Two stampedes at flood relief centres in Chennai in less than two months, the second one on December 18, claim more than 50 lives, exposing the lacunae in the relief distribution process.
S. VISWANATHAN in ChennaiIN the third week of December, Tamil Nadu, by all indications, was well on the road to recovery from a distressing phase of death, deprivation and desolation brought about by five successive spells of unprecedented monsoon rains and the consequent floods. But whatever little comfort the gradual withdrawal of the monsoon should have given to the lakhs of affected people was marred by a tragic incident in the early hours of December 18 in Chennai when 42 flood-affected persons were killed in a stampede at the entrance of a flood relief centre.
The victims, 23 of them women, were part of a large group of people who had patiently waited on a slushy road all through the night, braving intermittent rain, to collect tokens for receiving state assistance. Thirty-seven others were seriously injured. The incident occurred at the flood relief centre located in the Arignar Anna Corporation High School at MGR Nagar in the southern part of the city.
The incident was the second such in less than two months. On November 6, a stampede at a flood relief centre in northern Chennai claimed the lives of six persons. The two tragedies had some strikingly similar features. Both occurred on Sundays, in the early hours of the day, and after large numbers of people waited in despair for long hours under inadequate police protection.
OVER 4,000 people had gathered in the narrow street where the Arignar Anna Corporation High School, one of the 15 designated relief centres, is located. As many as 8,566 eligible families registered with 40 public distribution outlets located in and around MGR Nagar were required to collect their relief supplies (rice, kerosene and dhotis and saris, besides Rs.2,000 in cash) from the centre on December 17 and 18. On the first day, 3,452 families received the supplies, according to the State government.
The government claimed that at the end of the day's distribution, announcements had been made through a public address system and handbills had been distributed stating that the remaining families could collect their relief supplies on December 18 from 9 a.m. This meant that over 5,000 eligible families (1,500 more than the previous day) had to collect relief supplies within the scheduled working hours on the second day.
In their anxiety to get the relief materials well in time, people began queuing up before the centre right from around 9 p.m. on December 17. The crowd swelled to more than 4,000 around 3 a.m. the next day, local people said. There were only three police constables trying to control the crowd in front of the school, the gates of which remained closed. According to some local people, around 4 a.m., when a police jeep arrived at the scene, the school gate was opened for the vehicle to enter. On seeing this, those standing in the queue started rushing into the school. Those at the tail end of the queue also began rushing towards the entrance. Those rushing into the school campus slipped down a concrete slope that looked like a speed hump at the entrance and fell. Those who rushed behind stumbled over them. This went on for some time before the gate could be closed. But by that time a number of people had either been crushed to death or sustained injuries.
Some youth in the crowd scaled over the compound wall and rushed to the help of the injured. Only the members of the public, according to the local people, could help the police initiate the rescue and relief operations. Ambulances were called. The injured and those found dead were "all piled together" in the ambulances and taken to government hospitals. Most of the victims were from families of construction workers.
THE tragedy exposed many a gap in the ongoing flood relief distribution process. The first concerns crowd management. The turnout in such large numbers at MGR Nagar could have been anticipated because the distribution of relief was already late in coming. A police presence proportionate to the size of the gathering would have averted the mishap, some political activists said. They said that there was no point in blaming the people for waiting through the night despite the announcements that the distribution process would start only at 9 a.m. on December 18.
The people started assembling before the school 12 hours ahead of time because many among them could not collect their supplies on December 17. They were turned back in the afternoon on that day, when the authorities could not complete the supply of articles even to those who had already been issued tokens. Many who succeeded in collecting relief articles on December 17 had waited for their turn since the previous night. It is not surprising that under such circumstances the victims did not want to take any risk and opted to wait for long hours rather than lose the supplies.
"The inadequate presence of the police only points to the lack of coordination between the revenue administration and the Police Department," said S.K. Mahendran, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) Member of the Legislative Assembly and State president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI). He pointed out that in his constituency of Perambur, which had 93,000 family cards, relief supply undertaken for 16 days (November 17 to December 4) could cover only 81,153 cards. Over 12,000 cardholders, he said, were yet to get the supplies. He said that in planning relief supplies the government should be realistic and make clear announcements regarding the time and place for their distribution.
Another major deficiency is that the relief distribution process fails to ensure that the right kind of relief reaches the right person at the right time. "The delivery of the aid material at the doorsteps of the needy by civil supplies staff may look impractical, particularly in situations such as floods, but enlisting the services of committed local youth, cutting across party lines, may prove a better option," said a political activist. Mahendran, whose relief work in tandem with the officials in Perambur has received public acclaim, said the government ought to have formed monitoring committees with MLAs, MPs and representatives of political parties, as suggested by the Opposition Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA).
But then, given the sharply polarised political situation in the State, one wonders how the involvement of parties with divergent views in such work could be possible, particularly when the Assembly elections are round the corner. The ground reality, however, is not entirely hopeless. A report said that thanks to the active role played by the members of the women's self-help group of a particular area in relief distribution, everything went well and there was no casualty. Similarly, even in the absence of a monitoring committee, committed political activists are available for selfless service, whether in regulating the crowd, coordinating rescue and relief operations in remote villages or helping the injured reach hospitals.
MEANWHILE, the State government has ordered an inquiry into the tragedy by a commission headed by a former judge of the Madras High Court A. Raman. DPA MPs met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on December 22 and demanded an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, who paid homage to the dead and visited the injured at the two hospitals where they were being treated, announced a solatium of Rs1 lakh each to the families of the dead and Rs.15,000 each to the injured. She personally handed the solatium to the families of some of the victims. Former Chief Minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president M. Karunanidhi convened an urgent meeting of the DPA within hours of the mishap. The meeting condoled the deaths and demanded that the Chief Minister step down owning moral responsibility for the tragedy. While the Opposition faulted the mishap on the "administrative lapses" of the State government and the "woefully inadequate" security arrangements by the police machinery, Jayalalithaa blamed "some miscreants" who spread rumours about the timing of the relief distribution process "with a view to bringing a bad name" to her government.
Public Works Minister O. Panneerselvam said that though the government had made it clear that distribution of relief tokens would commence only at 9 a.m. on December 18, people had started gathering before the distribution centre concerned from 3.45 a.m. The police registered a case under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which requires the police to inquire and report a death under circumstances raising a reasonable suspicion, and began investigation. The police would inquire precisely what prompted the people to gather before the distribution centre much earlier than required despite the announcements.
On December 20, the police arrested a DMK member of the Chennai City Corporation Council, K. Dhanasekaran, on the charge of spreading rumours among the people.
The police said that Dhanasekaran and some others had gone round MGR Nagar and announced that December 18 was the last date to receiving flood relief tokens and that the distribution would begin at 5 a.m.
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