Continued from:
THE COLOSSAL UTTARAKHAND DISASTER: EQUALLY COLOSSAL IS THE GREED OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION (I)
http://severallyalone.blogspot.in/2013/06/the-colossal-uttarakhand-disaster.html
THE COLOSSAL UTTARAKHAND DISASTER: EQUALLY COLOSSAL IS THE
GREED OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION (II)
It is unfortunate and one feels sorry about it but it has
been the truth and in fact we should say ‘it is the truth’ now after the
sustained shameless bravado of Indian politicians that came to the surface once
again, so soon after the blame-game over the Uttarakhand disaster that is still
ongoing, with the ugly politics over the serial blasts in the Mahabodhi Temple of
Bodh Gaya on July 7 morning.
The calamity in Uttarakhand became a sort of disaster-tourism
opportunity and the devastated hill state became a tourism zone for the
politicians. What else inference can be drawn after witnessing what all that
happened. But whatever that happened also reaffirmed the fact strongly that
politicians across the parties are similar under the skin – insensitive,
inhuman and irresponsible. Who else can do politics over the dead and the
dying?
Almost every party was busy taking credits and shifting
blames while thousands had died, many were dying and thousands were imminent
danger of losing lives.
Choppers were busy ferrying politicians while the people
stranded were crying for help. Also, it remains a mystery that why very limited
number of choppers were put in rescue efforts in the initial days by a country
that claims to be one of the major powers in the globalized world.
After the unforgivable failure of ignoring the warnings
before the disaster of June 16-17, more horror was unleashed by the politicians
by denying the people precious hours of relief and rescue efforts.
Those responsible for ignoring warnings must be tried for
culpable homicide, isn’t it? But that is not going to happen. And those
responsible for denying the precious hours when many more lives could have been
saved must be sacked from the public life by the public. Even this is not going
to happen.
The Uttarakhand disaster was a calamity where the ordinary
Indian became victim of the nature’s fury due to the human greed of
political corruption when he faced simultaneous ferocious attacks from the parties,
the nature and the politicians, at the same time.
Whatever be the inside story into the bad play by the
weather, it was certainly worsened by the administrative apathy that ignored
the pre-disaster warnings and by the political debauchery that aggravated the
post-disaster misery.
Politicians and administration controlled by them were first
in denial mode about the scale of the disaster. Politicians then crossed all
the limits of decency by putting an audacious front to deny that there were
preceding warnings and finally did away with whatever little inhibition that they
had to put their brazen shameless votebank maneuvering in full throttle.
So we heard headlines like:
-
a
minister of the state got the relief material unloaded and used the rescue
chopper for his own ride;
-
the
son of a top politician of the state with political ambitions got a chopper
diverted in his personal service to draw the political mileage;
-
unhappy
with Vijay Bahuguna’s efforts, other Congress CMs had to come into damage control mode
to contain the political crisis by coming to the aid of the state;
-
the
disaster hit Uttarakhand refused aid from Gujarat
as the government there was of the political opposition;
-
the
imposed code of conduct not allowing any further VVIP visits to the state to
facilitate the relief and rescue efforts is subverted for a top politician of
the ruling party that causes further delays;
-
the
reports of corruption in distribution of the relief material;
-
the
claims of the state government on the progress of the relief efforts that were
found to be unsatisfactory
Sadly, the list is long and is growing longer.
It is now over three weeks of the disastrous flash floods
and the media cry over the issue is losing steam. So the politicians that made
the nature’s fury a man-made disaster will be relatively free to manipulate the
huge funds that would go into the rebuilding and rehabilitation efforts. The aftermath,
like in case of any other disaster, is going to be a free run for corruption.
P Sainath writes - ‘everybody loves a good drought’. It
can rightly be rephrased as ‘every politician loves a natural calamity’.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
