Politician's aerial surveys, spot visits hamper rescue work in calamity-hit Uttarakhand

NEW DELHI: The visits by BJP chief Rajnath Singh and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to disaster hit Uttarakhand, coming close on the heels of surveys by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, have triggered charges of politicising a natural calamity.

“When a part of India is trying to grapple with natural disaster there are some people who are absolutely unabashedly politicizing it,” said minister for information and broadcasting, Manish Tiwari after Modi’s high profile visit, who apparently flew back 15,000 Gujaratis. Modi responded by offering the Gujarat government’s help in renovating the Kedarnath temple which has been affected by the cloudburst.

Twitter outrage has concentrated on just how many Gujaratis could be fitted into the 90 Innova cars arranged by the Modi government. The Congress, which raised a stink on Modi’s visit was caught on the wrong foot with Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda too reaching Uttarakhand, just after Modi’s visit.

While the presence of the two Congress CMs contradicted the Congress’ stance on reducing VIP visits, AICC VP Rahul Gandhi’s absence has also raised eyebrows. Natural calamities became a political opportunity par excellence in July 1978, when a village called Belchi in Bihar was hit by massive flooding.

An embattled Indira Gandhi, out of power after the 1977 elections, reached the village to provide succour on the back of an elephant, called the government on the lack of response and rode back to power in 1980. Since then, aerial surveys, spot visits and sundry photo-ops have become staple at a disaster site, as it has with the Uttarakhand floods this year.

Do VIP visits then actually help focus relief efforts or are a hindrance to local authorities. “The reason why such visits have become so common in the recent years is only because of the proliferation of aircraft. unlike earlier, now every state has a fleet of aircraft, planes, choppers, etc,” says former cabinet secretary T S R Subramaniam. The work has to be done by the district administration, or the Army, both of whom will have people in command.

The civil administration in these cases does not need the distraction of a VIP visit, to take up space in rescue vehicles,” he says. B K Chaturvedi, member of the planning commission, says that the culture of visits by high profile politicians was basically a way of attracting attention to a certain disaster hit area.

“But now there is no need with the kind of media proliferation which exists. In fact, I would say that political parties should express their concern, and do whatever they can in as unobtrusive a way possible,” he said.