The floods of Assam and Bihar have certain disconcerting elements in common. For one, they occur every year, without fail. They devastate the lives of millions of people. Every year we hear of the respective state governments taking steps to mitigate disasters. News items about the floods don’t make screaming headlines in the mainstream Indian media. But worse, the hearts of Indians don’t quite bleed anywhere else for the trauma people here are subjected to.
This piece is neither a lecture in disaster management or a rambling rant against politicians and contractors who are singularly responsible for the affairs in both these states.
For someone who has covered floods for close to 20 years, one knows for certain that those who don’t have to bear the brunt of swelling rivers have little idea about how destructive these are. The depth of public perception of floods across the board is zilch. Most seem to comprehend disasters only in terms of the number of lives lost. So, a blast that kills nine people in, say Pune, would be of bigger import than the floods that see an equal number of people being swept away by swirling waters in faraway Dhemaji district of Assam.
What people don’t usually understand is that the toll in a monsoonal flood is hardly ever that high to make one wince; unless they are flash floods of course, and that too in a hilly region. The annual floods are only about one thing: destruction of colossal proportions.
Floods are about lives being thrown out of gear; they are about losing not only your house and meagre belongings, but often your livelihood too, for months on an end. Floods are not only about being rendered a destitute or refugee, they are also about knowing deep inside that the nightmarish experience of today will again be a grim reality during the next monsoon. Floods are also about losing crops, food crises, water-borne diseases. They are in equal measure about surface communication being snapped. And the unending trauma that comes along.
Stories about such devastation very rarely make it to our drawing rooms, and most people in the teeming metropolises remain blissfully ignorant of the monsoonal ravages. And, if the message does not reach out to the people, you can be sure that the messenger has been at fault to an extent. Yes, the media over all has been an abject failure in flood reportage.
The annual floods of Assam and Bihar are essentially rural stories, they do not affect the cocooned lives of citydwellers unless, of course, flood-stricken villagers make a beeline for the cities. Compare this with the coverage that the Mumbai floods of 2005 had generated. The waters remained in the headlines for days, and for weeks after the deluge it kept cropping up in some news story or the other. Mumbaikars themselves had no reason to forget the floods, and the media by and large ensured that others elsewhere did not either.
But can the media alone be blamed, if people elsewhere have little or no interest in what happens outside their cities? During the Mumbai floods, netizens had blogged feverishly. Posts ranged from first hand reportage to mobilising support for the distressed. People elsewhere chipped in with their mite. It was genuine concern that had moved people everywhere.
Contrast this with the response that the same citizenry makes to the annual round of floods in Assam or Bihar. One doesn’t have to Google it up – there isn’t much to.
Only a week or so back it was reported that 900,000 people had been displaced in 12 of the 27 districts of Assam in this year’s floods, a substantial number of them in Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts, two of the state’s most flood-prone. No, it was not a report about 900,000 people being “affected”; it was about them being “displaced”. If you didn’t read about it in the newspapers it was not because they were obsessed with the Hazare campaign. More people were hit by floods last year as well; you probably didn’t hear it then either.
True, this news item wasn’t splashed on the front pages, but it was carried nonetheless. Yet, it didn’t move anyone into proactive concerted action either. There is a group on Facebook that was created to provide relief to the victims from Dhemaji, but most members are from Assam. The last time I checked, it had fewer than 150 members.
Tomes can be, and in fact are always, written about inadequate disaster management plans in our country. Volumes can also be penned about how much corruption at the ground level is responsible for piling up the agony of flood-hit people. It is also, perhaps, time during these times of heightened nationalistic frenzy for Indians to introspect. While it is true that the people of this country are not lacking in rage against the political leadership, it is also true that they are running woefully short of compassion – for fellow citizens.
Agreed that floods don’t hit North Bihar or Upper Assam alone; they have been mentioned here only as case studies. However, given the scale of devastation that the people of these regions have to endure every year, and the untold misery that is wreaked upon them by nature every monsoon, we cannot keep telling ourselves that we don’t reach out to them because no one ever told us. Small news items always trickle in. All we need to do is keep our eyes open.
And, maybe our hearts too.
