Kosi Floods: Bihar Battles State-Sponsored Catastrophe
The rhetoric of governance in India has nowadays become pretty elaborate and sophisticated. Every government waxes eloquent about ‘good governance’ rooted in principles of accountability, sensitivity, empowerment, administrative efficiency, disaster management, transparency and so on and so forth. The current Chief Minister of Bihar too had been busy packaging himself as a veritable brand ambassador of good governance, till the Kosi floods washed away all his carefully cultivated image and revealed the true face of his regime. It is governance at its crudest and cruellest, typical of a feudal-bureaucratic order.
That the Kosi floods resulted entirely from years of institutionalised apathy and criminal neglect is now an open secret even though the powers that be in Patna and Delhi are busy in a competitive blame game. A judicial probe ordered by the Bihar government focuses on the pre-2005 period as though the present government was mandated to carry forward every bit of the legacy it inherited from its predecessor. Even as late as August this year when the footsteps of the impending disaster had become audible enough for the people entrusted with the safety and maintenance of the Kosi barrage network, crucial time was allowed to be wasted. After August 18 when the breach had already occurred, the administration sat over this information for several hours and the CM went there after two days while the PM visit came after another week. The CM described the situation as ‘pralay’ (catastrophe/deluge) while the PM declared it a national calamity. A series of grand pronouncements followed but little attention was paid to actually stepping up rescue operation on the ground and rushing relief to the marooned.
In most cases, boats that were pressed into service were quickly appropriated by the rich and the powerful while the poor and the oppressed had the last claim, if any, on official rescue efforts. Instead of rushing relief to the victims wherever possible, the government opened a handful of ‘mega shivirs’ (mega relief camps) and said relief would be made available only to those who would come to government relief camps! Just as it is not sufficient to be poor and unemployed to be on the BPL list or get a job card under NREGA unemployed, it takes much more than bearing the brunt of the floods to be officially recognised as a flood-victim in the prevailing feudal-bureaucratic mode of governance. Right from day one, flood victims had to fight for getting every bit of official attention. And of course the government’s figure of casualties is limited to only those cases where post-mortems have been conducted and death certificates issued!
The most shocking was the spectacle of how flood-victims’ right to dignity and timely and adequate relief was sacrificed at the altar of what can only be described as criminal politics of pretentious charity. Many ‘Bihar government relief camps’ merely sported banners without any substantive arrangement for conducting any meaningful relief. Public money was used for narrow partisan politics with the Ministry of Railways running ‘Laloo-Rabri Bhojan Shivirs’ and Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan indulging in tall talks of his party’s plans to provide one million flood victims with ‘family relief packs’ and flood-resistant housing, all with resources made available by the Steel Authority of India Limited! There was also this shocking case of a Bihar minister inaugurating a relief camp by cutting ribbon. Sure enough, one man’s meat can be another’s poison – the plight of flood victims becomes a photo opportunity for publicity-hungry politics!
The CPI(ML) pressed its entire organisation into organising a rescue and relief campaign by mobilising support from the people. In terms of organisational reach, the flood-affected districts are certainly not among the party’s strongholds in Bihar. In most of these districts, Party work is still in a primary stage and confined largely among agricultural labourers, themselves the worst victims of the floods. Yet almost everywhere local units of the Party and AIALA lost no time to mount whatever rescue and relief operation they could. With support coming in from the rest of Bihar and also from other states, the relief campaign gradually gathered momentum and comrades combined the relief operation with the equally pressing task of organising the masses in struggles to secure relief and medical care from the government agencies. Teams comprising Central Committee members Comrades Dipankar Bhattacharya, KD Yadav, Rameshwar Prasad, Rajaram Singh and Dhirendra Jha and concerned state and local leaders visited flood-affected areas in Supaul, Arararia, Madhepura, Saharsa and Purnea districts. Students from AISA and JNU Students’ Union and doctors and health activists from West Bengal also joined the relief campaign. The CC of CPI(ML) and National Councils of AIALA and AICCTU contributed Rs. 100,000 each to the relief campaign and comrades of AISA, RYA, AIPWA and Kisan Sabha too carried out a mass collection and distribution drive.
As we go to press, the campaign is still on. For the flood-affected people of Bihar it is only the beginning of a long battle for survival, dignity and justice and all efforts must be made to win this important battle and punish the architects and perpetrators of this man-made disaster.