On 26th of December 2004 , I woke up to hear my father discussing something very serioulsy on the phone. It was unusual as it was seemingly quite early in the morning.(Don't remember the exact time). I woke up and saw my father asking his officers to get a company of jawans ready for disaster relief.
I saw the TV running in the hall and inferred from the news that there was a minor incident of sea water gushing into some households in chennai.
I ran upto my father with my new found knowledge and told him straight that he was overreacting. It was just a minor case of water gushing into some houses and not an big ruckus.
I was barely listened to ,he was frantically searching his folders for phone numbers.It was one of those rare moments when I saw him really tensed up.
By this time, my mom joined in and I was desperate to get my point across. My mom supported me as usual and recommended strongly that I be heard to. I was quite famous by then in the neighbourhood as the little knowledge gatherer, u see !@.
I put forward my finding to get this reply from my father ...."In the event of a natural disaster, information flows slowly. It takes time for journalists to reach the spot , cover the incident and beam back the news to the world. The scale of a disaster comes to our knowledge very late. Telephone networks might have been destroyed, mobile/radio towers damaged and all other possible sources of information gathering might be in disarray. We cannot sit and wait till such information comes to us. We might loose lots of innocent lives if we wait till that moment to dispatch disaster relief. "
He dialled the District Collector of the nearby coastal district in Tamil Nadu. He was technically senior to the Collector but as per the constitution, no central force can move/act in a state unless the state govt formally requests it to do so. This holds true even for disaster relief.
The young IAS officer at the collectrate thought almost in the same lines as me. He said he would go and inspect coastal areas in the morning and request help if needed.He certainly didn't confer with my father's view that the scale of this disaster might be huge.
Experience is something that only time can bring alongwith. My dad had experienced numerous Andhra & Orissa cyclones first hand & I very well knew he was not going to sit down satisfied with the collector's response.
He instructed his officers to get the company moving towards the coast. But he asked them not to act unless he gave the go-ahead on wireless/phone. By this time, the collector might have had done his inspection but no calls were coming in from him. The jawans had by then reached the coastal villages and reported back the immense damages that they saw through their wireless sets.
Within an hour , the call from the Collector came : To dispatch as many men and material for help. My father gave the go ahead to his men and they started their work immediately.
He had to do lots of documentation for this unusual movement of the jawans under him. If I am not wrong, he was also pulled up by his immediate seniors the very next day for such an action.
But his stand was vindicated in style when during the annual review of the force in 2005 , our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh praised the way the force was able to start relief for the Tsunami victims barely 4 hours from the striking of disaster .
A little learning for me here : The rulebook is fine. But a Leader ought to think beyond it at times and if necessary , rewrite those rules to play the game well.
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