Flood Havoc After Drought: Where’s Rehabilitation ?
by Gabriel Vaz    
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore

Bangalore, Nov 2: More than a month after most of Karnataka, especially the northern parts of the state, suffered its worst-ever devastating floods for over a century, rehabilitation of the millions of people is yet to really take off.

For the record, however, two sets of parallel schemes for organising rehabilitation and reconstruction of houses have been launched.

First was the ``navagrama’’ programme launched by the Bellary mining lords under the leadership of revenue minister G Karunakar Reddy in Gadag district, which was used by tourism minister G Janardhana Reddy and health minister B Sriramulu to unleash a full-scale fussilade against chief minister B S Yeddyurappa.

And, the chief minister himself launched the government’s official ``asare’’ programme under public-private-participation model in Ron taluk also in Gadag district on the Rajyothsava Day in the presence of Adichunchanagiri Mutt pontiff Balagangandharanath Swamiji. Another programme was launched through the union home minister P Chidambaram on Monday.

But does anybody know for sure as to what will happen to these grandiose schemes? The question is pertinent and needs to be answered in the background of the serious political crisis that has gripped the Yeddyurappa regime for the last one week, with the Reddy brothers openly challenging the chief minister, calling him names like mythological ``Kasma,’’ who was destroyed by Lord Sri Krishna in the epic Mahabharat, accusing him of ``shedding crocodile tears’’ and demanding change of guard.

Though he initially sought to ignore the dissidence war lightly, Yeddyurappa also took some retaliatory steps to rein in the Reddys. The Bellary mining lords even roped in assembly speaker Jagadish Shettar and persuaded him to throw his hat in the ring for leadership stakes.

Paradoxically, the national general secretary and former union minister Anant Kumar is also said to be behind the entire crisis and if political grapevine is to be believed it is because of Anant Kumar that Reddys and Shettar have decided to strike at Yeddyurappa. There is definitely some truth in this because Anant Kumar is said to be without a godfather after L K Advani’s political career virtually coming to an end and Rajnath Singh’s term due to expire by the end of the year.

The fact that the BJP national leadership dispatched its ace trouble-shooter Arun Jaitely to Bangalore to hold talks with the warring factions and sort out the differences, who held parleys with both groups for two days and returned empty-handed to Delhi shows the seriousness of the situation.

All the key leaders in both factions, barring the chief minister, have landed in Delhi for talks ignoring even the state’s all-important Rajyothsava Day, which of course is being observed in a simple manner this year on account of the floods. Yeddyurappa, who also is scheduled to visit Delhi in the next few days, is smug with confidence.  Yeddyurappa’s trusted colleagues and confidants like Dr V S Acharya, Suresh Kumar and Dhananjaya Kumar are already camping in Delhi lobbying for their boss with the central leaders.

Viewed in this background, can anybody really predict how the crisis will be resolved? Also, can the public, who have voted BJP in large numbers both in the assembly and lok sabha polls, tolerate more than 60 ruling party legislators enjoying the five-star comforts in Hyderabad or Goa for almost a week when more than half the state is worried about their future? The cloud over the government, naturally, casts doubts on its rehabilitation works.
Paradoxically, till August, more than half the state was reeling under serious drought conditions. The government had declared 20 out of the  29 districts and 84 of 176 taluks as drought affected by the government in mid-August. A high-level Central team headed by Union agriculture ministry’s joint secretary Jiji Thomson visited some of the severely affected regions, in response to the government’s demand for Central assistance of Rs 700 crore to tackle the drought situation.

Withering crops, drying wells, depleting water-levels in reservoirs and drinking water starved men and animals was the major cause of concern on account of drought conditions in most parts of Karnataka till mid-September. Ensuring supply of drinking water, food and work for the drought-hit farmers and agricultural labourers and fodder for cattle were the major worries of the farmers as monsoon was receding.

