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.