Lessons unlearnt

Orissa has long been India's natural disaster crucible, so it is informative to examine how it managed — or mismanaged — relief and rehabilitation operations after a cyclone five years ago

Bibhuti Mishra Bhubaneshwar

In little more than a year after its coastal districts were ripped apart by a cyclone on October 29, 1999, Orissa saw five people serially occupying the crucial post of special relief commissioner (SRC). The Orissa State Disaster Management Authority, set up a few months after the 1999 cyclone to oversee reconstruction, had a high turnover of management heads. Not only does this underline the state government's inept handling of disaster relief work but also the inefficiency and venality of government officials charged with relief and rehabilitation responsibilities.

''Help the victims of the super-cyclone'' screamed a banner at the Bhubaneshwar railway station in the wake of the 1999 calamity: but the relief operations reception counter remained unattended. Large quantities of relief materials were piled on the platforms with no takers. Cartons, boxes and polythene bags, inscribed with the legend, "For the super cyclone victims of Orissa'', lay around containing everything from rice, dal (pulses), gur (molasses) and wheat to dress materials, medicines, polythene covers and baby food. The consignees were mostly government agencies, but included individuals and voluntary organisations. Even the medicines sent by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund lay around unprotected.

At least 500,000 blankets nestled undistributed in a government warehouse in Bhubaneshwar even three years after the tragedy. It was only after media reports that authorities dispatched the blankets to the affected districts. (As always, government help did not reach the victims when they needed it the most. A majority got the blankets at the height of Orissa's scorching summer. When an earthquake struck Gujarat in January 2002, Orissa was quick to send 2,500 blankets to Bhuj and 800-odd tents to Ahmedabad. The irony was that these were meant for Orissa's own cyclone victims but had been caught in the web of bureaucratic ennui.)

There was an absolute lack of coordination at the receiving end, prompting an activist of the Bharat Seva Ashram Sangh, who had come with the relief materials, to remark, ''Our chief has even threatened to close down relief operations in the state.'' Voluntary organisations that preferred to carry out relief operations on their own faced problems from uncooperative officers and local politicians who tried to dictate terms.

Relief materials also piled up at block and district headquarters, from where they had to be dispatched to villages through local ward members and sarpanchs. At many places, the villagers alleged that they were not getting the relief, stymied because the sarpanchs and the ward members employ political considerations to decide on the distribution of relief in the villages. At Ersama, the worst affected block in Orissa, where more than 6,000 people were killed, huge stocks of dress materials were found piled up at the block headquarters. All the while, little children were seen moving around half-naked in the chilly weather. The dress materials later allegedly made their way to the residences of the district officers, as did foreign blankets.

A CARE official who was engaged in the relief operations said, "It was amazing how venal these government officials turned out to be. They were out to grab everything from foreign blankets to good rice and pulses that came from outside. It was horrifying to see these people cashing in on human misery."