Madam’s visit leaves flood victims hungry

By Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: More than one lakh flood victims, majority of them tribals in the Bhadrachalam area, were forced to starve for a day when AICC president Sonia Gandhi made a whirlwind tour of the flood-affected parts of Khammam and East Godavari districts.
Reason: the Indian Air Force helicopters that were supposed to airdrop food packets in the flood-hit areas were denied permission to fly in view of the “VVIP” visit, ostensibly for security reasons. The helicopters were supposed to make 10 sorties for airdropping food in the flood-hit areas but only two sorties were allowed, that too for security check. This, in fact, is not an allegation being made by opposition parties but a bare fact revealed by a Chief Minister’s Office functionary. The authorities planned to complete their task at least after “Madam” left the scene but the weather deteriorated by evening, preventing the choppers to fly, top sources in the CMO said on condition of anonymity. This is one of the sad stories related to the flood relief operations in the worst-affected districts like Khammam, East Godavari, West Godavari and Adilabad. One other glaring aspect was the clear lack of co-ordination within the government administration and with external agencies like the non-government organisations (NGOs). Whenever there is a calamity of such magnitude, leading NGOs swing into action immediately to lend a helping hand to the government machinery in the relief operations. This time, however, no such NGO was in the picture anywhere in the flood-hit districts. One reason being cited for this was that there has been no initiative from the government to involve the NGOs in the relief operations. Even after the flood relief operations proved to be disastrous, the argument in the government is that there’s no need to involve NGOs when the official machinery itself has been “taking care of everything.” “Our officers and employees have been working round-theclock in all the flood-hit areas for over a week now. NGOs will only add to the trouble instead of mitigating the woes. So we decided not to encourage the NGOs,” observed a top revenue official.
Apart from these, “formalities” like filing of daily status reports and protocol duties also hamper the relief operations, official sources admit. Everyday, there is a VIP visit to the flood-hit areas and part of the official machinery is forced to take care of it. Besides, routine “reviews” through tele and video conferences are also diverting the attention of the district administrations thereby affecting the relief operations, the sources added.