India’s Aid Mistake 
By Barun Mitra 

The Asian Wall Street Journal 

January 10, 2005 


Insisting that the country had the money and the manpower to deal with the tsunami crisis by itself, New Delhi politely declined offers of international aid. That was a mistake. Relief operations should have been open to anyone interested, including foreign governments and organizations. Exposing relief operations to market forces--rather than keeping them under government control--would have maximized the chance of relief supplies being quickly delivered to where they were most desperately needed.

In India, the state is generally in control of the communication and transportation resources needed for major relief and rehabilitation operations. Yet virtually every kind of relief operation led by the Indian government has suffered from delays, and is often tainted by corruption. Government control can lead to procedural and logistical bottlenecks--obstacles that can best be overcome by leaving it to the market to deliver goods and services to victims in the most cost-effective and timely manner. 

There is an even more fundamental problem in government-dominated relief operations. New Delhi has operated on the basis of coercive taxation, while private relief organizations rely on voluntary donations. So during natural disasters, it is not uncommon to hear people asking the following question: If the government is going to tax for relief anyway, what is the point of making private donations? 

To be sure, New Delhi had its reasons for resisting aid. India’s ideology of self-reliance, doubtless played a part--even though it was Indian lives that were at stake. One official described an altruistic motive: Apparently New Delhi wanted to ensure that international aid flowed to where it was needed most. So did national security concerns. Nicobar, in the devastated Andaman Islands, has an air force station, and India is said to be monitoring the region from there. 

There were also more “practical” concerns. In 2001, when a major earthquake disaster in Gujarat province took around 30,000 lives, there were many reports of international relief and rescue teams stranded at airports because of logistical and information bottlenecks. By refusing foreign assistance this time, Indian authorities may have been seeking to avoid the same confusion.

Yet it is worth noting that, despite this refusal, relief operations were slow to mobilize and transportation bottlenecks obstructed relief. Many relief workers spent hours or even days at cargo stations in the hope of sending their material to the affected regions. Media reports described too much used clothing at one spot, no drinking water at another, angry victims turning their wrath on hapless government servants, or evacuation of victims taking place a week after the tsunami.

If the government of India is, as it claims, capable of delivering relief and facilitating rehabilitation in a crisis like the present one, then why hasn’t it been much more effective in dealing with poverty during normal times? Can New Delhi really provide clean drinking water to the victims of the tsunami when half of the population doesn’t have access to it regularly? Can the government really deliver medication to a devastated area when in general, the state of public health care is so pathetic? Can New Delhi really distribute food to crisis areas when a third of India’s children are malnourished? A million children under the age of five die each year due to preventable diseases, poor sanitation and non-potable water. 

The point of all this is that there is a danger that the same policies that have perpetuated poverty for decades will be the biggest obstacle in getting relief to the tsunami victims. The poor have been the biggest victims of this natural calamity, yet government policies are largely to blame for perpetuating this poverty. So it is ironic that in this moment of crisis, New Delhi is seeking to further expand its domain in the name of “helping” the people. It is impossible to avoid the sinking feeling that the relief effort is being used by the Indian government as a means of furthering its own legitimacy. 

While the tragedy has been global in scope, affecting people in more than 50 countries, the response has been even more international. Money is being raised all over the world. Yet by trying to monopolize relief operations, the Indian government has simply undermined the sense of common humanity among those sharing the grief. On a practical level, India would have greatly benefited had international help been quickly sought to expand the logistical capabilities of military and civilian airports in the region by cooperating with foreign militaries as well as air-traffic controllers.

India is not alone in adopting such attitudes, so other nations could learn from this tragedy as well. But with so many Indian lives at stake, rather than exhibit a misplaced sense of pride, New Delhi would have done much better to open up relief operations, and focus on the most efficient way to save lives.

[Mr. Mitra is the director of Liberty Institute, a Delhi-based independent think tank.]