What should we say on this
irony?
Nature’s Fury Vs Human
Greed
Double whammy! Triple
whammy! Or whammy of nth order!
Yes, there was reason to
feel good when an alert Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and its
scientific community played the pivotal role in assessing and warning about the
Cyclone Phailin, a super-storm category cyclone, capable enough to bring
catastrophe, and thus minimizing the loss of human lives. The state governments
of Odisha, the most affected state, and Andhra Pradesh, the other state in the
path of the cyclone, worked overtime to evacuate people.
The result was remarkable. Once
equipped with required technological advancements, the Indian scientific
community performed well Phailin told us. And thought the present and the past
of Indian politics give us reasons to believe the promptness with which the
political class acted was more due to the concerns of the upcoming parliamentary
polls than being the call of the humanitarian conscience, still, it was a
commendable (though rare) promptness.
But the same day, the irony
struck.
Over 100 people lost their
lives in a stampede during a religious event of a temple in Datia, Madhya
Pradesh. The same Ratangarh Mata temple had seen stampede in 2006 killing many.
A probe was ordered then. Its report is still not in public domain. A judicial inquiry
has been announced in the latest mishap. What is the relevance of such probes?
Any probe report cannot do
anything unless the human greed is checked.
Reports say the stampede
took place due to the greed of the local police. The police was busy in
collecting bribe money from vehicles to let them pass through the bridge that
was the main passage to the temple. Some other reports say the stampede began
after police lathicharged the devotees to control the crowd. Lathicharging a
religious crowd of tens of thousands! Unbelievable!
Stampedes, sadly, have
become a common occurrence during religious events in India and are result of
the mismanagement owing to the human greed.
These man-made calamities
tell us how irresponsible the governance in country has become.
Yes, we do come across ‘feel
good’ examples like in case of Phailin but the share of good is simply
outnumbered by the ‘feeling shocked’ examples of the man-made disasters.
While a small part of the
governance acted in time and correctly to avoid what could have been a much
bigger loss of life, its other, and majority counterpart, created a tragedy
that killed 6-8 times the lives lost in the aftermath of Phailin.
Nature never kills us. It
is us who come in its way.
So, the nature was gauged and
its might was respectfully given passage so that we could have the safe passage
for us.
But what about the human
element!
It is the human element
that creates disaster after disaster – the man-made disasters killing the man.
We see it every time
whenever a disaster happens. The stampede deaths in Datia are example of it.
We saw it in Uttarakhand in
June. Even if we agree to make the role of the scientific community (IMD and
the likes) debatable (though it was not as clear warnings were issued at
various levels), the scale of the Uttarakhand flash floods disaster, killing
thousands, was certainly man-made.
Warning signals were
ignored. The situation only got worsened with irresponsible infrastructure development
in ecologically fragile areas. The human greed was complicit in the crime.
Polity and bureaucracy, supposed to keep things in order, added to the chaos by
nurturing their greed shielding behind the greed of the masses to survive a day
peacefully somehow.
Equally pathetic has been
the response to the rehabilitation process. Compensation cheques of even Rs. 100-200
are getting dishonoured. See it in context of the reports that say the
Uttarakhand government has spent over Rs. 22 crores in advertisements in the
last four months to drumbeat its (largely ineffective) rehabilitation efforts.
Man-made! Horrible!
Detestable!
Add to it the polity of the
day. Politicians have probably a unique gene that turns most of them into (a
political gene, so the politics in play even here!) insensitive, shameless and
selfish creatures.
Their brazenness inspires
them to switch onto the warpath of the dirty politics to exploit the mileage as
soon as a disaster starts its killing machine.
Bigger the output of this
killing machine, bigger is the display of the dirty politics over dead bodies –
and so bigger is the brazenness.
We saw it in Uttarakhand.
We are witnessing it in Datia.
Horrible! Detestable!
