re is a growing tendency to call any disaster as a
Natural Calamity and hence deal with it as disaster. This leads to the use of
terms like disaster preparedness, disaster mitigation and rehabilitation phase.
What used to be said, as opportunity for development afforded by disasters is
becoming more of a rule than exception? While one would readily accept Tsunami
or an earthquake as a disaster, it is difficult to extend the same definition to
drought and floods in many areas of the country that have definite season of
rains and scarcities. A huge capital has been invested in irrigation and flood
control in these places.
Going back in the history, there was an engineer named Robert Green Kennedy during the British period. The credit for assessing the water logging problem in the canal fed areas goes to him. He found (1873) while working in North Eastern parts of the country that only 28 per cent of the water released from the canal Head Works actually reached the fields and the remaining water was lost in transit, some of it in evaporation and most of it in seepage. The seepage water was instrumental in raising the water table leading to the waterlogging of the fields and loss of production. When he suggested that if the government was charging canal rates from the farmers for irrigation and taking credit for improved production, it should also accept the responsibility of waterlogging the fields of a sizable number of farmers and should compensate the farmers for the losses they incurred, thus. Nothing of that sort happened and Kennedy was shifted to the battlefields of Afghanistan for reminding the state of its obligations to its clients. He had to spend 18 long years there but that did not dampen his spirits and when he returned from Afghanistan in 1893, he started his work on waterlogging once again where he had left in 1873.
Kennedy belonged to a rare breed of professionals who could remind the state of its obligations. In many states, canal rates are charged from the farmers simply because their fields are located in the command area of canals irrespective of the fact that they may not be able to undertake any irrigation. Such farmers, in an attempt to avoid confiscation of their properties and humiliation before the entire village quietly pay the taxes levied on them. Let us forget, for the time being, the revenue collection part of the canals; but is it not legitimate for the farmers to ask for compensation when the canal system virtually collapses in some cases as it happened some years ago in Gujarat when virtually all the dams that are there became dry.
Similarly, in many flood prone states, the government has worked to protect some areas against flooding; of late, the phrase 'partial protection against floods' has come into use. Bihar, for example, has a flood affected area of 68.8 lakh hectares against 94 lakh hectares of the total area. Only 29 lakh hectares of the state are 'partially protected against floods' in the state. Remaining nearly 40 lakh hectares are yet to be protected. While it is the responsibility of the Government to tell its people how and when it is going to provide protection to the remaining area of 40 lakh hectares; will it be too much to ask for compensation to loss of life and property that the Government claims it has protected against floods? A quick look at the map of the flood prone area suggests that the most flooded areas of the state are the ones that the Government says it has protected. This has happened because of the reckless construction of the roads, railway lines, embankments, canals, and village roads without any regard to the drainage of the country leading to massive drainage congestion. While continuing its efforts on each of the causes that have led to the deterioration of the drainage, the Government of Bihar wants the Disaster Management Department of the State to manage floods as disaster and that department is doing its duty without ever indicating the Water Resources Department of the state that much of its bread comes out of the follies committed by the latter.
What has been happening in Mumbai since 2005 or in Gujarat and Rajasthan ever since, was basically due to the encroachment of the river basin. The Government has been a silent spectator. The disaster situation is becoming more a way of life in these places, an annual pre-determined event. If the state were serious about curbing the menace, it should not have been happening time and again. Most of this encroachment was done at the behest of the politicians and the bureaucrats. Andhra Pradesh has an ambitious plan for embanking its coastal rivers to control floods and has made huge allocations for the same. Let a team of AP engineers / bureaucrats / social workers visit Bihar or eastern UP and see for themselves and talk to the affected families directly what havoc embanking of the rivers has created in those places. Situation in the Brahmaputra Valley in Assam is no different either.
Since there is no likelihood of people's resistance getting strong enough on a national basis against the vested interests in earthwork, let us think of a Compensation Code, instead of the infamous 'Relief Code' where the establishment would go ahead with its programs without taking any lessons from anywhere and the victims would be compensated for all the losses they suffer during such man-made calamities. There is no reason in asking right to relief, it is a dole after all, and makes beggar of a respectful citizen. Most of the NGOs who are trying to dig out antique provisions of the British Period for provide relief to the people during Natural Calamities (unfortunately they are not, and in most cases people know the men who made it) should strive to draft a Compensation Code, and insist that to be enacted by Parliament and grounded for the benefit of the flood or drought victims. After all, the nation got the Right to Information despite all odds.
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