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DEATHQUAKE;
RESCUE AND RELIEF
Contd...
State administration didn't identify epicentre till 3 p.m. on January
26.
Take
Ahmedabad. For nearly three days the Government struggled to bring in
cranes and earthmovers. It was left to senior BJP leader Narendra Modi
to suggest that the railways should be asked for assistance. Removing
those trapped in the debris requires gas cutters. It took Chief Minister
Keshubhai Patel 48 hours to appeal for gas cutters on Doordarshan.
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PROBLEMS OF PLENTY: With a relief plane coming from even Pakistan
(above), Gujarat had more foodstuff than necessary, though particular
medicines were still needed (below)
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One of the
primary principles governing crisis management is to expedite information.
Congress leader Irshad Patel points out, "The first initiative should
be to open communication lines. This Government did exactly the opposite."
Till four days after the quake the media was left to speculate on the
number of buildings that had crashed/collapsed in Ahmedabad. Upper and
middle-class residents of buildings with cracks and believed to be unsafe
spent days in the open not knowing whom they should turn to for checking
their homes. The Government also failed to transmit the progress report
to restore normalcy and allowed a sense of despair to envelop the state.
Not only
did the Government not communicate, it often miscommunicated. At a select
briefing to mediapersons a day after the quake, Keshubhai revealed that
he believed over "1.25 lakh people were still buried under the debris"
but denied it the next day. Just as this storm was dying out he caused
another by declaring that "tremors would rock Gujarat for 48 more
hours and that people should stay away from unsafe buildings". Result:
panic.
It took
over three days for the Government to get its act together. By January
29 it had sent 235 jeeps, 34 ambulances, 280 medical teams, 60 water tankers,
36 heavy earthmovers, 15 cranes, 42 gensets and 230 gas cutters for rescue
work in Kutch. Even this would not be enough.
Awakening
to the enormity of the crisis, Keshubhai also deployed six ministers,
the Speaker of the Assembly and 20 MLAs in Kutch with clear responsibilities.
On day four of the quake, seven senior IAS officers, 10 IPS officers and
227 other officials were in place in Kutch district to coordinate relief
and rescue work. The much-maligned Gujarat State Electricity Board pulled
off a minor miracle when it laid a 165 km line from near Morvi to Bhuj
to bring power to a region where every other piece of the grid had collapsed.
It took 1,500 workers three days of non-stop work to make that happen.
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Number
Crunch
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| The
army deployed 22,500 troops in Ahmedabad and Bhuj sectors. |
| 22
hours after the earthquake, 1,000 phone lines were working in Bhuj.
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| From
Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan came 1,00,000 blankets. |
Bhilai
despatched
5 wagonloads of cranes for rescue operations. |
The Government,
by day four, embarked on the relief part. S.J. Haider, collector of Gandhinagar,
reveals that by the evening of January 31, they had despatched "just
from the Gandhinagar relief camp, 248 tonnes of fuel wood, 500 tents,
76,000 biscuit packets, 90 metric tonnes of milk powder, 846 quintals
of cereals, 11 lakh water pouches, 425 tonnes of sukdi, 2,240 pieces of
kafan cloth, 12,000 blankets ... to Kutch in 231 trucks. Also despatched
were 1,661 volunteers, including 100 government officials and 55 doctors."
The task
was daunting. "It was like waging a war against a mighty enemy,"
says Atanu Chakravorty, one of the IAS officers overseeing relief work
at Bhachau along with 20 officials from his department. There were complaints
that relief material flown into Bhuj had not quite percolated into the
adjoining villages. There was also the problem of an overflow. Haren Pandya,
state minister of home, says, "The response of people has been overwhelming.
We have a surfeit of some materials but 50,000 tents, blankets, particular
medicines and gensets are still needed."
The tragedy,
almost unprecedented in India's history of natural calamities, has not
cowed down Gujarat. After the 1999 cyclone, for instance, much of coastal
Orissa was a picture of despair. Not so Gujarat. An alternative NGO network
got activated after the quake. For starters, the Sangh Parivar's reach
throughout Gujarat is unmatched. The first volunteers in Ahmedabad and
in Kutch were RSS and VHP workers who worked along with the army (which
eventually deployed 22,500 troops), the RAF and members of the gallant
fire brigade in rescuing the trapped.
In the absence
of the official machinery in Kutch, it was the RSS-VHP brigade that helped
rescue people, nurse the wounded and even carry bodies for the last rites.
On January 29, the residents of Nanireldi, a Muslim-dominated village
in Kutch virtually starving since the day of the quake were pleasantly
surprised to see a batch of RSS and VHP workers land with foodgrain, clothes
and medicines. Said Abha Ibrahimbhai: "I could never imagine that
the RSS and VHP workers would come to our rescue."
By January
30, over 8,000 Parivar workers were deployed in Kutch district. The huge
effort was spearheaded by the VHP's International Secretary-General Pravin
Togadia. Using an initial Rs 3 lakh, Togadia started by placing orders
for food and other relief material. "I aimed to raise Rs 50 lakh
to buy material but in many cases people simply provided material worth
thousands of rupees free of cost." Working alongside the Parivar
are social organisations, including the Swaminarayan sect, corporates
and other voluntary agencies. Missing are the multinational NGOs, which
flooded Orissa after the 1999 supercyclone.
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| FRATERNITY
FIRST: Homeless victims were ditched by politicians, not people |
By January
30, a sense of purpose and urgency had finally caught on with the Government.
It roughly knew the extent of the damage across Gujarat. According to
its estimates, private property worth Rs 6,000 crore was destroyed, public
property worth Rs 1,000 crore would have to be rebuilt, the loss of assets
managed by utilities like power and water services was Rs 1,000 crore
and loss to trade and industry (including premises and opportunity cost)
was a massive Rs 2,000 crore in just five days.
In terms
of providing a roof to those rendered homeless in Ahmedabad, the Government
announced that nearly 3,000 flats available with it in Gandhinagar would
be offered free of rent to affected families for a period of one year.
It was also formulating in conjunction with corporate houses long-term
rehabilitation plans for other affected areas, including Kutch. Reliance
Industries is donating Rs 15 crore and has adopted the town of Anjar.
Essar proposes to adopt Surendranagar. Others like L&T and some PSUs
have similar plans.
But what
is most striking is the community spirit of the Gujaratis-in the state,
across the country and overseas. School children in Mumbai are busting
piggy banks to donate money, housewives from upper and middle-class homes
have collected at community kitchens to cook food, doctors are working
round the clock and businessmen are busy networking to bring the requisite
relief to the needy. Ahmedabad is already limping to normalcy. So are
Rajkot, Surat and Jamnagar.
Now if only
the slothful Government could march in tune with the dynamism of its own
society.
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