The Fifth Season

Long ago, in Bihar, we added a new season to the natural periods of the year divided by equinoxes and solstices, or atmospheric conditions. It was the fifth one to the sequence. The man-made one. A reset to our lives. Like every seasonal situation, this would bring lessons that would last a lifetime. That season, a construct by those who suffered, was abided by disaster’s infinite threat.

Growing up in northeastern Bihar, floods were a recurring event in our lives. The overflowing Kosi, Gandak, Bagmati and other rivers would inundate large swathes of land in the region, leaving behind a trail of deaths and destruction, difficult to map, describe and explain. There wasn’t any consolation. The season lasted forever, in its aftermath and its memory. Over a period of time, the floods were normalised. The ‘flood’ season became an inevitability.

Every year, before the monsoon, people in these parts, especially those living in villages near the embankments, would brace themselves to deal with the ordeal of floods. These rivers would inundate our homes and the fields. The regularity of the floods has led to some familiarity with them unlike the tsunami, which became a visual rendition of the apocalypse. But why is there that familiarity? Was it an act of giving up hope of redemption, an experience so settled in our subconscious? Like a season.

I was posted in Maharashtra, which does not face the intensity and frequency of floods as Bihar does. However, in August 2019, it did. The districts of Sangli and Kolhapur in western Maharashtra faced massive flooding. The city of Sangli was completely marooned. Lakhs of people were evacuated from these two districts and there was large-scale damage to houses, public infrastructure and crops. From the cosy chambers of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), I was following the news of the floods. Several teams of sanitary workers, doctors and health workers from the BMC had gone to the affected areas to lend a helping hand to the district administration in these two districts. Could this be that season? I asked myself this question as I watched people brave all odds to rescue the stranded.

Many times, incidents recede but images stay. One of the images from the flood that has stayed with me was that of the then Superintendent of Police (SP), Sangli, Suhail Sharma and Lt. Shreyas from the Indian Navy and their colleagues walking barefoot in their wet uniforms, carrying a heavy rescue boat on their shoulders. This got me thinking about leadership in difficult times.  My quest to understand this and more took me on a three-day journey to Sangli immediately after the flood.

Sangli had never seen floods of this magnitude before. River Krishna, on whose bank Sangli city is situated, had started inundating the city from August 3 onwards. On the night of August 5, the river had breached its regular path. Just like the Kosi.

It altered its course completely, inundating the majority of the low-lying areas in the city, affecting close to three lakh people. Around 30 people died in the district in various flood-related incidents. Between August 5 and August 10, more than 60 per cent of the city was under water. By this time, fear became pronounced. To me, it was a familiar feeling. I know loss, the aftermath of it and the memory of a disaster that repeats itself without fail in my home state. Was there a way out?

The 1990s and 2000s saw some of the biggest disasters striking the country in the form of cyclones, earthquakes and the tsunami. With the disasters striking different parts of the country frequently, the need for a structured response to deal with all aspects of the disasters was acutely felt. This led to the passing of The Disaster Management Act, 2005 (the Act) by the Parliament.

By the time floods had ravaged these districts, the Act had already been in place for more than a decade and the district administrators, including some of those in Maharashtra, had used the provisions of the Act effectively mostly to handle localised floods. The institutional mechanism and the structures of the Act were widely used across the country during the Covid-19 pandemic, too.

The Act creates a three-tier structure—the centre, state and district levels—to spearhead an integrated approach to disaster management in the country. It provides for the setting up of The National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM), the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and also Disaster Response Funds at the level of the centre, state and district. The NDRF—probably the world’s single-largest force dedicated to disaster response—has created a niche for itself within a short span of time because of its professionalism.

