Every year, the winter season brings with it cold in varying measures, accompanied by rain, snowfall, fog, rainfall, other miseries — and deaths. The last two months were no exception.

All the states along the Himalayas — Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh — reeled under its impact this year. Normal life, air, road and rail traffic took a severe beating. Conditions were so bad that the administration virtually threw up its hands in helplessness.

The same way, during summers, people of these very regions go through the ordeal of unbearable heat with record-breaking temperatures.

Experience has shown that in this sprawling nation of about 1.2 billion people, mitigating the large-scale climate-related sufferings of the people is a Herculean task. After braving one harsh season, people prepare themselves for the severe conditions of another season. They get some respite during the transition period only. It is amusing to hear the common refrain, "Oh, I have never experienced such a severe winter. Seems this bone- chilling cold could kill me," or "My goodness, it has never been so hot, never ever in my life. It is roasting me alive."

For them, every present season is worse than the last one. The grouse is repeated every year with the same intense feelings because after all, it is rightly said, human memory is short. However, the fact remains that it is an annual cycle that keeps repeating itself. As part of its job, the media keeps telling us that so many people died of heat stroke in Bihar or the cold claimed so many lives in Uttar Pradesh. The gullible swallow it without a murmur. Somebody reading the news would nudge his neighbour telling him, "Saw this? So many people have died in our area." Another would assert, "More people seem to be dying this time because it is colder than last year."

That is how irrespective of official figures, people keep setting their own new records. Whenever I heard such a dialogue I could not help but smile. Why?

Sense of defeat

Years ago, my newspaper's correspondent based in Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh was on a visit to the headquarters. While discussing the ongoing cold wave I told him that it seemed to be quite severe in the Moradabad region as it had so far claimed 11 lives there according to a report sent by his rival to another paper.

He heard it not in disbelief but with awe and a sense of defeat. After a pause he mumbled, "So, he has killed 11. Okay." (Our correspondent's figure being eight, he felt let down). He phoned up some one at Moradabad and then wrote a news item for our next edition saying the cold wave there had so far taken a toll of 17!

He had tried to give the impression of having collected authentic information but in reality it was an exercise to only retain his part-time job in this competitive world. Stringers, as part-time correspondents are called in small places, enjoy clout which they want to retain at any cost. It gives them a privileged identity. That is why X kills 11 and his rival Y, not to be beaten, raises it to 17.

This is not to suggest that such figures were always unreliable. At the most, these were exaggerated.

Even today, when we have access to faster means of collecting information and things are better organised, it is not possible for any administration to find out on any particular day the exact number of casualties from all places, especially remote villages in a state like UP which is as big as a few European countries combined.

 

Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.