Sadly, the Uttarakhand chief minister, Vijay Bahuguna, had only toured a few parts of the state after the tragedy. When I was travelling in Pithoragarh, everyone was complaining that the CM had refrained from visiting the most-affected areas. Moreover, it was also alleged that he never bothered to show any concern about this part of the state.
However, I saw the Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat (later the chief minister), and Almora MP Pradip Tamta touring these parts. It’s largely due to the pressure created by news channels that Bahuguna even toured the state, but even then he seemed less focussed on raising the morale of the people and more on propagating the “good work” done by his government.
His advisors chose Aaj Tak, a TV channel with high viewership ratings, to accompany the CM as he toured the state. Senior anchor Ritul Joshi was asked to travel with the CM. Later, Joshi told me:
Along with the chief minister, we first went to Maneri near Uttarkashi. Maneri is on the way to Gangotri and the villages in this area had faced severe losses. the district administration had been alerted [about the CM’s visit] and Congress leaders were also present to welcome him. CM sahib got off the helicopter and asked the people in a patronising tone, “Is everything ok?” the DM immediately rattled off figures to impress upon the CM how extensive the relief work had been.
Everything was going off smoothly, but as soon as I switched on my camera and told the people that the CM is here right in front of them and that they could ask him questions directly and narrate their difficulties, it was as though a mountain of troubles had come crashing down on CM sahib. On camera, the local people started complaining about the administration’s callous attitude and lacklustre support.
One of them said, “Do you know we don’t have clean drinking water here?”
Another person said, “All of us have lost our homes but these people here have not even put up any tents for us.”
One woman said, “Thousands of people have fallen sick. No one has got any medicines and no doctors have been sent here.”
The doctors deputed by the administration never showed up until noon and, even in these conditions, were sometimes not seen for the entire day. A diminutive but bold woman stepped out of the crowd and shouted, “Do you know where we get drinking water from? there are dead animals lying there. Disease is spreading… children are falling sick…all of us are going to die. Where are the doctors? Where is the government?”
The DM tried to calm the woman down, but the damage had been done. The crowd got very agitated and the CM thought it best to quietly exit.
For the purposes of publicity, the Uttarakhand chief minister had obviously chosen the wrong time, wrong place and wrong journalist. Joshi’s team captured each and every moment of the CM’s humiliation on camera, but the story was not yet complete. Bahuguna’s guided tour became the bane of his life.
A local Congress leader suggested that the CM go to neighbouring villages and check on the welfare of the people there. Bahuguna cited paucity of time as an excuse and proceeded towards the helicopter. This proved to be the last straw for the Congress leader and he started shouting at the CM too. This was a most awkward situation for the state chief. A local leader was publicly lashing out at his chief minister. And so, perforce, the CM had to go to the villages in the area where agitated crowds were anxiously awaiting his arrival. Joshi continued:
The villagers surrounded the chief minister and he was seen actually wiping his brow in the midst of the protestors. Seeing how frenzied the people were becoming, some officers helped the CM climb up a high platform so he could take questions from everyone. Just as Bahuguna started to talk about how much money the government had pumped into the relief work the crowd shouted him into silence.
“Your promises are only on paper. So far, your officers have not even made out a list of affected people. They have not even visited us yet…how will they distribute compensation?”
And so the CM remained stuck on this platform. His staff wanted to extricate him from the crowd’s wrath, but people wouldn’t let him come down. This “reality show” went on for about half an hour, where a drawing room politician was face-to-face with the public for the first time. If he had known that he’d be reduced to this in his own constituency, the CM would never have stepped out of his air-conditioned office in Dehradun.
After escaping from there, the CM visited one more place to ask about people’s welfare but the disaster-struck local population meted out the same treatment to him as that of their counterparts in Maneri and villages around it.
When I met Vijay Bahuguna a week after Joshi’s interview, I didn’t get the feeling that he was particularly upset about the fact that the government didn’t respond on time or that the relief work was unsatisfactory.
In fact, an officer in the CM’s office complained to me, “Sahib is not happy with the reporting of your channel. For no reason at all you gave the story an emotional angle.” I looked at Siddharth and he smiled. We knew that if the government was not happy with our reporting, we must have done something right!
Excerpted with permission from Rage of the River: The Untold Story of Kedarnath Disaster, Hriyadesh Joshi, Translated from the Hindi by Vandana R Singh, Penguin India.
