As the wind with a speed of 175 kilometres per hour howled in Odisha on Friday morning, the message that resonated in echo chambers across the country was that the state cries out for a massive national effort towards reconstruction and rehabilitation of the dispossessed in the coastal belt ~ Puri, Bhubaneswar, Kendrapara, Cuttack, and Jagatsinghpur.
Alas, it has turned out to be a decadal catastrophe. Ten years after Cyclone Aila convulsed West Bengal (26 May 2009) and close to 20 years after the super cyclone devastated Odisha (29 October 1999), both the eastern states will have to grapple with the tragedy for some time yet, deflecting the focus from the puerile electoral joust between a Chief Minister and the Prime Minister.
In the hour of the tragedy, the political relief must seem to be considerable. The response, specifically the assistance package, will hopefully match the scale of the devastation. Cyclone Fani is the most severe cyclonic storm since the super cyclone and this is the grim message to be drawn from Friday’s landfall. In several respects, it has turned out to be decidedly more destructive.
That Kolkata and coastal South Bengal were spared the worst at midnight lends no scope for a sense of Schadenfreude, specifically the “pleasure” derived from another’s misfortune. The collapse of “mobile towers” in Bhubaneswar has been symptomatic of the general collapse of connectivity, with Kolkata airport closed for nearly 24 hours and 223 trains cancelled. To that must be added the near-total breakdown of power supply, almost inevitably leading to a crippling shortage of water.
As battered Odisha languishes in unsplendid isolation, one must give credit to the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) for the precautionary measures, which have arguably checked the number of casualties. Notably, the evacuation of 12 lakh people two days before the cyclone from the low-lying areas of the coastal districts is a reflection of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s signal of intent ~ “The priority is to take care of the people.”
On Monday morning, restoration of communication links and power supply were the two other forbidding tasks. It redounds to the credit of the BJD government that Odisha has been the first state to put in place an Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), which is backed up by the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force. This structural arrangement has ensured an effective response, as immediate as it was concerted.
The district administrations had acted with the very first weather forecast on the impending cyclone, reaffirming that there ought to be no time-gap between the alert and response. With not dissimilar alacrity, the government will be expected to contain the ballooning food inflation in the wake of the cyclone not the least because of the limited purchasing power of people in a predominantly rural state with a sizable swathe belonging to the BPL category.
The overwhelming darkness is as literal as it is figurative in a state that is generally acknowledged to be an investment destination. Puri, for instance, exemplifies the grot of poverty and the glitz of tourism. Let India help Odisha.