Nature's fury in Uttarakhand, where is political response?

India is awestruck and not angry enough at the scale of the loss of lives in the hills of Uttarakhand. kids going to secondary schools would be more aware of the fragile ecology and topography of the hilly state than its chief minister Vijay Bahuguna. Nature's fury could not have been stopped but the loss of lives could have definitely been minimized had Bahuguna not been sleeping all these days after the Congress high command  forced him upon the state as the chief minister. 

When bodies swept by flash flood in the Kedar valley of Uttarakhand are found as far as in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, one must pause to ask if there is any administration or government in the hilly state at all. 

Since nature's fury broke on June 17, Uttarakhand chief minister at best had been speculating on the number of dead. His love of statistics or attempts to hide the actual calamity is least an attribute of a leader in whom the people trusted for their welfare and safety. 

So far, the people have restrained themselves from pointing fingers in the aftermath of the Kedar valley calamity. Media is counting number of the dead and is largely awestruck. People are glued to tv sets to watch the tales of tragedy.

One side of the Kedarnath temple was swept away by 9.30 pm on June 16 in which the cottages, hotels and ashrams became debris. More than a thousand pilgrims rushed to the temple to take the shelter. Among them were some VIPs like Ashwani Choube, former health minister of Bihar, who rang officials from Dehradoon to New Delhi for help. 

It was by about 7 am next morning that the second wave of the nature's fury hit the Kedar valley. Even after a gap of 10 hours, the administration did not show signs of their existence. When the deluge in the temple and the subsequent water wave swept away pilgrims in thousands, it was the individual valour of some who saved lives of people in hundreds. Even after six hours of the June 17 flash flood, the local administration did not rush to save the people.

When a state depends so much on pilgrims and tourists for its economy, how could there be a situation when there is no physical infrastructure to deal with natural calamities. Why should people take shelter in a temple? Where was the evacuation plan in the event of a natural calamity? None of such things existed. In fact, the state government thought that the hills (Dev Bhoomi) will never have such a calamity and hence no need to prepare for such exigencies.

Ironically, no one knows how many people were there in the Kedar valley, as there is no system in place to regulate the traffic. With debris and silt rising as much as by 10 feet, it will take months to know how many died.

Fewer people would have been killed and more would have lived if the state government listened to the weather predictions and resisted the hotel lobbies. The Char Dham Yatra should have been stopped by June 14 itself had there been enough sense in the local administration to interpret the meteorological forecast of "very heavy rains and landslide" in the region. To say that that met department's forecast was not specific is too callous to say the least.

Amid the breast-beating, we need to pause for the kind of political response to the disaster. Except for Gujrat chief minister Narendra Modi, who went there and used the infrastructure and network of the Shanti Kunj ashram in Hardwar, to rescue pilgrims, others had been busy in arranging trucks of relief material and seeking money from people for Prime Minister's relief fund. This is cowardly. The political class, who commands so many foot soldiers in the nook and corners of the country, could not rush volunteers and used the existing infrastructure of the numerous ashrams, has been laid-back in the time of crisis in which the whole country was affected. 

Time to account for the lapses would soon arrive and the roll call would begin from Vijay Bahunguna and must spread higher and higher for it was not a natural disaster alone but amplified by inadequacies of the administrative response. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has done too little in the time of crisis for the nation. This is not leadership even if some incorrigible admirers thought the man in blue turban of being a leader.