The birth of a new politics?

The birth of a new politics?
Neerja Chowdhury

There are moments in a nation’s life that leave behind more than a transient impression on the people’s psyche. The Bhuj earthquake could trigger off a new phase in politics beginning from Gujarat. The cathartic outpourings it has released from all over India may cut through cynicism and spark off people’s initiatives of a kind we had not earlier thought possible.

Remember the Nav Nirman movement in Gujarat? The pent up discontent burst into student-led agitations at the beginning of 1974 when people had had enough of the insensitivity of the Chimanbhai Patel ministry. Finally, Indira Gandhi had to dissolve the state assembly. The movement spilled into faraway Bihar, hit by rising prices and food riots. The students asked Jayaprakash Narayan to head their movement and the "clash of giants" JP and Indira Gandhi led to the Emergency, ultimately devouring the Congress government.

That movement changed the contours of politics and influenced the course of democracy. Today, press censorship is unthinkable. Even a mere mention of limited democracy in a discussion paper raises a furore. The imposition of Article 356 in states has now become a virtual impossibility.

The situation today is reminiscent of 1973-74. There is anger seething in the farmers, as they face hardships due to the lifting of quantitative restrictions under the WTO regime and with worse still to come. The discontent of the peanut growers in Gujarat was a factor in the rout of the BJP in the local elections. The disinvestment of PSUs is agitating workers.

The apocalyptical quake comes against this background, with its toll of lives lost, limbs maimed, communities wiped out, homes destroyed, and dreams buried under debris. Those who have to live with the indescribable pain of losing their loved ones can never forget that precious lives could have been saved had the building material been of better quality, if successive governments had enforced the building code instead of colluding with builders’ lobbies, or if the government’s reflexes had been quicker after the tragedy. It is no secret that many more lives could have been saved had the administrative machinery directed foreign rescue teams to the spot instead of delaying them at airports and parking them in hotels.

We have not put systems in place, and the interim report by a high level committee set up after the Orissa cyclone for the creation of a comprehensive National Disaster Plan is little more than a compendium of papers read out at seminars. We do not learn lessons from the past because there is no political will. And there is no political will because politicians have ceased to care.

The Crisis Management Group took seven hours to bestir itself and the Cabinet took 10 hours to meet. This, when the Indian Meteorology Department had taken 14 minutes to identify the epicentre of the earthquake and put its intensity at 6.9 on the Richter scale, a sure signal of devastation. This, when the IMD had alerted the Department of Science and Technology, the PMO, the Cabinet Secretary, and the officials who man the National Disaster Control Room in the Ministry of Agriculture within 30 minutes of the quake. This, when the Control Room staff knew that 26 buildings in Ahmedabad had been razed to the ground by 10.30 am, having managed to get through to Ahmedabad on wireless, using the facilities of the CRPF. Even a week later, little had been done to put in place an alternative structure to the badly affected administrative machinery in Kutch.

With cumulative anger building up against an administration that cannot cope and the sheer insenstivity of the political class, it is not inconceivable for the situation to trigger the birth of new social forces in Gujarat, as people band together to rebuild lives and towns. In the process, it could throw up a new leadership, just as the JP movement had done another Laloo Yadav, or a Nitish Kumar or a Sharad Yadav.

Given the popular distress, Keshubhai Patel’s days are numbered. What happens to the BJP in Gujarat has a bearing on the future of L.K. Advani and on national politics. This does not necessarily mean that the Congress will replace the BJP. People have observed the inanity of Sonia Gandhi circling over Bhuj in her helicopter instead of instructing her MPs to park themselves in the villages of Kutch, as also the insensitivity of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in letting Rajnath Singh, Kalraj Mishra and Lalji Tandon outdo each other and spend Rs 2 crore on welcome arches for him in Lucknow.

For the moment, there are only straws in the wind. The donation of blood by Muslims to Hindu victims in Gujarat and the Hindu gesture of cleaning a mosque by way of response could turn out to be more than isolated incidents in a state so sharply polarised along communal lines. The people may set a new agenda for political parties in the days to come.