The geopolitics of indifference

Regional geopolitics as well as the global 'war on terror' have come together to ensure that the suffering of tens of millions in Pakistan is not generating the outpouring of support that one would have expected in response to the July-August 2010 Indus floods. There is a discernible lack of empathy out there, which compelled UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to call a separate meeting in the UN headquarters when the initial call for support garnered only a lukewarm response from member states. The niggardly coverage provided by India's usually hyperactive print and television media has itself been remarkable, with international networks the only ones covering the calamity in any detail. Yet the power and reach of the Indian media is such that its modest interest has meant that the public of India itself and the Subcontinent at large have been less than well-informed and empathetic.

There was a time when the 'Indo-Gangetic region' was seen as one long, continuous plain, though the two biggest rivers flowed into different seas. Evidently this is not the case any longer, with the people of the Indus being seen as quite separate from the people of the Ganga. The distancing of the people of Southasia over the six decades since Partition is evident in how little is being done to raise funds in North India, for example, for the nearby people along the Indus. If this distancing were not there, we would have had energetic fundraising drives in Patna, Gorakhpur and Lucknow for the Southasian cousins hit by inundation in Multan, Muzaffargarh, Sukkur and Hyderabad (Sindh). Similarly, if not for this distancing on the other side, would Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani have responded in such a lukewarm manner to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer of USD 5 million for flood relief?

Bangladesh and Bihar are two areas that understand well what flooding is. When the Brahmaputra and Ganga (Padma) 'peak' in August, the impact on their joint delta region in Bangladesh could be devastating. The Kosi River's impact on the people of eastern Bihar is a matter of yearly concern to India's administrators. But Bangladesh's population and the people of eastern Bihar at least know to expect the flood; the inhabitants along the Indus were caught unawares. And yet, why do we see so little concern in Patna and Dhaka when unremitting cloudbursts in the upper catchment of the Indus lead to inundation in the lower reaches?

The break in the Kosi embankment within Nepal in August 2008 affected 60,000 within Nepal and more than two million in India. Substantial relief efforts were started immediately, even though that too was hardly enough. The Indus flood has affected 20 million people in Pakistan. The national media in the Indian capital, which provided detailed coverage of the flash floods that hit Leh in mid-July, would know well that the rivers of Leh, and of the larger Kashmir as well as Himachal Pradesh, all end up in Pakistan – the Jhelum, Chenab, Beas, Ravi and Sutlej.

The tragic irony of it all is that the Indus is a river shorn of its normal historical flow. The rapaciousness of inefficient irrigation (and technology) inherited from the colonial era has meant that the canals suck away all its water. The rivers of the Indus system are almost shallow enough to wade across in the dry season. The consolidated flow of the Indus, as it passes the Hyderabad, has to be seen to be believed for its low ebb.

Sixty years on
The media disinterest reflects not only the Partition-fed distancing of the societies of Southasia, but the divisions of world geopolitics, where Pakistan is perceived as complicit in the support of 'terror'. This represents a tragic inability to distinguish between state and society. If at all the Pakistan state is to be held responsible for the support of terror, either against the West or against India, a tragic conflation of the Islamabad state and the people of Pakistan is being made. In this way, the disinclination towards rescue and rehabilitation is tantamount to nothing less than direct victimisation of the innocent – people who already suffer and live in fear due to religious extremism, ethnic hatred and political violence.

Within India, where significant coverage is understandably given to extremist attacks with 'cross-border' provenance, there is not enough empathy for the regular occurrence of sectarian and similar attacks hitting the people of Pakistan. The variety and regularity of attacks visiting Pakistan is not something over which analysts and the general public elsewhere in the Subcontinent have been particularly exercised. Over the years, the Islamabad authorities certainly have been complicit in the support of militancies that hit out beyond the national boundary. At the same time, one has to consider how much of what happens is state policy, how much the acts of renegade intelligence agencies and their operatives, and how much is completely outside of state control. And how much of the corruption of the Pakistani military-government complex has been made possible through support of a certain power across the Atlantic, whose media today creates the definitive image of a 'rogue state'?

Himal's view is that, even if the Pakistani state is responsible for both directly and indirectly supporting terror – as maintained by the Indian establishment, and recently by the British Prime Minister David Cameron while, interestingly, on a visit to India – this should have no bearing on aid to help the Pakistani people survive a natural disaster of unimaginable proportion. For comparison's sake, look back at New Orleans, in the US, and look now at the millions along the Indus.

The Ganga and the Indus both have species of the freshwater dolphin, known respectively as the susu and bhulan. Microscopic differences emerged in the physiognomy of the two species as they became separated over geological time, but they are essentially the same creatures. Likewise, the people of the Subcontinent might have been separated by the boundaries of Partition, but remain essentially the same. This common identity requires the people of Southasia to respond hugely to the Indus flood of 2010. Empathy begins at home!