#ChennaiFloods: What Modi understands that Jyoti Basu didn't

There is an anecdote about Jyoti Basu when he was the chief minister of West Bengal. It went like this - there was once in the 1980's great flooding in north Bengal and large parts of the region were submerged. All across the state people joined in offering relief and helping out anyway they could. Sporting and cultural clubs organised volunteers who took food and supplies to the affected areas. Households and localities joined in the effort of preparing the food packets.

The administration was also doing all it could. Some journalists accosted the chief minister as he was about to enter Writers Building where his offices were. They asked Jyoti Basu why he did not go and survey the devastation and why he was still in Calcutta.

Without bothering to answer Joyti Basu had almost reached the elevators when he suddenly turned and came back. He reportedly snapped at the journalists saying, "What will I do there? What good will come of me flying over the area, looking through a peep hole on the side of the aircraft? How will that help the people down there? Those who could be of use have already been sent, I am more useful here!" And saying this, he turned on his heels walked to the elevator and got inside. 

Those were the days when technology was quite backdated and for information the chief minister had to rely on people reporting back using more primitive technology like landline phones or wireless radio sets, than those in use today.

Today, a chief minister or a prime minister for that matter, can have better visuals of a flood-hit region sitting in his office than from the small window of an aircraft. He/she would have access to satellite imagery, pictures from unmanned drones to aircraft fitted with high tech camera gear or even live TV news coverage. 

So what was the prime minister doing… going all the way to Tamil Nadu to fly over Chennai? What better assessment of the situation did he manage looking through the window of his aircraft? Who did he have to talk to and meet in Tamil Nadu to get detailed information that would not be available in Delhi? By the way, his not going would also have saved the Press Information Bureau much embarrassment over having to photoshop the pictures they released. 

Thirty years ago, Joyti Basu might have been more pragmatic a leader than Narendra Modi, but then there was possibly no election coming up in north Bengal, while Tamil Nadu, as everyone knows, is going to be up for grabs a few months from now.

The prime minister has to show that he feels for the people of the state. Sitting in Delhi and directing relief is not the same as being there and flying over the rooftops of submerged buildings looking down at the plight of potential voters. 

An aerial inspection is so much more the "done thing". People expect it and it is a way for politicians to show that they care.

Joyti Basu probably did not understand such niceties: after all, he couldn't become the PM, that one time when he had a plausible shot at the chair, in 1996. 

And nobody doubts that Narendra Modi knows exactly how to be seen acting the prime minister.