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Unofficial anger: DTE's Alok Gupta reflects on Aila
Similarity is striking. Water, embankments, devastated homes, no wood for funeral, no food and no water. Aila cyclone and the Kosi floods both were disasters.
Difference lies in apathy. Relief material was in short supply this time. Even a fortnight after Aila struck the Sunderbans, the people on the islands were hungry and thirsty, thanks to Didi and Dada. The new tidal wave of politics cared less for the cyclone-hit people. Muddy and saline waters of the Sunderbans will surely favor Didi in the upcoming assembly polls.
In Bihar floods a broken hero of the backwards was chugging on the train spewing venom against the sushasan man.
At Aila’s ground zero it was a battle for survival. Anger was obvious: a BDO sahib thrashed, the CM given verbal lashing and an MLA smeared with mud. This happened in Bihar floods as well. But a senior BSF officer sitting idle with his men? This was not the scene in the Kosi floods. The obedient military of our nation does not want to go on record, but BSF was not given a clear plan for distribution of relief material. The officer was disgusted. He wanted to save lives but he had no orders to do so. In the areas flooded by the Kosi, the army, navy and the disaster management force could cheer after a hard day’s work because they saved lives. The Sunderbans were gloomy.
A true Left-driven state would have ordered execution of that lanky BDO beaten by a hungry and thirsty crowd. In a media briefing babu sahib claimed only five dead, none missing and no records of cattle death. Plan for disaster management? “There is none.” Any plan for making Aila-proof embankments? “There is none.” Wish pen could fire bullets.
There were hundreds of people with empty bottles, vessels and plastic containers standing on the embankments, crying for water. It was heart-rending to hear their cries rising above the loud sound of generator-run boats. For 10 kilometres ear drums quivered with the shouts of hundreds of people: “jal acche”.
Yes, water was there, at the BDO office. Two plastic Sintex containers full of it. There was no flurry of activity in the sarkari office.
In the Kosi-flooded region every administrative office was full of action. It is unbelievable the West Bengal government did not send a shipload of relief material and drinking water to every island of the Sunderbans? Why diesel motor pumps were not sent to suck out saline water inundating the fertile fields? Why was there no national disaster response battalion? And why has the Central government not declared it a national calamity? Why was the head of the Indian Meteorological Department not fired for failing to give advance information about the cyclone?
It is politics of devastation where Buddha refuses to gain enlightenment from the dead, and Mamata is not about moving hearts. |
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