Indian Media Indifferent To Floods

By: Nirmala George, Associated Press Writer (AP) Come the monsoons, the mighty Ganges River overflows, washing away sleeping villagers along with their mud and thatch huts, leaving a trail of death and heartache in its wake.

But scan the local dailies and there's little mention of the floods. In India, deaths from floods are no longer news.

"Floods don't have disaster value anymore. It's nothing new. It's an annual phenomenon, so newspaper editors are indifferent," said Ajit Bhattacharjea, media analyst and director of the New Delhi-based Press Institute of India.

This year in India, about 400 people have died and more than 16 million people have been stranded or displaced, mostly in the remote reaches of northeastern Bihar and Assam states.

"People have got immune to human disasters. It's tragic, but true," said Bhattacharjea, a former editor of The Indian Express.

Just two weeks ago, large parts of India were suffering from drought. Parched crops and the cracked earth of fallow fields made for dramatic photographs, but the print media in New Delhi had other stories on their front pages. The mainstream newspapers devoted pages to India's weeklong fashion show of stunning models and top designers.

"Even drought at its blistering best can't match the pull of the India Fashion Week," Palagumi Sainath, a media watchdog and social analyst, lamented in the Sunday edition of The Hindu. More than 400 journalists covered the glittering fashion shows as leggy models sashayed down the ramps of a five-star hotel in New Delhi.

"Contrast that with the number of reporters assigned to cover agrarian distress as a beat," said Sainath, author of the critically acclaimed book Everybody Loves a Good Drought, which highlights how corrupt officials siphon off funds meant for disaster victims. And this media indifference is translated to government inaction when it comes to preventive measures, said Sainath.

Although ravaged by floods each year, and with 76% of the state declared flood-prone, people in the eastern Indian state of Bihar say their government waits for divine intervention to rescue them from the annual deluge. "People in Bihar survive at the mercy of the gods," said A.C. Pandey, a state official in Patna, the capital of Bihar.

The frequency of the floods has left the cash-strapped state government indifferent to the plight of the people, he said. "The government is not bothered, and even if it were, there's precious little it can do considering the scale of destruction. So they do nothing."

Ram Vichar Rai, Bihar's minister for relief and rehabilitation, disagreed. "We're doing our best in a very difficult situation to provide food and medicine to the flood victims. But I do admit that our best is not enough," Rai said.

Opposition leaders, in turn, accuse the state government of shaking itself out of its lethargy only to demand more money from the federal government, often inflating the death and damage figures. "Except for getting more funds, the government is completely callous about people's miseries," said Sushil Kumar Modi, leader of the opposition in the Bihar legislature.

"Where did rural India go wrong?" Sainath said. "Perhaps not enough people are dying to rouse serious media interest."