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Mainstream, VOL LI, No 28, June 29, 2013

In the Wake of Uttarakhand’s Tragedy

Editorial

Monday 1 July 2013, by SC

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Last week one had tried to bring into focus just an idea of the tragedy that accompanied the disaster wrought by nature in Uttarakhand. In the past seven days the magnitude of what happened there has become clearer. Even as the Indian Air Force pilots and crew members along with the armed forces personnel are relentlessly carrying out the mission of rescue and evacuation of thousands of stranded pilgrims and tourists from remote and inaccessible mountainous areas, Manu Pubby in The Indian Express has pointed to the futility of finding out the precise death toll. In his words,

For anyone who has actually been to the ravaged town of Kedarnath, it should be very clear that putting a number to the dead is pure folly. The extent of the damage is so immense that it would take weeks, if not months, to come to some nominal number of those who have died in the disaster. The exact toll may never be known, simply because entire mountainsides have come down, burying several in tons of stone and mud, making any sort of retrieval operation impossible.

While rescuing survivors and flying them to safety, the IAF has had to cope with its own tragedy. The Times of India’s headline of the front-page lead report conveyed everything: “Tragedy Strikes Day After IAF Sets Record By Evacuating 4500: Saviours lose their own lives: 20 rescuers killed in chopper crash”. This happened on Tuesday (June 25) afternoon: an Mi-17-V5 medium-lift helicopter, the very latest in the IAF inventory, crashed while ferrying rescue personnel from the Kedarnath town to the temporary airbase in Gaucher; this occurred as there was a thick cloud cover near the Jangal Chatti area north of Gaurikund, which is the base camp for the 14-km trek to the Kedarnath shrine. The rescue personnel who perished in the crash were among those who smilingly carried out their assignment, saving many lives. They were the real heroes in the massive operation evacuation.

In the wake of the unprecedented tragedy such heroes are not just a handful. There are several reports of selfless service and among those offering such service one can find civilians as well. Yet one cannot also be oblivious of those inhuman elements unashamedly seeking to line their pockets taking advantage of the tragedy—the chief of a private airline requisitioned by the State Government charging exorbitant rates, running into lakhs, for flying pilgrims and/or tourists to safety (exposed by a TV sting operation), shopkeepers exploiting outsiders while selling food etc.

And then there are the politicians. First it was the BJP’s prime ministerial hopeful, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, who—it was reportedly claimed—had rescued 15,000 stranded Gujaratis in Uttarakhand through his own initiative; when the media pointed out that that was not possible in practical terms, the head of the party’s election campaign committee changed his tune to deny having ever made a statement to that effect. The Times of India rebutted the denial by asserting that the BJP’s Uttarakhand spokesman had himself made the claim in the presence of the State party chief and several administrators from Gujarat who had come to the State to conduct rescue operations. All this unmasked not just the hollowness of Modi’s protestations but also his parochial proclivities for which he has was taken to task by none other than Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray!

However, the most unseemly spectacle was yesterday at Dehradun’s Jolly Grant Airport where a large crowd witnessed Congress and TDP legislators coming to blows on which party’s plane should take the stranded Andhra pilgrims back home to Hyderabad.

Trust our politicians not to change their characteristic behaviour in the face of even such a grave calamity. Having long forfeited their dignity, they have now completely lost their sense of shame as well.

Even if belatedly the process of cremating the bodies has begun. Yet the danger of outbreak of epidemic looms large over the horizon. And there are already complaints that relief operations have still not reached the local residents since evacuation of stranded pilgrims and tourists continues to be the number one priority of the authorities.

No one tries to belittle the enormity of the nature’s wrath that suddenly fell on the State. Yet there is no gainsayign that the civilian administration there was absolutely clueless on how to deal with the situation before the armed personnel stepped in. The future, therefore, appears to be uncertain since the possibility of further natural mishaps—like cloudbursts and flash floods—has not receded in the least.
June 27 S.C.

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