Special Correspondent, NDTV
Thursday, September, 25 2008 (New Delhi)
We live in such voyeuristic times that it's often difficult to feel anything
anymore. Blasts. Floods. Torture. Terror. Every news piece is a story of
victims of some sort or the other and after a point it's all deafeningly
similar. An endless stream of tears, loss, and above all of that, viewer and
reporter fatigue.
So when I went into Bihar to report on the floods, I was carrying the
enormous weight of that weariness with me. `Oh, you're going in three weeks
later...huh. ..,' said a colleague or two. `Well, there are stories to do
yaar, but it's no longer a headline. Not a sexy story.'
So it took a while for these layers to peel away and for the true horror of
what I was in; actually dawn on me. Realisation came nearly two weeks into
reporting in flood hit Bihar. Relief camp after camp. Tens of thousands of
people queuing in long lines to get food. But it seemed like the Nitish
Kumar government was doing the impossible. Moving a state machinery that had
become defunct through decades of misuse and getting large relief camps into
pretty decent shape.
Then, we drove down a stretch of national highway in Supaul. It was a sight
that suddenly changed everything. One never ending road...stretching far
beyond the horizon....miles and miles of people huddled into plastic
sheets...in what looked like the longest camp in the world. It wasn't even a
camp. It was a vast plastic slum. We measured it the next day. It was 6
kilometres of road...dotted by plastic tent after tent...at least 4 lakh
people on one stretch of road alone, all from just this one district. Lined
up like an army of ants. This was no flood.
It was I now realised, the largest displacement of people in India since the
partition. Perhaps the largest displacement of people anywhere in the world
in the last decade or more. We're talking about a river getting up and
moving 120 kilometres east. We're talking about 35 lakh people displaced.
Homeless overnight. 3.5 million people. That's nearly half the population of
Bihar. Out in plastic shanties. Homeless, penniless and struggling to
survive. Or nearly the whole population of Orissa, the neighbouring state
that's also flooded.
Imagine feeding 35 lakh marooned shelter less people everyday. Even if you
give them only two instead of three meals, and imagine that you can get one
meal for 10 rupees...that adds up to 7 crore rupees or 7 million in just one
day. Now know, that their villages are either completely submerged or at
best, floating in at least 3 feet of water. That's not receding yet. The
water may take another six months to find alternate routes and leave behind
vast tracts of ruined, bare land.
Imagine what it's going to be like to feed that many people out on the
streets for 6 months or more. Ok, let's pretend, we're going to be
optimistic and hope this will all somehow sort itself out in three months
and the villages, now unidentifiable tracts of land will be ready for these
people (if they survive until then) to move back to in three months.
It will still cost a minimum of 630 crores just to feed them for three
months. That's not factoring in the cost of transporting the food there. Or
the cost of cooking pans (that nobody has thought of transporting there so
far). Or fuel. Or tents. Or medicines. Or clothes.
And the Prime Minister's relief Fund is 1000 crores. Given the scale of this
disaster, that's nothing.
Now look at the picture already in front of us. A disaster on a scale India
hasn't seen since it's independence. But one that's somehow being reported
as `The Bihar Flood.'
And therefore a localised problem. Like a bad annual rash you may get on
your arm in the monsoon that some ointment will set right. Oh the annual
floods again! Something that should ideally make the central government push
panic buttons for on a war scale. That the national media should report on
as if we're in the grip of a war. And only then will these people have a
fighting chance at even receiving 10 rupees a day worth of rations.
But now, a month has gone by. The Delhi blasts have happened. India's
nuclear deal is on the verge of being pushed through parliament. The
financial world as we know it has crumbled and America is getting ready for
it's Presidential debate. Where's the space in all of that for The Bihar
Flood? Oh yes, wait a minute! There IS space. It's now clubbed together with
other flooding - Orissa, Nasik. It happens every year. It's the same story.
Poor people. They're used to it.
Try telling that to Rajender Sardar, living in a 8 x 6 feet plastic tent in
what I'm going to refer to here as the longest camp in the world. He's ill,
so is his wife. The top of the plastic sheet is so hot when the sun's
overhead that if your skin accidentally touches it, it will get singed (as
mine did).
Yes, he is poor. Yes he earned money before the flood as a daily wage
labourer. But go look at how daily wage labourers live in their villages.
