Petty politics shouldn’t dominate Kerala flood relief efforts

The scale of devastation in the wake of the great deluge of Kerala should have been humbling and a rare moment of reflection for our politicians. Alas, that was not to be! Instead, Kerala remained an instance of petty politicking over what is a great human tragedy. The issue first came to the helm when Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan informed Prime Minister Modi that the state has suffered a loss of Rs 19,512 crore as per initial assessments. But Kerala’s request for an immediate assistance of over Rs 2,000 crore from the Centre for the massive rebuilding exercise could elicit only an announcement of an additional relief of Rs 500 crore, aside from the Rs 100 crore granted by Home Minister Rajnath Singh. 

This apparent ‘miserliness’ from the Centre rankled Vijayan no end and what followed next was unfortunate. To make Modi look small, the Kerala Chief Minister’s demonstrable move was to highlight the fact that compared to the pittance promised by the Centre, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had offered to give Rs 700 crore as aid for Kerala’s flood victims, which is in direct contravention of an unstated policy initiated by the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government at the time of the 2004 tsunami to not accept disaster aid from foreign countries.

Of course, the current ruling dispensation was not obliged to follow in the footsteps taken by its predecessor. It could have cited that taking foreign aid during times of crisis was by no means detrimental to India’s image, and that it was not a matter of national prestige, because the US and Japan — two largest donor countries of the world — have also not hesitated to take foreign aid in the past. Russian humanitarian aid to the US in the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and Japan’s graceful acceptance of foreign aid in the wake of the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku are two examples that come to mind. But the Centre militated against any such move, feeling that India was well equipped to cope and it was there that the matter should have ended.

But the controversy sparked by the talk of UAE aid to Kerala did not end there. What was worse was the great hue and cry across some parts of the nation that the Centre was allegedly “blocking” the far too generous offer amid reports that no such offer for financial aid was formally placed on the table by the UAE government, while the Kerala Chief Minister steadfastly stood by the call of UAE support, which contradicted UAE Ambassador Ahmed Albanna, who refused to own up to any decision of specific amount to be donated. In this game of one-upmanship, with either side trying to make the other party look petty and small, India’s image and federal credentials got dented.

Earlier too, we have seen how negotiations and party politics around the subject go on for months, embroiled in political and economic interests, delaying relief supply and causing more misery to the victims of the disaster.

This was not the first time that clashes between state and the Centre have broken out on the amount of aid relief. In the 2009 floods in Andhra Pradesh, some 300 people were killed, and against a financial damage estimated to be Rs 12,225 crore, financial aid was to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore, a package repeated during the Uttarakhand floods in 2013, in which 4,094 people died and financial damage was cited as Rs 3,000 crore. In both cases, the states had Congress chief ministers while the UPA was in power was at the Centre. Then in 2014, after Prime Minister Modi took over, he faced the floods in Jammu and Kashmir in which financial damage was pegged to the tune of a whopping Rs 50,000 crore with a relatively “low” count of deaths at 280. Though PM Modi did not allow foreign aid to Kashmir, he offered an assistance of Rs 745 crore to the state government, in addition to Rs 1,100 crore already earmarked for the disaster, an amount that was also cited as too low. And now, with the Kerala instance, it is clear that such issues are likely to continue.

While we can cite these as instances of India’s rambunctious democracy, we must learn to rise above petty politicking and the temptation to secure political brownie points over lives of ordinary people in view of the fact that Indian federalism has enormous epistemic value for a democracy committed to human well-being.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 had great consequences for a region and a nation, and served as a catalyst with respect to significant changes regarding race, class, power, politics and social structure in American society.

As it had been a lasting lesson for America, the Kerala floods of 2018 can still teach us something.

The author is a a commentator on geopolitical affairs. Views are personal.