With the situation in Sangli continuing to be grim, the NDRF teams moved into the city on August 6, followed by the defence teams on August 9. The local administration, along with the NDRF and defence teams, had been evacuating people and moving them to safer areas. However, Sangalwadi, a locality in the city with a population of 15,000 was completely cut off from the rest of the city. Strong currents were preventing rescue boats from entering choppy waters. On the morning of August 9, upon receiving multiple distress calls from locals in the area, Suhail Sharma, SP, Sangli and his colleague got themselves dropped on the Irwin Bridge. The bridge stands over the Krishna River and is a landmark red stone structure built in 1929. Half the bridge was outside water when Sharma  and his colleague landed there.

Since they did not have a boat with them at that point, they decided to swim across the river to reach Sangalwadi from the Irwin Bridge. While approaching Sangalwadi , Suhail could sense extreme fear and anger amongst the residents from a little distance. Displaying great common sense and a presence of mind, both he and his colleague decided to raise slogans hailing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj as they neared the area. Soon, the entire area was reverberating with the sound of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj ki Jai.  By the time they reached Sangalwadi, in a few minutes, people had calmed down. They spoke with the stranded people and gave them the confidence that evacuation would begin immediately.

Sharma and his colleague swam back to Irwin Bridge and, by then, the Navy team, led by Lt. Shreyash, were ready with their Gemini boats. Lt. Shreyash and his team were supposed to be airdropped to Sangli, but could not be because of bad weather. After having travelled in a bus for more than 17 hours from Mumbai, they were ready as soon as they arrived in Sangli to begin the rescue operation. After eight hours of rescue work that day, 750 people were safely evacuated. While Sharma, Shreyas and their teams were busy evacuating people, the district administration ensured that relief camps were opened for flood victims across the city. These camps were manned by municipal corporation staff and volunteers and were converted into temporary shelters for thousands of citizens with provision for water, food and medicines.

To ensure that there was no epidemic after the floods, a team of 500 personnel was deputed from the BMC who worked day and night to clean the city, dispose of the dead animals and restore the water supply. Coordinating all these efforts quietly behind the scene was Praveen Pardeshi, the then Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, who camped in Sangli for a week. He was the district collector when the massive earthquake hit Latur in 1993 and was also deputed to Bhuj after the 2001 earthquake. His extensive experience in disaster management and ability to tap into huge networks across the country ensured that the cities of Sangli and Kolhapur were back on their feet within a very short period.

There is no denying the important role that an established legal and administrative framework plays in times of disaster. It definitely aids and complements the efforts of the individuals leading from the front in all such cases. But, very often, it is the personal qualities of courage, commitment and sense of purpose that matter more than anything else in cases of extreme adversity.

While Sharma and Shreyas led from the front and showed exemplary courage and commitment, there were several other foot soldiers from various departments who worked tirelessly day and night to save and care for the lives of citizens. It was heartening to see common citizens walking up to public servants and thanking them for their services to the community during my short stay in Sangli immediately after the deluge. That gave me hope. That told me that the fifth season, our bane, was an anomaly, an aberration.

In less than a year’s time, the world would face the worst disaster in recorded memory in the form of the covid pandemic. And Mumbai would be one of the first major cities in India to be swept in its wave. After finishing a month-long in-service training at the IAS academy, some of us did carry masks at the Dehradun airport in mid-March on our flight back to Mumbai, but we had no clue what lay ahead of us. At the airport, we only heard of some whispers about a virus from China.

When I landed in Mumbai, I saw a message from Pardeshi, asking me to come to his house the next morning for a meeting to take stock of the situation and to plan for the pandemic. It was something that we had never experienced. No one is experienced in disaster, in that sense. But we had hope. In my memory, the images of the disaster had been countered by the visuals of courage—of that boat being carried on their heads. We knew there was a way out. We did what we could. A disaster could be avoided, mitigated, minimised. But that story is for some other day.

And, yes, we could return to the year of four seasons. Disaster isn’t a season.

(This appeared in the print edition as "The Fifth Season")

(Views expressed are personal)

Ashutosh Salil is an IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre