AP?short-changed on relief after ruin

Hyderabad: The state is getting a raw deal in terms of Central assistance for natural calamities, be it drought or cyclones, as against the losses projected by the government.

In this backdrop, an interministerial team of the Centre will be on a week-long tour of the state from Monday to assess the damage caused by Cyclone Phailin last month, and the torrential rains.
The government has projected loss of Rs 9,000 crore, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has agreed to release immediate assistance of Rs 1,000 crore.

In 2010-11, when the state was battered by Cyclones Laila and Jan, besides heavy rains and floods, the Centre provided just Rs 983 crore out of the projected loss of Rs 9,244 crore.

In all, since 1995, the government has sought Rs 48,185 crore as assistance from the Centre but received just 15 per cent of the sum, or Rs 8,666.37 crore. The state government provided another Rs 12,679 crore on its part, leaving the remaining loss — about Rs 26,840 crore — uncovered.

Farmers were the worst hit as they were not reimbursed for their crop loss. Many a time, the Centre has asked the state government to meet the cost of relief from the annual releases under the Calamity Relief Fund or National Disaster Response Fund, without making any additional releases.

The state government projected a loss of Rs 18,000 crore due to drought, including rs 9,747 crore in 2009, the worst year in recent times. All that the state got from the Centre was Rs 267.67 crore.
In 2009-10, the Centre released additional assistance of Rs 685 crore but it was for drought as well as the severe floods in Kurnool.

In 1999, the state projected a loss of Rs 720 crore due to drought and got additional assistance of Rs 75 crore nil out of projected loss of Rs 849 crore in 2001, Rs 116 crore against Rs 953 crore in 2003; nil against Rs 1,093 crore in 2004, Rs 56.56 crore in 2006 against projected loss of Rs 536 crore.

The situation was no better in 2011 and 2012 when the state projected loss of Rs 3,006 crore and Rs 1,090 crore respectively but received no additional assistance. Stating that the Centre makes releases as per norms, National Disaster Management Authority vice-chairman M. Shashidhar Reddy told this newspaper that the Centre had identified certain flaws in the system of projecting losses due to natural calamities, and is trying to rework the guidelines.

“For instance, the Centre assesses the crop damage uniformly irrespective of crop stage at which the damage occurred,” he pointed out.