ELECTION 99
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
ELECTIONS '98
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

In the teeth of a cyclone

They're OK, but that's all I know. My brother and his wife, doctors trained in community health, live in Bhubaneswar. Ever since the cyclone hit the state, we've been trying to reach them. No success at all. We did get a message several days ago, routed through Delhi. It said they were OK, if a little short on food, and plunged in relief work. They also managed to call the next day to tell us personally that they were well; that time they reported that there was a lot of looting and rioting going on.

Since then, I stop at STD booths whenever I can and try their number in Bhubaneswar. There's a ring, but there's no answer. I don't know if it's a false ring -- after all, the cyclone knocked out all the phone lines in the area -- or if they are still caught up with relief work, thus out most of the time. I presume they are still OK, though until they manage to phone again I won't know for sure.

The same continuing uncertainty is, I'm sure, what families all across India are experiencing right now. It remains hard to get any substantial news from the state. So while I wait to hear again of my brother and sister-in-law, let me share with you some of my thoughts, some of my possibly disconnected thoughts, in the wake of a cyclone.

One. They have lived in Orissa over six years now, these two. Through most of those years, their job was to bring basic healthcare to the tribal areas of notoriously poor Orissa districts like Ganjam, Gajapati, Koraput and Kalahandi. Hard work, often in places where there are no roads, where trudging for hours over hills is the only way to get to remote tribal hamlets. It has taken a toll of their health: my brother has suffered through several bouts of malaria, rampant in the state.

But curiously, their health is hardly what concerns us most about their life and work in Orissa. Especially over the last year or two, it has been something else entirely that we have been worrying about: his name. Except for "Dilip", it's the same as mine. It seems to us, the families on both sides, that in this climate we're immersed in these days, it's only a matter of time before that name makes them a target.

Oh sure, they might be swept up in relief work after the cyclone. They and their colleagues might have been taking healthcare to people most of us have forgotten. Who cares? In the end, that's all incidental; his name will be used against him. Nor is this such a far-fetched idea. In an earlier stint in Madhya Pradesh, there was a time they were to run a short course to train rural health workers. The trainees were detained by the police; brother and his wife were summoned and accused, solely because of his name, of trying to convert them. No amount of remonstration helped; nor did his protest that he did not observe Christianity. Or any religion. Finally, sis-in-law told the police her name, revealed that she was Hindu. It burned her up that this mattered at all, but it was their only option. Only then did the cops release the trainees and let the course begin.

This is a time when thinking, responsible people explain away the incineration of a priest and his two young sons by saying, well, he must have been converting people, what do you expect? You bet I'm worried about my brother. How long before someone in Orissa latches onto his name and, while he is busy in the wreckage of a cyclone, makes some empty inferences?

It's crazy, I say to myself, that a cyclone sets these thoughts off in my mind. But there you are. It did.

Two. I can't forget Orissa Chief Minister Gamang's consultation of experts as the cyclone built up off the coast. They predicted, India Today reports, "that the storm would spare the state." So when it did hit Orissa, "the administration's response was woefully inadequate."

And what experts were these? "Select astrologers."

Astrologers. An entire state remains cut off, I have no news about my brother and his wife, people died in thousands, and it's all at least partly because a chief minister paid attention to astrologers.

Am I angry? Damned sure I am. I'd like to see every public figure who consults an astrologer dispatched into the maw of the next cyclone. The astrologers too.

Three. Just a few months ago, a war in Kargil generated an astonishing outpouring of national sentiment. Schools, government agencies, newspapers, NRIs, politicians and businesses all collected money -- tens of millions of rupees -- for the families of the men killed and wounded in the war.

It's early days yet, but it is nearly as astonishing how little such sentiment there is after the cyclone. Then, I got several email messages from young, fired-up Indian students abroad, asking for my journalist's advice on how to send their dollars directly to the families of soldiers killed in action. Now, there are none that ask how to send dollars to help the cyclone victims. There are no parades of ad agency and PR firm types down Bombay's MG Road to raise money, as there was during the war. Also, only months ago, whether and how much you had contributed to a Kargil fund became a test of patriotism. Today I read this line in a Times of India editorial: "Is our nationhood so fragile that only a war against others can make us realise what patriotism really means?"

Do I sound bitter? Perhaps I am. It took that war for us comfortable city folk to feel, even if fleetingly, a bond with ordinary soldiers fighting on our border -- as they have actually been doing for years without being noticed. Is a devastating cyclone not enough to feel a bond with ordinary Indians left homeless, left to scrape for food and water? (As, actually, many ordinary Indians have been for years without being noticed).

Four. Cyclones just as powerful as this one hit other parts of the world too; in particular, the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts in the USA are regular targets. People die, but never in thousands as in India. Why? Because here, there are at best only limited, ineffective, efforts to evacuate them before the storm hits. Because a lot of people in coastal areas in India live in flimsy huts that are no match for cyclones.

Because too, a lot of people in India are so poor that they are no match for cyclones.

Yes, as with so many things in India, high death tolls in a cyclone have a lot to do with widespread poverty. Mention poverty in India and there's always some bright spark who'll snap out a rejoinder: Do you think there's no poverty in the West? I've seen homeless people in New York just like in Bombay! The implication being, should you have missed it, that poverty is a natural condition the world over and we should not worry about it too much.

I think: of course there's poverty in the West, but anyone who pretends it's on a scale equivalent to India lives in a fairytale. If just looking around in India is not convincing enough, the devastation wrought by this cyclone should be. Death tolls a hundred times greater than the US grieves over after a hurricane, survivors rioting over food and water: yes, perhaps all this happens elsewhere too. But poverty in India means it is guaranteed to happen every time there's a natural calamity here.

Five. So I wonder, when will poverty come to mean something to us all? When will it be something that we don't just wave away by pointing to New York's homeless? When will poverty occupy the national agenda and weigh on our minds as much as temples do, or as foreign origins do, or as imports of sugar do, or as defending one or another religion does? When will giving all Indians a chance at a dignified life become a national endeavour? When will an Indian prime minister call for a debate on Indian poverty as he calls for one on conversions?

Not very soon, I suspect. There are too many other things that are more important. Our press is full of them. Somebody's fashion show. The Pope's visit. The party everyone was dying to attend: Bombay Times' fifth anniversary bash. (Where "Mumbai had at last gotten over its skin-showing obsession ... The women stuck to the earrings, the men to the pants and sartorial sanity prevailed!"). Governor PC Alexander's insistence on spending over Rs 2.5 million on a new Mercedes because he has an old one.

What chance does poverty have in the teeth of these preoccupations?

Six. None.

At least two newspapers have set up Cyclone Relief Funds.

1) The Statesman, Statesman House, 4 Chowringhee Square, Calcutta 700 001. Make cheques/drafts payable to The Statesman Cyclone Relief Fund. www.thestatesman.net

2) The Times of India, Times of India Building, DN Road, Mumbai 400 001. Make cheques/drafts payable to The Times of India Relief Fund. www.timesofindia.com

(In both cases, I have no idea if the websites say anything about the funds. I'm only passing along the URLs).

Dilip D'Souza