Sunday, August 09, 2015

Day 6 of Missing Helicopter in Arunachal Pradesh: “Who cares if an IAS on duty goes missing in jungles of India’s Far East?”

TODAY (Sunday) is the Day 6 of a Pawan Hans helicopter going missing in Arunachal Pradesh with deputy commissioner of Tirap and 2010 batch IAS Kamlesh Joshi on board. The world moves on: Loggerheads in Parliament, heat on forthcoming Bihar polls, tension in LoC, iPhone-maker Foxconn’s proposed USD 5 billion-investment in Maharashtra, Swachh Bharat ranking of cities, and yes, England’s massive victory to wrest the Ashes. No one seems to have bothered about an IAS officer going missing. After all, the incident took place not in Delhi or Mumbai but in jungles of Arunachal Pradesh, the eastern-most state of North-east of India, or more appropriately of Far East of India? BoI wrote on Day 2 of the incident how…
four choppers including two from Indian Army, and one each from Indian Air Force and state government of Arunachal Pradesh got engaged in the search operations from the morning till dusk in the dense forests bordering Myanmar trying to locate the whereabouts of the chopper. The missing chopper had two crew members -- Captain MS Brar and Captain Rajiv Hoskote, apart from IAS Joshi on board, when it lost contact on Tuesday.
For those who may consider this incident inconsequential, here are a few factoids. First, the road network in Arunachal Pradesh is one of the worst in the country and one has to travel via Assam, that too a long distance of over 500 km, if one travels from Khonsa, the district headquarters of Tirap where Joshi is the DC, to Arunachal’s capital city, Itanagar. So, a helicopter journey is not a luxury but often a sheer necessity there.
Secondly, officers working in those highly inaccessible frontiers often need to walk miles to meet the residents living in far-flung villages. Sample this: In the 2014 general elections, the Hukani polling station located in Lower Dibang Valley district of Arunachal Pradesh had only 22 registered voters. And the officials had to walk 22 km to get there, according to Election Commission of India data.
Thirdly, Tirap-Changlang is such a pocket in Arunachal Pradesh where anti-talks faction of NSCN led by a Burmese Naga SS Khaplang is very active.
Hopefully, by now, everyone is convinced that life is not easy for officers like Joshi serving in India’s Far East. But when such an officer goes missing on duty, no one -- including media, argumentative Twitter Indians, Netas and Joshi’s own colleagues in bureaucracy -- care much. When BoI appealed every bureaucrat to join hands in Twitter on Wednesday on this issue, most ignored it happily (barring a few of course). Some officers who are highly active in social media and have views on every subject on earth, failed to spare a moment for their missing colleague! And when bureaucrats themselves ignored it, how can you expect others to take it up?
On Day 5 of the incident, i.e. Saturday, the cabinet secretary and 1977 batch IAS Pradeep Kumar Sinha finally had a review meeting on the ongoing search operations of the missing chopper in Arunachal Pradesh. Cabinet secretary directed that all available technical (including satellite imagery) and human inputs must be deployed by both the state and Central government to locate the missing officers and the helicopter, according to a statement issued by the government.
Earlier on Saturday, union home secretary and 1979 batch IAS LC Goyal also reviewed the search operations in a high level review meeting attended by defence secretary, secretary (telecom) and senior officers of the Government of Arunachal Pradesh and ministry of external affairs, Armed Forces and Central intelligence and security agencies.
But the Day 5 or Day 6 is too late in a search operation, if someone is injured and trapped inside forests.
Pawan Hans has not issued any statement. Nor has the oil major ONGC who owns 49% of the government-run helicopter company that owns the missing chopper.
Last thought: Back in 1977, the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai walked out of a plane at Jorhat in Assam when the Pushpak aircraft he was travelling crash-landed in a paddy field  killing all the pilots!

7 comments:

  1. Loss of any life is regrettable. A public servant's death even more so. Sadly this will not be the last time this happens. Part of the reason such a death has received little media attention is because most of NE receives the same treatment.

    But let's not get carried away because the person who died is an IAS officer. Everyone who becomes a public servant, from a lowly constable to a District Magistrate, knows only too well the opportunities and risks of their job. I am sure the families of IAS will receive better protections and compensation compared to a lowly constable.

    To expect, or almost demand, that the media eulogize in proportion to the exalted service status of the deceased, shows only the hubris of the IAS than respect for the deceased.

    Let us mourn for the person whose aspirations for public service were sadly cut short by fate. But please show him respect by not merely measuring his worth in column inches in newspapers

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  2. Yeah and MS Dhoni training with para commandos oh wait he is a cricketer and where is the question of hubris but if its a IAS officer then definitely there is a question

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  3. It is disheartening that heartless bureaucrats are not sensitive for own community. A young bureaucrat Kamlesh Joshi is disappeared in helicopter mishap but none bureaucrat is showing their sympathy or doing any effort. Bureaucrats may fear that if they involved may be face political harshness. Sympathy and grief is vanished in bureaucracy.

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  4. M.S. Dhoni is a public figure, Bureaucrats aren't meant to be public figures. They are not politicians. They are experts whose job requires to provide neutral support in running the government to politicians. If bureaucrats start seeing themselves as public figures in their own right, they will be treated by the public as such. The IAS should carefully consider the repercussions of this growing impulse to crave for media attention. Inadvertently they are making the case for removing the constitutional protections for All India Services.

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  5. M.S. Dhoni is a public figure, Bureaucrats aren't meant to be public figures. They are not politicians. They are experts whose job requires to provide neutral support in running the government to politicians. If bureaucrats start seeing themselves as public figures in their own right, they will be treated by the public as such. The IAS should carefully consider the repercussions of this growing impulse to crave for media attention. Inadvertently they are making the case for removing the constitutional protections for All India Services.

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  6. Life of young officer and pilot could have been saved if the search / rescue operation was started in time . It was too late to wake the people sitting in Delhi

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  7. Indian army started its rescue op as soon as it got the news and the weather was a hindrance there is no machine on earth which can work in any weather.

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