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Telegraph.co.uk > Telegraph
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Correspondents > Peter Foster

Peter Foster

Peter Foster was the Daily Telegraph's South
Asia Correspondent for four years until January 2008 when he moved to live at
the bottom of the world with his wife and three small children. He reports on
life in Takaka, a town of 1,182 people on the northern coast of South Island
New Zealand, where he is writing a book about his experiences.

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Will Bihar floods be India's 'Katrina
moment'?

Will
Bihar floods be India's 'Katrina moment'?

Thursday, September 4, 2008, 10:35 AM GMT [General]

Even by Indian standards the response to the Bihar floods has been
abject.

A
man struggles with food supplies on a flooded village road

Despite receiving warnings from Nepal that the River Kosi had burst it
banks, both the local and central governments in India utterly failed to
mobilize.

While as many as three millions mostly poor (and therefore not really
worth bothering about) people were stranded in trees and on rooftops, the
bigwigs in Patna and New Delhi bickered mercilessly about who was to
blame.

It says much about how, on so many levels, India's poisonous politics
gets in the way of concrete action. Compare the Chinese response to the
Sichuan earthquake.

Floods, landslides, droughts, earthquakes and other natural disasters
are nothing new in India (I reported on one of the above at least once a
year while I was in Delhi) and yet still there doesn't seem to be a
default arrangement for dealing with these problems.

Given the frequency of these events - and most scientists seem to be
predicting that extreme weather events are on the increase - it's amazing
that India doesn't have effective federal-level disaster relief teams,
with supplies and equipment, on permanent standby.

This might sound like a big 'ask' but in reality it only requires the
stockpiling of required supplies and the training of some military units
to be ready to be redeployed in relief mode (as their secondary function)
when disaster strikes.

As always in India, there is that appearance of class/caste-prejudice
which means that the fate of the poor man is of little or no account to
holders of high office.

"The governments of India and Bihar are going about the relief work as
if it is a favour they are doing for the people," writes Himanshu Thakkar,
the journalist and water rights specialist. "That favour is being doled
out in a totally haphazard, unplanned, callous way."

However, before I get too sanctimonious about India's failings, its
worth remembering that the mighty United States of America fared little
better when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans three years ago.

There are obvious of parallels between the two disasters:

Warnings about the poor maintenance and breach of the New Orleans
levees were issued and ignored with catastrophic consequences, just as
they have been over the ageing Kosi barrage in Nepal which India was
supposed to be maintaining.

And when the scale of their folly became clear, the Louisiana and US
federal governments played the blame-game just as the authorities in Patna
and New Delhi have done.

And yes, there was the same ugly whiff of casteism (call it
class-racism, if you prefer in the American context) which saw the poor,
black underclass of New Orleans bearing the brunt of the
disaster.

But I fear that this is where the similarities might end.
America learned from its mistakes, as could be seen by the evacuation of
two million people from the Big Easy this week as Tropical Storm Gustav
bore in from the Atlantic.

This is not to say India should have evacuated three million people
from Bihar - that's clearly impractical in the Indian context - but it is
surely time the better plans were laid at Federal level.

So will India learn lessons? Will the Bihar floods of 2008 be a
'Katrina moment' when the state woke up to its obligations and put in
place the contingency plans required to deal with these kinds of
disasters?

I sincerely hope so, but on past form, you'd be a brave man to bet on
it.

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Comments

Remember, this is a country where callous Brahmans have happily
lived oblivious to the suffering of hundreds of millions of people
because in their minds, they are 'unclean'. Whose nationals spend
more time complaining about perceived racism in London's Met, than
rallying around to help their own people in a flood. I am afraid
human suffering is somehow seen as holly.
Frank
Feels Urpain

September
04, 2008
12:04 PM GMT

It was the same with the Tsunami in Tamil Nadu, storms in
Gujarat/Orissa, and earthquakes in northern UP and Maharashtra. In
Bihar, years of central government polices, with the 1990's collapse
by Lalu Prasad (now famed Indian Railways Minister) has created an
even greater danger for the poor people in northern
Bihar.

Besides, who really cares for poor people anywhere in
the world?

can anyone name me one country that really
cares?

Also, does the Indian media give too hoots for Biharis
and their plight>? How much serious coverage has this story had
over the rubbish that goes for news in India?
ChristopherHitchFAN

September
04, 2008
12:37 PM GMT

Calling the Katrina response class-racism is stupid, racist, and
ugly. Only 28% of the city was white. Almost all the city officials
were and are black. The chief of police was black. (I don't know if
he still is; Mayor Nagin blamed him for everything, accused him
falsely of being on drugs, and fired him. I haven't seen the
successor.) A greater percentage of the white residents died than
the black residents (as percentages). Since only 1/4 of the
neighborhoods were white, what were the chances that black
neighborhoods would be hit? 3 to 1! Since only 1/4 of the city was
white, what would likely be the ratio of black refugees to white
ones? 3 to 1! Since the mayor didn't have the gumption even to
commandeer school buses, what was the chance that he would be
effective at emergency management? Zero! (He corrected that bus
mistake with Gustav, the buses were lined up, new and shiny.)
Bu on U

September
04, 2008
03:32 PM GMT

Ineptitude and callous attitude of the governments of the States
as well as Central are mind boggling and the pity of it all that the
powerful media do not ever critisize strongly enough the
inefficiencies of the politicians who need to be exposed to the
entire nation. Facts remain at odds with reality that the poor
people will never get a fair deal while India shines in the eyes of
the corrupt politicians. Shame on them!!!
Preeket

September
04, 2008
08:17 PM GMT

Bu on U.

Reviewing that paragraph, I realise that I
phrased it poorly. My point - and I had hoped to convey by the use
of the word 'whiff' - was the widespread sense at the time that the
people of New Orleans might not have been so neglected had they been
white and middle class.

True or not, the perception was
there.
Peter
Foster

September
04, 2008
10:29 PM GMT

Soldiers and "fuel poverty" pensioners come under which class ?

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sea...

Care to talk ?

Jack The
R

September
05, 2008
06:14 AM GMT

Bihar is the victim of colonial rule of the Central Government of
India and the capitalism. All the colonial solutions of the state's
problem have been implemented there without thinking about their
ecological, political-economic and social consequences. Floods are
an annual feature for people of Northern Bihar. To fix the problem,
governments constructed embankments and big dams in Nepal and Bihar.
The construction of embankments to control rushing mountain river
water into plains is as stupid an idea as construction of big dams
to control floods. The recent floods are just the response of nature
to the devastating political acumen and the solution of such crisis
lies in political resolution of water conflicts with neighbouring
countries like Nepal and Bangladesh.
Ishteyaque

September
05, 2008
10:22 AM GMT

Peter, thanks for your civil reply to my angry one. You're right,
the perception was there. That doesn't make it right, or good, or
true. But to confess I have a chip on my shoulder because I live in
the town where the white Duke University lacrosse players were
falsely accused of rape. I was here for all that racially-motivated
ugliness, which turned out to have been based on the lies of a woman
with a history of crying rape. I still hate the New York Times over
it.
Bu on U

September
05, 2008
02:22 PM GMT

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