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Journalism of Courage
It is not the disaster that is often the more debilitating event. It is the response to disaster. For those who had hoped for a reaching out and a coming together across political lines in the face of the terrorist strike at Ayodhya, it has been a disappointing few days. Petty point-scoring has deepened the political polarisation. Narendra Modi was first off the block, quickly announcing a cash reward for the CRPF jawans who fought down the terrorists at Ayodhya. Another BJP chief minister, Babulal Gaur, followed. That the brave recipients of the awards were fully deserving of the honours, and more, did not take away from the cynical showmanship of those who rushed in with indecent haste to pluck partisan-political gains from this sober moment.
This evident lack of grace, this failure to summon a larger empathy in the wake of shared disaster is now a syndrome. It was there in the response of the Centre to the floods in Gujarat as well, when visiting UPA seniors did not desist from finger-pointing even while conducting aerial surveys of affected parts of the state. The Gujarat government has failed to reach relief to the interiors, commented those who should have known better than to submit to the vulgarity of blame games in moments so urgently fraught with human suffering. Past experience has shown us that there are often unconscionable delays and leakages in delivering central relief to states visited by calamity. There is an urgent case for speeding up procedures and cutting down the red tape in meeting situations of distress in any part of the country. This situation is made far worse when the Centre itself seems distracted from the joint relief effort by narrow political calculations.
