himself as a veritable brand ambassador of good governance, till the Kosi floods washed away all his carefully cultivated image and revealed the true face of his regime. It is governance at its crudest and cruelest, typical of a feudal-bureaucratic order.” These lines appeared in Liberation October 2008, can be rewritten today in the context of the state of affairs in flood-ravaged Tamilnadu.
The people affected by floods have lost their livelihood, their life-time savings and despite the motivating captions such as ‘Chennai Rising,’ the majority of the marginalized sections have lost hope of rebuilding their lives. Those affected by the floods, including the upper middle class but especially the more deprived, are yet to get back to their routine life. In the worst affected Chennai and Cuddalore, stagnant water has not drained away yet in many parts. While affluent in Chennai are seen demanding removal of the stagnant water and nothing else, the urban poor are miserably clueless about their future.
Volunteers from various fields have actually taken care of most of the relief work in the state. The role of the Government is nothing in comparison. There are a few poignant tales of deaths of volunteers. Many doctors and nurses in the medical camps fell sick. Sanitary workers brought from other districts to Chennai are risking their own lives in cleaning up the huge piles of garbage. State transport bus drivers and conductors ferried people in and around the city braving stagnant water and unpredictable dangers on the heavily damaged roads. Electricity board workers are on the water sheets to restore power supply. CPI(ML) has carried out its own relief operations in Chennai, Villupuram and Cuddalore of Tamilnadu and Puducherry.
Chennai has seen the height of compassion for the fellow human beings in this misery crossing all boundaries. Chitra Mohan, a pregnant woman, who was saved by a volunteer Younus in a boat delivered a girl child and named it after his name. She did not look for any numerologically suitable and lucky name for her kid but just named her after a Muslim man. Muslim volunteers cleaned flooded temples in Chennai.
But in the midst of much that was inspiring, some forms of stubborn social divisions showed Tamil Nadu at her worst. In Cuddalore the dominant OBC castes demanded discrimination in distribution of relief materials for dalits. In some villages the overriding concern was that the rebuilt roads/bridges should not require the OBCs to walk through the Dalit settlement; the lie was repeated that Dalits ‘tease our daughters’. And the Dalits, of course, bore the brunt of the dangerous job of cleaning the drains in the city.
According to the Governments of the day, ‘nobody’ is responsible for the floods. Narendra Modi and Prakash Javadekar blamed the floods on global warming – and found friends to echo them in Tamil Nadu. During the October rains Jayalalitha had the audacity to say that losses occur when there is a natural disaster. In the first week of December, when floods were furiously washing away everything, when misery filled with screams for help was the only spectacle seen and heard, there were a few ‘generous’ voices in Tamilnadu sermonising that rescue and relief work is paramount and any blame game should be put aside. Karunanidhi, the DMK patriarch, who has been the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu for five times was the first to come out openly with this generosity. Following him a few more voices surfaced to add their mite to this ‘generosity’.
Karunanidhi has every reason to avoid any blame game as the accusing fingers would also turn against him. Releasing excess water from the Chembarambakkam Lake, which supplies water for Chennai, is the main reason for the current havoc Chennai faced. The capacity of Chembarambakkam Lake was increased in 1996. After 1996 Karunanidhi was also at the helms twice. Nothing was done during his tenure as a Chief Minister to increase the capacity of the lake to match the growing urbanization needs. Even when he is in the Opposition it is fact that his party men remain a part of the real estate mafia in the state. Justifying land acquisitions for industry during his rule he has said agriculture should give way for industry.
When actor Kamal Hasan asked where the tax money has gone, the Finance Minister O Paneerselvam, who did not speak about the losses suffered by the people or about the rescue and relief measures being taken, lashed out at Kamal Hasan with an elaborate statement. Karunanidhi is also answerable for that question. Karunanidhi’s generosity in no-blame-game itself is a political attempt in these troubled waters. No discerning political eye is necessary to see this bare fact.
The chaotic ground situation which was marked by lack of coordination in rescue and relief operations, the arrogance of the ruling party men in sticking Amma pictures on the relief packs, good Samaritans being prevented from distributing relief materials, inability to reach many interior areas which were badly affected, meant that there were few takers for the ‘no-blame-game’ encouraged by the Government. Instead there was a furore about the abject failure of the government in preventing and minimizing the huge loss. Columns after columns in newspapers discussed every possible angle of the apathy, callousness, criminal negligence, arrogance of the government and factors contributing to the complete absence of basic infrastructure which led to the havoc and showed clearly that Jayalalitha government is the biggest disaster being faced by the people of Tamil Nadu.
