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from the December 2005 AN The Neoliberal State in Disaster Management Judy Whitehead One month before Katrina resulted in floods in New Orleans, a similar “natural” disaster occurred in Mumbai, India, revealing common problems in both neoliberal states’ disaster management. States that minimize public safety, leaving “civil society” and the market to meet social needs, may well be ones that are deficient in safety planning and provisioning. Economies and Geographies Like New Orleans, Mumbai, too, has a vulnerable topography. Originally comprised of seven islands, land reclamations during the colonial period linked them together. It is bordered on the west by the Arabian Sea and on the east by mountains. Post-independence population increases have had to push residential construction northwards. Major traffic flows in Mumbai are from the northern suburbs to the southern financial districts. This topographic sketch explains why, when the Mithi River, the geographic divide between north and south Mumbai, flooded this past July, it affected all those who commuted from the business districts to northern residential suburbs. A City Flooded One of the most poignant stories of the flood came from the Air India colony in the Kalina neighborhood. The retaining wall bordering the colony broke and water quickly engulfed it and the nearby market. Bus passengers stranded in the market stood on the tops of buses for 8 hours. Finally, a young women in the colony thought of using her rubber dinghy to rescue them. Several Air India employees guided all but two of the 250 stranded commuters to safety, two by two. The police arrived a day later and claimed credit for the rescue. During the first four days after the flood, few police or civic employees were seen in the major areas of flooding.
Three days after the flood, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra praised ”the resilience of Mumbaikers, and urged people to get Mumbai running again.” He claimed that the flood had been impossible to predict, given the Meterological Department’s lack of Doppler radar. The following day, the Times of India carried highly critical accounts the state government inaction during the flood. They asked why it had been impossible to predict when the Konkan coast had just flooded, how could this be a sudden event when the rain continued for 14 hours, why was the chief minister meeting emergency response departments at 3 pm on July 26, and yet no warning of the flood had been given. By the end of the first week, the official death toll was 500, although many put it closer to 1,000. Anger at official inaction was not confined to journalists or those Bollywood celebrities who filed a case of negligence against the state government a week later. On July 30 there were demonstrations of 10–15,000 in suburbs that were still without power. On July 29 the Prime Minister’s entourage was stoned outside Air India Colony. On July 31 subway trains in the Thane district were stoned. It was only after this incident that police were visible in Kalina. Thus, the “state” initially acted to repress disorder in the eyes of the public. Neoliberal Problems The Times of India organized flood relief when reports of bureaucratic delays surfaced the following week. It brought together companies, FM radio stations, medical staff and major NGOs. Our organization was included to set up medical clinics in slums where we had carried out research. It seems impossible that the majority of the flood-affected in a city of 15 million were covered by the activities of a few dozen NGOs. Our small research organization could only reach about 2,000. Since economic reforms were installed in India in 1991, “good governance” has come to mean that state and municipal governments should be pared down, while social services are contracted out to non-governmental organizations. The notion of a state that relies on “civil society” to meet its social programs ignores long-term investment in infrastructure to prevent disasters and long-range planning that focuses on preparedness for the worst-case scenarios. Comparative studies of flood management in neoliberal, social-democratic states provide important insights in resulting problems in disaster management. Judy Whitehead is an associate professor at the University of Lethbridge in the United Kingdom. She studies gender and multicultralism, the environment and development theory in South Asia. |
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