When the CMG stands for a confused and muddled group

n A pine-tall column of files has cascaded down the wall and right across the door, blocking the entrance to the control room. Will someone please remove the files quickly, the secretary may be on his way…

A week into the Gujarat quake, the Crisis Management Group (CMG) is still embroiled in a crisis of its own: it cannot manage itself and it cannot manage others. The CMG control room at Krishi Bhawan, headquarters of the nodal Argiculture Ministry, is the very face of what it is intended to handle: chaos, confusion, crisis.

Telephones that nobody picks up, lines that cannot be put through, fax machines spewing paper, officers who do not recognise each other, officers pulling rank and faces, orders that nobody is prepared to listen to, requests that nobody can respond to.

A team of Japanese relief workers has desperately been seeking instructions on what it should do having reached Ahmedabad. The control room fumbles for an answer.

Any wonder, then, that men and material haven’t reached where they were meant to, when they were meant to? That it took the Agriculture Secretary and CMG spokesman a week to unwittingly admit that the government had finally started doing things ‘‘in a systematic manner’’ and that it had become ‘‘well aware’’ a whole week after the quake that 492 villages in Kutch district had been affected by the quake? That nobody yet knows what the real extent of damage in Gujarat is? That this is a crisis grossly mismanaged by a CMG that has been opreational for quite a while now, at least since the Orissa supercyclone?

‘‘This should not be called the CMG control room,’’ mutters the officer in charge under his breath, ‘‘This should be called a post office, we are just passing paper from here to there, we are not equipped for more.’’ He is irate his higher-ups should think it was his fault that the earth-movers couldn’t be lifted onto the Il-76. “Am I trained to know the size of earth movers, or whether they fit into air force planes?â€

His call to the Air Headquarters has been futlile, his assistants cannot get him through to Bhuj, which must be told a team of German relief workers may be on its way, a senior official in the ministry is demanding a list of key telephone numbers in Gujarat…‘‘Where are the numbers? Where are they? Tear the list from the board and send it to him, we’ll have it copied later…’’

A fresh file of faxes lands on his table. Relief groups in India and abroad seeking directions on where the go in Gujarat, who to meet; the office of this minister or that making queries on the safety of specific persons; relatives wanting information; senior bureaucrats seeking progress on earlier orders made.He shuffles through the papers, his shoulders still awkwardly cocked, holding handsets to his ears for calls that seem they will never come through. Chaotic images from Gujarat continue flickering on the television screen across him. His own face, and the face of his office, aren’t too much of a contrast. Save for the glider on the master computer of the Great Gujarat Earthquake website, blissfully riding clouds.

By the way, someone is needed to update this site.