The Hindu Business Line : A retribution for warnings ignored?

In less than 24 hours, the tsunami jolted awake the whole nation to the reality of its ill-preparedness to meet a major catastrophe and the inescapably global character of all technology. India kept away from the Oceanic Intelligence System. In consequence, thousands of people were devoured without notice by the tidal wave. If only the Ministry of Agriculture had not abandoned the proposal to install an early warning system wiser by experience of El Nino and Bhuj, the nation may have been spared the full blast of the tsunami.

THE last fortnight of 2004 was marked by a veritable tsunami of reports, statements, declarations and documents on agriculture. There were drafts of a National Environmental Policy and a Agro-Processing Policy besides and a series of documents and statements on the new WTO Intellectual Property Rights regime that was ushered in on January 1, 2005. Last but not the least was the second rehash of the May 1997 Finance Ministry document on the Central government subsidies.

In his first stint, the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, had been a more genuine reformer. He was content dividing government subsidies into only two categories — merit and non-merit. In his current avatar, he has created two sub-categories — Merit-I and Merit-II.

It is remarkable that just a week before the real tsunami, subsidies for space, oceanographic and other scientific research as also and meteorology were classified in the document under Merit-II subsidies.

In fact, the matter is much simpler. Any disbursement by the government — implicit or explicit — that exceeds the quid pro quo is a subsidy. When the quid pro quo comes with a time-gap, the subsidies are treated like an advance.

For a reformer, all subsidies are, by definition, pernicious. If any distinction is to be made between subsidies, it can only be on the basis of the length of the time between the subsidy and its quid pro quo.

Distinguishing between subsidies on the basis of any qualitative parameter is clearly fallacious. The biggest beneficiaries of subsidies in India, by rational definition, are salary/wage earners in the organised sector.

The new Chidambaram does not even mention these categories as beneficiaries of subsidies.

On the other hand, he appears keen on highlighting the food and the fertiliser subsidies without mentioning the negative subsidies on farm produce.

The debate on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) was dominated by jingoistic platitudes about the scientific and technological capability of India with wild assertions that the country needed very little in these areas from outside.

All these reports constituted, by themselves, a veritable tsunami before the oceanic one came on.

It is a curious accident that the tsunami devastation occurred just four days before the IPR deadline.

In less than 24 hours, the tsunami jolted awake the whole nation to the reality of its ill-preparedness to meet a major catastrophe and the inescapably global character of all technology.

India kept away from the Oceanic Intelligence System. In consequence, thousands of people were devoured without notice by the tidal wave.

The initial reaction was typically bureaucratic — it was thought that an early warning system for an eventuality like this did not exist. Slowly, it became clear that a Pacific Tsunami Warning System did exist and that a non-resident Indian even held a patent for it.

Then with nonchalance, the political bosses asserted that a comprehensive early warning system would be installed and that no cost would be considered too high.

The figure of the dead in the Indian Ocean region will probably cross 2,00,000. The number of Indians killed will be more or less the same as the farmers who committed suicides in the last three years.

The coincidence may not be purely accidental.

In the wake of the 1934 Bihar earthquake, Mahatma Gandhi maintained that the disaster was a ``retribution for the sin of untouchability''. Rabindranath Tagore protested that physical phenomena have physical causes and that any other interpretation would encourage unreason.

Only a spiritual authority like the Mahatma would have said that the tsunami 2004 disaster is retribution for the sin of injustice to farmers and that the city dwellers and the government would have to answer for their sins.

Even going by Tagore's dictum, the tsunami 2004 and the toll it took can be causally linked to a whole nation's indifference to the farmers' sufferings.

In 1987, the advanced technological powers of the world had a six-month advance knowledge of the El Nino effect that resulted in massive and prolonged droughts. For India's farmers who were taken totally unawares, it was God's first warning No 1.

On January 26, 2001, when an earthquake brought massive devastation to Saurashtra and Bhuj regions of Gujarat, a proposal for an early warning system was mooted in the Ministry of Agriculture and a special cell for disaster management created under the Cabinet rank chairmanship of the present Union Minister for Agriculture.

But the proposal was scuttled as the cost involved in setting up a comprehensive early warning system was thought not justified by its possible advantages. Thus, warning No 2 went unheeded.

In 2004 itself, the Meteorological Department had forecast early and abundant monsoons. This led thousands of farmers to start early sowing after a few promising pre-monsoon showers.

Then followed the drought and disaster that drove thousands of farmers, desperately, to suicide.

It was brought out even in Parliament that the deficient forecasting system was as much responsible for the farm crisis as the vagaries of monsoons.

Even that did not wake up the Government to reopen the proposal to create an early warning system.

The Government maintained that the proposal for establishment of an early warning system was not only not abandoned but was being actively pursued.

The nation continued in its stubborn indifference to the plight of the farmers in the absence of a dependable forecasting and early warning system, even as it indulged in euphoric bragging about its capabilities in science and technology.

In one fell swoop, the tsunami washed away all the illusions of the scientific community and the bureaucracy as also the political leadership.

If only the Ministry of Agriculture had not abandoned the proposal to install an early warning system wiser by experience of El Nino and Bhuj, the nation may have been spared the full blast of the tsunami.

A nation that stoically took the suicides of over 8,500 farmers now stands jolted by about the same number of deaths caused by a similar absence of concern for the common man.

(The author, founder of the Shetkari Sanghatana, is a Rajya Sabha member. He can be reached at sharad.mah@nic.in)

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