But October changed everything. The state witnessed its worst-ever devastation. What began as a sudden downpour transformed into torrential rains and rampaging floods in entire northern Karnataka and the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra with overflowing rivers and their tributaries causing untold suffering, misery and havoc.
The heavy pounding and battering for eight days since the beginning of October have claimed a toll of 226 human lives in 16 of the 29 districts of Karnataka, with the 12 districts, accounting for most.

In neighbouring Andhra, which witnessed serious destruction in some 600 villages of five districts, the toll exceeded 65.

Loss of lives, while being tragic and unacceptable, is just one aspect of the situation. As many as 4,292 villages in the 16 districts were subjected to the battering by rains. Over 5 lakh were damaged and the loss of cattle is around 8 lakh, which could even go up further as details pour in. It is, however, almost an impossible to get an accurate picture of the loss of fowl. Standing crops in over 25 lakh hectares besides vast extent of horticultural crops were destroyed.

The government initially estimated losses of Rs 20,000 crore which was subsequently scaled down to a more realistic figure of Rs 16,500 crore.

Clearly, such a massive and gigantic task of arranging relief and rehabilitation of the nearly 18 lakh affected people is beyond the limited resources of a state on its own.

Naturally, the state government has urged the Centre  to declare the flood havoc in the as a national calamity and sanction immediate assistance of Rs 10,000 crore and release a third of the amount forthwith to take up relief and rehabilitation work on a war-footing.            

The Centre, however, not did respond favourably. The Congress-led UPA regime’s chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Home Minister P Chidambaram along with Law Minister M Veerappa Moily and Labour Minister M Mallikarjuna Kharge have already visited some the affected districts. The Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has also visited Raichur district and flew over some of the affected villages.

While asserting that the Centre would not discriminate against the state in the grant of central assistance on political lines, Dr Singh promised to treat all states fairly in handling human tragedies due to natural calamities.

Obviously, it chose to treat both Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka equally as is evident from the sanction of Rs 1,000 crore each of central assistance to both states despite  the fact the scale, size and extent of the devastation was many times more in Karnataka than in the neighbouring state.

By all accounts, the ordeal of the millions of people in the affected regions is undoubtedly the worst-ever. True, the magnitude and extent of devastation or the scale of human deaths may not match the 1977 cyclone that battered Andhra Pradesh killing over 10,000 people. However, the devastation caused by the eight-day fury of rains is described as unprecedented in north Karnataka’s history.

Karnataka MPs camping in New Delhi

But what apparently provoked indignation in the government and even the general public is the apathy or rather lack of even-handedness while dealing with requests for central assistance on previous occasions in respect of grant of funds for tackling drought or flood situations.

Ironically, the Centre’s release of Rs 52.26 crore to the state from Calamity Relief Fund (CRF) as against Rs 156.84 crore to Andhra Pradesh served as justification for the accusation of alleged political bias and even step-motherly treatment. The fact that state’s actual entitlement from CRF was barely Rs 139 crore against  Rs 418 crore for Andhra based on the recommendations of the statutory bodies like Eleventh and Twelfth Finance Commissions, was of least concern to the critics

But the Centre can be expected to release further grants as promised by the Prime Minister after studying the assessment reports and recommendations by the Central study team, which toured the affected districts in three batches from October 21. The four cabinet ministers from the state have also promised to do their bit in getting more grants from the Centre.

But Yeddyurappa, who was busy with his cabinet colleagues in undergoing a three-day ``Chintan Baitak’’ in Suttur Mutt premises near Mysore when the skies were opening up and drowning people of north Karnataka in deluge besides washing away homes, cattle and other belongings, quickly jumped into action after the end of the training.
Wasting no time, the chief minister galvanized the administrative machinery to meet the daunting challenges in organising rescue and relief operations. Helicopters from Indian Air Force with boats and personnel from MEG as well as hundreds of men from CRPF as also National Disaster Relief teams were pressed into service. Hundreds of relief camps were established to provide shelter and food for the homeless and hungry people.
Having set the rescue and relief operations in motion besides immediately providing the initial corpus of funds by releasing Rs 100 crore to the deputy commissioners of the affected districts, the government appointed the senior bureaucrat, S M Jaamadar,  as the nodal officer for monitoring the relief operations.

