Hopping between one crisis to another, life has never been smooth in J and K State. Nature has been playing havoc creating trying conditions with the government and administration playing truants and failing to come up to the expectations of governance; leave alone responding to massive challenges and crisis management in devastations.
Early summers, the state was in grip of a draught fear with reports of likely monsoon failure. The paddy sowing was delayed. The rice bowl of the state R S Pura has fortunately a high sub soil water table. There was no effort by the state government to augment irrigation water supply by provision of additional tube wells and water pumps. Even the power supply was erratic and of low voltage restricting existing pumps. The historical Ranbir Singh canal and its distributaries were not properly de-silted further restricting water supply for irrigation.
Next were the unprecedented rains causing flash floods in Jammu Division to include Rajouri, Poonch. The government continued its deep slumber. The massive rain fury and flooding of the Kashmir valley caught the government unawares. It was neither the first flooding of Valley nor something that could have not been foreseen while unabated encroachments were allowed and the historical water escape routes were blocked. The Uttarakhand example was a loud warning. For the defunct administration and non-operative crisis management the Leh cloudburst rang the warning knell. Yet the government did not come out of inertia. The resultant devastation is the outcome, with not even a murmur of fixing responsibility of those ‘public servants’ who betrayed their jobs and duty-so called leaders from treasury benches and opposition alike, betrayed the public trust placed in them and deserted the scene to reappear only with rescue packets organised by the armed forces, central government or donors from the country.
Even a moderate storm of a few hours have left life paralysed in Jammu for past few days. Broken power cables, uprooted poles and fallen trees gave more than two days of darkness; resultant cut off water supply and disrupted telecom services. Once again it was all adhocism with no reserve poles, no dedicated, earmarked or provisioned staff and plans to meet crisis. It is life on edge as usual.