Not in plastic. Mud walled huts covered by thatch and bamboo. One hut, with
mosquito nets in it is meant for sleeping. The hut next to it is meant for
cooking and a third serves as a cattle shelter. All of this near a hand pump
connected to a tube well that pumps sweet, clean groundwater. And located in
the midst of vast open fields.
Here, it is possible even for these subsistence level miserably poor workers
to get a good night's sleep. To stretch out under the mosquito net at night
and not be bitten by mosquitoes. To know that tomorrow, they may not get
much more than dry rotis to eat. But maybe the day after they may be able to
have two or three meals.
Contrast that with life under a plastic sheet. Six people lie here huddled.
No space to even lie down. And the heat is so unbearable, that in 5 minutes
you're drenched in sweat, your body demands water, more food, salts and
sugar that's drained out of you. You get no sleep and certainly not enough
to eat. You cook in a chullah made in front of your tent. That's on the
road.
You've lived in the same pair of clothes for a month. There's not always
water at hand to wash it, and what by the way will you wear if you wash the
only set of clothes you've got? If you're a woman, this means living through
your menstrual cycle in this state. Blood on your clothes.
An NGO told me horror stories of women who in these times, were used to
using many pieces of cloth, and changing their clothes, now have to live in
that one set of soiled clothes. Some, in desperation, use polythene bags to
stop the blood. Yes, this is a gory story but needs to be told. This NGO
provides sanitary napkins to women and they get used in a second. Oh, what
are you talking about, said some people I told this to. These women have
never used napkins in their lives before. True. They've also never had to
live in one pair of soiled clothes before.
In less than a month, from being extremely hot, it's going to be extremely
cold. Thirty-five lakh people are going to need blankets and shawls. But
Bihar is no longer a sexy story. Soon, it's going to disappear off the news
altogether. The relief trickling in now, will become a slow staccato drip.
Like the last drop from a stubborn tap you're trying to shut.
The thirty five lakh people also includes many who aren't in camps or
plastic slums I've described so far. They're wading through three feet of
water everyday in their villages. Staying on there for fear of losing their
only means of livelihood - their cattle. What do we call these people?
Stupid for staying on? Oh, how stupid you want to save your house and your
money. Get out, go live...erm, where......go live on the street like the
millions of others...Sleep piled up one on top of the other, wait your turn
for the handful of food. And for a fresh set of clothes; chucked from a
truck or tractor to many desperate, flailing anonymous hands. So that when
you return in a few months when the water clears, you see a neat little
piece of land. One small problem that might arise.
Where exactly on that vast stretch of mud is your village? And in it, your
piece of land. With all the recognizable markers washed away, how do you
tell one village or field from the next? So many say, no thank you. We'll
take our chances, live in semi submerged villages amid disease and carcasses
of cattle. But at least this is ours. Only, the Bihar story is no longer in
the news. Orissa is now flooded. The last few boats connecting these
floating villages to supplies of food grain are now going to retreat. The
army and central industrial reserve force boats are after all, meant for
rescue missions. Not suppliers of daily rations or ferry rides for pregnant
women cut off from hospitals.
If the boats stop, well...let's not imagine what will happen if they stop.
Let's look at the bright side. These people are after all mainly daily wage
labourers. Extreme poverty is all they've ever known. They're used to
starving. They'll survive.
Sounds good, sitting here in Delhi, where we haven't a clue what subsistence
level existence is or what starvation really means. We think India's poor
starving millions somehow have a different biological clock from the rest of
us. Somehow, they'll be able to take weeks and months of only one meal a day
(as opposed to intermittent days when they may miss the odd meal). They can
live under plastic. They can survive endless mosquito bites and acute
diarrhoea. Somehow the data on malaria deaths, on kala azar deaths and
people dying of starvation amongst these poor don't tell us anything about
this imagined resilience.
Or one very crucial fact. When you're at subsistence level, you are at
bottom rung. One rung lower means below subsistence. Death. But who's
listening. Right now, I'm back from Bihar with all these stories to tell.
But it's not on the news yet. Bihar floods every year yaar. Terror. The nuke
deal. Freddie and Fannie collapsing. Will our markets survive? Never mind
thirty five lakh people. Bihar is always flooded at this time of the year.
