Even as the deluge in the Ganga tributaries wreaked hell-fury on Uttarakhand, national disaster management authority (NDMA) vice-chairman M Shashidhar Reddy was gracing the stage at a Unicef (United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund) event in the national capital. He should have been marshaling all his forces to contain the devastation in the hill-state (something now almost entirely left to the Army, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and good Samaritans). Although, in his defence, he had probably scheduled to attend the seminar much earlier when it had been planned.

Ever since news of the tragedy broke, the question “Where is the NDMA?” had been gnawing everybody’s mind. Does the body even have the wherewithal to take on disaster of any magnitude, let alone something as huge as the floods? Ironically, these questions aren’t cropping up after the floods. No, they have been around for long — in fact, ever since the body was set up in 2005.

Confronted with many a fingers pointing at him and the NDMA at the inaugural session of the four-day event titled ‘Climate Change Adaptation – Managing Risk for Resilience’, Reddy saw red and lost reason.

The livid Congress MLA from Andhra Pradesh lashed out at two bodies — the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) and, the Indian Meteorological Department!

In March, when Vinod Rai, the then CAG, was in the last days of his tenure, his office brought out a report blaming the Uttarakhand government for the environmental mess in the state. The CAG had also pointed out flaws in functioning of NDMA. Two months ago, when everything was normal, this report went virtually unnoticed. With the recent floods, every the report was dug out of the pile and flashed by every news organisation.

Cornered by news hounds, Reddy sought to deflect the blame, but it sounded far from convincing. Reddy accused the CAG, of all things, of “being insensitive”. “There is a table in the CAG report which lists India's major disasters in the last ten years and I am surprised they haven’t mentioned the 2005 Mumbai floods which indicate that people in CAG need to become sensitive,” he said.

“The performance of NDMA in terms of project implementation had been abysmal. So far, no major project taken by NDMA has seen completion,” the CAG had said in its March report.

The damning indictment aside, Reddy snapped at being held accountable for the NDMA’s functioning. This begs the question if Reddy and the NDMA can be even answerable for their responsibilities.

Since the formation of the NDMA in 2005, Reddy, first as a member, and then as a vice-chairman, has clung to the office that gives him the status of a cabinet minister. Meanwhile, several disasters have occurred and each time questions have been raised about the efficacy of the NDMA. What has Reddy done to redeem the body and himself?

If you ask Reddy, he would probably say that he has been brainstorming — in conferences at five-star venues. The top disaster management body of the country has been crying for more muscle. Be that as it may, did Reddy stick out his neck when disaster struck? Little wonder that the CAG thought of the NDMA’s functioning as being abysmal.

Now, let us come to Reddy’ second target — the well-known bumbler, the met department. Reddy believes the weather guys failed to predict the rainfall within a fair range of the volume that caused the floods. Without a forecast, what good is disaster management, Reddy reasoned.  “How are we supposed to translate it into action? They (the met department) need to pinpoint where and how much it is going to rain,” he said.

It will not be deemed unfounded if one points fingers at the met department for inaccuracies. But to hinge disaster-readiness on weather predictions defies good sense. For a body that has been around for eight years, the NDMA sure should have been better prepared for responses across terrains and disaster-heads.

Reddy must have found some relief in the words of David McLoughlin, the deputy representative of Unicef in India. McLoughlin cautioned at the event, “We need to develop resilience at the local level, not waiting for the first emergency to come.”

“We need to make a serious effort to understand the implication of such disaster to which south Asia is vulnerable,” Reddy told the gathering. This reminds us of the statement made by the former home secretary, Madhukar Gupta, after the 2008 Delhi blasts. “With every blast we are gaining experience,” Gupta had said. “We have been observing that these kinds (of blasts) are happening in cities across (the country) in each incident you learn, gain experiences...”

As the vice-chairman of the NDMA for the last three years, Reddy should have used his precious time to rescue the top disaster management body from its current moribund structure (though the body is under the home ministry, the ex-officio chairman is the prime minister. Besides, as a nodal agency, it has to coordinate with many other organizations, not always a easy task).

But instead of robust ground work and addressing problems highlighted by the CAG, it is the seminar circuit where Reddy shines most.