Red-tape delayed response to tsunami warning: Official

Indian officials tangled in bureaucratic red tape lost 30 precious minutes after they received an alert from an Air Force base in Andaman and Nicobar islands.

Indian officials tangled in bureaucratic red tape lost 30 precious minutes after they received an alert from an Air Force base in Andaman and Nicobar islands about the tsunami hurtling toward the mainland coast, a government official says. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Friday that the urgent message from the IAF base was not directed right away to the Ministry of Home Affairs, responsible for dealing with natural disasters.

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The delay in forwarding the alert may have cost thousands of lives along the southern coast. The tsunami hit India's southern coast almost an hour after swamping the Andaman and Nicobar islands, where India also has an earthquake-warning system.

A newspaper report on Thursday quoted the Indian Air Force chief as saying the Ministry of Defence was immediately alerted about the sinking islands.

The Air Force has yet to respond to written questions from the AP, although its spokesman, Mahesh Upasni, said: "We do not work as a warning center."

After the disaster, India announced plans to spend millions of dollars for a new tsunami-warning system and upgrade its weather forecasting technology. But analysts warn that the high-tech equipment could prove futile if information sharing about natural disasters is stymied by the government's obsession with protocol.

"We require rapid and specific responses. The Indian bureaucracy by its training and conditioning can't do it," said Balbir Arora, a New Delhi-based professor of public administration. "There is an obsession with communication through proper channels, a mind-set fixed on outmoded tools, such as communications which must be made in written form," Arora said. For India's multilayered bureaucracy, sticking to the unbending rules of official communications is the first commandment. This means a message from a junior official, however urgent, must pass through several layers before it reaches the top. Similarly, communications between departments and ministries have to be approved by senior bureaucrats.