India seems to be at its most naked at a time of disaster. With time and
relative affluence, there are many parts of India that seem to have been
transformed. The road network has improved, the airports look like they could
be from anywhere in the world, private high-end hospitals boast marble floors
and receptionists, and malls can be found in most small towns, exuding their
brand of shininess. Thanks to these, it is possible to cobble together a
passable sense of change.
But come a disaster, and things
falls apart. The veneer of efficiency disappears and familiar heartrending
stories of despair and hopelessness return. In a flash, it seems as if nothing
has changed, that in India, anything that can go wrong will do so in a way that
is particularly pitiful. The current Uttarakhand calamity is deeply aggravating
because it is so familiar. That the calamity was virtually preordained is no
secret. In fact, similar scenes have been witnessed before (so much so that, as
someone pointed out, some images on television seemed to have been identical to
last year’s scenes), and there is little doubt that, after the mandatory
two-week news cycle expires, things will go back to normal till the next time,
we see an eerie replay of the mayhem we are seeing today.
While preparing for a disaster
like this would have been extremely valuable, the truth is that when calamities
strike, it is the existing system that needs to kick into action. Because of
its unpredictability in terms of precise timing, location and scale, disasters
are designed to catch us at our most unprepared. In a sense a disaster thrives
on reality as it exists without any dressing up. It tests all our systems and
instincts at their rawest, which is why it exposes so much. More importantly, a
preemptive effort to minimize the chance of a disaster is the most critical
action point, particularly when the area is known to be disaster-prone. This
means well thought-out legislation and diligent enforcement. It means adherence
to a long-term plan of development which factors in all the consequences of the choices
one makes. In an ecologically sensitive geographical terrain like the hills,
once flooding takes place, it is difficult to contain the extreme nature of
consequences that follow. Roads will be washed off, landslides will be triggered, fragile
structures
will get decimated.
The problem is that for India to
be better prepared to meet disasters, it needs to levitate into becoming
another kind of country. In the case of Uttarakhand, for instance, it is clear
that what we have seen is part of a larger problem that will continue, with
escalating consequences, to bedevil the hills. Unchecked
commercialization and
rampant corruption has led to the kind of development that will
eventually be catastrophic. This is something that cannot be brushed aside or
escaped from; it is simply a matter of time. The nature of the political
process and its impact on the kind of administration provided is wired in a way
that makes change very difficult. In the case of the hills, the version of
development that has been embraced is the kind that almost exclusively feeds
the needs of local interest groups. When those who should act as guardians for
the long-term interest of their own state, find it more profitable to leverage
whatever assets are at their disposal for short-term
gain,
and when that implicit collusion across the political spectrum results in the absence
of any meaningful and politically significant alternative, the impetus for change
just does not exist.
At a deeper level, the belief
that any regulatory or rational long term view is a constraint that needs to be
gamed creates an inbred sense of legitimacy about circumventing not just rules,
but also a sane view of the future. The relief at making things work in a
historically unsupportive environment, and finding a way around obstacles, is
so entrenched that no distinction is made about the nature of the infraction
involved. Any ‘way around a problem’ is seen as being presumptively good.
Anything that sort of works is worked beyond the limits of its capacity and
without regard for any long-term consequences. The belief that one can
infinitely postpone any final consequences, by gaming the system in one small
way or another neutralizes the fear of catastrophic outcomes. The short term is
real and immediate and the long term mere speculation, which in any case can be
‘managed’ when the time comes.
By valorizing solutions,
regardless of what they might be and what impact they might eventually have,
any intolerance for failure is played down. The regularity with which natural
calamities occur, the predictable nature of fires, building collapses and stampedes, with the familiar scenes of chaos and anguish that
surround these, point to a tacit acceptance of these as a fact of life.
However, at some level, this is what is beginning to change. Increasingly,
there is an expectation that the state response to such situations be more
professional, an expectation that the media has helped foster. But this
intolerance is still shallow, for it loses steam after the event, and life goes
on.
In all such disasters, the only
institution that routinely covers itself with credit is that of the armed
forces. Trained in the idiom of action, organized in a way that is purposeful,
and acting without a trace of self-interest, the armed forces deliver what
every self-respecting profession, in an ideal world, should. The army masks the
extent of the problem that exists by its efficiency and commitment. As for the
rest, the Uttarakhand tragedy tells us that the system cannot be endlessly
gamed; that there are final consequences that cannot be manipulated or wished
away. This kind of disaster will happen next year, and the year after in the
hills and elsewhere.
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