Two articles appeared in The Hindu on December 8 raised a few fundamental issues in holding the establishment responsible for the disaster merit mention here. In his article titled ‘For a morally conscious government’ Suhrith Parthasarathy stresses: “In the days to follow, therefore, it is vital that the inexplicable stroke of misfortune that the rainfall in Chennai has brought with it is not used as an excuse to whittle away the moral bankruptcy of successive governments in Tamil Nadu….. The loss of property must be viewed as an illegal expropriation by government. The state’s role cannot end with mere rescue and relief. The government must be forced to pay for the losses suffered by millions of people across Tamil Nadu.”
Josy Joseph in his article ‘Chennai and India’s urban nightmares’ (The Hindu, December 8) says: “Blaming excessive rain or unauthorized construction for the latest misery is a very lazy analysis, ignoring the significant contribution of government institutions and political masters to the mismanagement of Chennai and other cities…. So any discussion on Chennai disaster must begin with some fundamental questions. Are the missing drainages and shrinking waterbodies of Chennai a creation of our corrupt masters? Has Chennai’s misery been accentuated by the failure of the state to manage its urbanization? Is the Chennai disaster a peek into what is in store repeatedly for the rest of India in the coming days?”
After such incisive analyses, it has dawned upon the ruling class Opposition leaders of the state to hold the Jayalalitha government responsible for the government-made disaster. There are now calls for her resignation on moral grounds. Jayalalitha responded to this call with a WhatsApp appeal to the people of Tamilnadu reiterating her commitment in improving their living standards. This appeal failed to work as can be seen from the fact that this is the first time in these four and half years of rule of Jayalalitha government, an appeal by Jayalalitha has received as much ridicule in the social media as a statement of any other political personality in the state. In her appeal Jayalalitha says that she is the Amma (mother) of Tamil Nadu people, she lives for them and that she will take care of them. People of Tamilnadu have started asking now if she will bequeath her properties in Kodanad estate, Sirudhaavor, Hyderabad and Jaaz cinemas to them!
The Chief Secretary of the State has come out with a statement on December 13 in response to the demands for a probe into the release of water from Chembarambakkam Lake. This statement claiming that the government has taken necessary precautionary measures to prevent flooding while releasing excess water has no takers given the scale of devastation the flood has wrought. The Chief Secretary who has some explanation for the Chennai floods does not have anything to say about the floods in Cuddalore where vast tracts of land with standing crops and many villages were submerged.
On December 10 Tamil news channels caught the District collector of Cuddalore, a severely affected district saying that Rs.100 crore has been spent in relief and other repair works. That was a time when the affected people were not even getting food and water properly. Affected people asked the CPI(ML) team led by Comrade Balasundaram, State Secretary for bed sheets. Rs.100 crore spent in a few days did not even fulfill the basic necessities of the affected people. This clearly shows not only the callous way in which the government machinery deals with the misery but also indicates the way in which any relief fund is going to be spent.
Every section in the state – from the big industries to small industries, from farmers to pavement hawkers – is raising its demands for adequate compensation for the loss suffered. The Chennai–Tiruvallore–Kanchipuram area, the new industrial belt claimed as the Detroit of India, has gone under water and along with it went the tall talks exchanged in the global investors’ meet held recently about investment and job creation. Production is yet to be restored in factories such as Ford and BMW as there is shortage in spare parts supply. The State Transport Corporation claims that more than 3,000 buses need to be repaired. (A bus with a failed brake fatally hit a woman in Chennai). The state government is yet to assess the losses as a whole. It is of course futile to expect this government to come to a realistic assessment. There is still excess water being released from reservoirs in Tiruvallore district.
The compensation announced by the state government is Rs. 5,000 for houses affected by inundation and Rs.4 lakh for death. Thus the compensation is only selective and does not cover all losses. This is nowhere near the loss of livelihood people are suffering. Jayalalitha government is trying to use even this tragedy to throw people who were living in the heart of the city to a place 20 km away from the city in the name of providing alternative dwelling. The government is also using the situation to show its gratitude to the Centre by forcing those without bank accounts to open one to get the compensation. Many of the affected people can be seen with tears rolling down their dry cheeks and asking ‘We have lost everything, where will go for Rs.1,000 to open a bank account?’ The government is yet to complete the relief measures and there are flood affected people in many areas ignored by the authorities. A Tamilnadu government press release dated December 10 states that for 17 lakh plus affected people staying in the 6605 relief camps, 1.28 crore food packets are distributed. It means the 17 lakh people have got only around 7 food packets each! The government is yet to plan for rehabilitation measures. Nothing has come to normal in Tamilnadu in the flood affected areas and it is going to take a few years for many flood affected people to start their life afresh.
In this background, Modi had responded to the December rains which brought more devastation, with declaring the floods as calamity of severe nature, a description which will only keep the Centre’s assistance at a lower level. Puducherry has been ignored in the distribution of relief. It is time the Centre and State governments are forced to take measures for adequate compensation for all sections of people affected by the floods and for complete rehabilitation assistance. The disaster should be declared a national calamity and a compensation commensurate with the loss should be released.