The chief minister also devoted his time and attention to the other tasks at hand in tackling the developing situation like mobilising funds by personally undertaking padayatras in the unaffected areas of north Karnataka and in Bangalore along with his senior ministerial colleagues.

The public, companies and organisations too responded positively and have contributed cash and kind besides giving promises to the tune of a whopping Rs 800 crore, which is no mean achievement. With the independent parallel fund collection drives initiated by several media houses and even political parties, the total corpus can certainly be expected to reach Yeddyurappa’s target of raising Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 1,500 crore mark.

Not content with his fund mobilization efforts, the chief minister has sought to mop up more resources by levying a flood tax either by marginally enhancing the value added tax (VAT) on some commodities or increasing sales tax on petroleum products for a limited period of 6 to 12 months to fund the rehabilitation work to mop up another Rs 1,500 crore to Rs 2,000 crore.

The government has already brought in an ordinance to provide for augmenting funds for calamity relief to the tune of Rs 2,500 crore either in the form of borrowing or taking recourse to other means.

Yet another proposal that has been floated – in fact, it has been tossed around for quite some time now – is imposing toll charges on iron ore, granite, timber and sand transporting trucks for the maintenance of damaged roads, which incidentally was seen by the Reddy brothers as a move to clip their wings. But the government implemented it anyway.

Though the Reddy brothers were obviously angry at Yeddyurappa’s pro-active methods to mobilise funds, including levy of toll charges on trucks carrying iron ore, granite, timber and sand, he received widespread appreciation from the media and almost all sections including arch enemy H D Deve Gowda. The JD(S) supremo and former prime minister even personally called on the prime minister and even wrote to him seek liberal central assistance.

Yeddyurappa managed to enlist the help of the four central ministers, when he went to meet the prime minister, even as the local Congress leaders had spurned his request to join the delegation led by him. The chief minister even convinced his Andhra counterpart K Rosaiah to make a joint representation to the Centre to relax the norms governing grant of relief and seek generous central assistance.

Another factor that enraged the Reddys – apart from the levy of flood toll charges on mining trucks and Yeddyurappa’s cosying up with Rosaiah – was the government’s stand in permitting joint survey of the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border areas to check illegal mining. Though the move was scuttled because of the ``help’’ rendered by the then chief minister YSR, the issue has come to haunt the Reddys again with the present Andhra government registering cases against Obalapuram Mining Company operating in the neighbouring state.
 
Anyway, with Central assistance and money from all sources, ensuring sufficient funds to finance the massive rehabilitation work should not be a problem.

The challenge is to organise rehabilitation of the millions of helpless victims. This is more so in the case of farmers, who need assistance even to make their lands cultivable again. Students need special attention, assistance and care to continue their studies. On top of all this, the authorities and non-governmental agencies have to work hard to prevent spread of various water-borne contagious diseases and provide medical aid.

The exercise involved in the rehabilitation will be akin to the past experience during Orissa and Andhra Pradesh cyclonic storms, the destruction caused by the Gujarat earthquake or the devastation of Tsunami in Tamil Nadu. The biggest and foremost task before the government is to ensure complete transparency to prevent pilferage, corruption and the menace of middlemen.

The task is stupendous and urgent. The challenges must be faced head on. They brook no delay or laxity. Farmers must be helped to return to resume their work quickly. Agricultural loans must be provided and the crop loans already availed must be waived. Those who lost their houses must be provided with shelter in the next six to nine months and most certainly before the onset of the next monsoon.

As of now, Yeddyurappa seems to be quite confident of weathering the storm by making necessary adjustments. He might be proved right also. Even if he is forced to quit and make way for Jagadish Shettar – which does not appears to be likely in the present circumstances – the ruling BJP cannot afford to go slacken or ignore the rehabilitation challenges ahead.