Welcome clear bright sunny days brought much relief to the rain ravaged State bashed by flash floods and the havoc caused by landslides, inundated low lying areas, broken communications and washed away roads.
What the State faced was not abrupt. Flash floods in Baran, Kot Bhalwal and Gharota -Jhiri areas of Jammu Division and soaring water levels in Poonch – Rajouri in August were ample warnings of looming dangers. What Leh-Ladakh faced in August 2010 with administrative helplessness was also fresh in minds. Alas! The priorities of leadership of all hues and aims of governance are different, where what matters to public comes last; always and every time and hinges to extraction of political mileage through each crisis. Bias this time also was on making statements; some ‘leaders’ awaited media men to catch up with cameras before offering sympathies to the families who suffered losses of men and material. It is a ‘great’ humane gesture for a Chief Minister to personally supervise evacuation of patients from an inundated hospital to safer facilities; with deserving political hype for that constituency. At the same time it is master failure of the administrative and the medical management, if a CM has to do ‘this’ himself when the crisis is spread through vast areas of the length and breadth of his State.
All the elected MLAs including the aspirants, should be, would be and could be legislators should have been camping with the people, they boast of representing, with teams of party workers, helping in salvaging, evacuating, caring and helping the victims-not merely ‘visiting’ for photo sessions and lip service. The national ‘cream’ of public ‘servants’ should have been trailing them behind, if not leading to provide timely administrative back up.
The religious leaders should have been in the fore front consoling and building moral courage and injecting spiritual strength to face misery . There was no news of the huge empires and buildings of various religions and their enormous monitory build up coming to the ‘mercy’ of the same people who have subscribed for these.
And last and the least, where were the self styled custodians of Kashmir and Kashmiriyat? Conferring to re-unite anti-national front to multiply misery on advice of Pakistani envoy and dictates of ISI?
