Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 484 Emergency Relief

Xiong Buyou was very clear about the situation of the grain depots in the county: the accounts and the quantity of stored grain were completely consistent, but the quality was far worse.A large amount of brown rice reserves are aged grains, which can only be used as feed according to modern standards.What can be taken out for people to eat is only a hundred stone rice.

So Xiong Buyou played Chang Pingcang's idea.The level of communication and transportation in ancient countries was very low. It is unrealistic to expect the imperial court to provide disaster relief for general natural disasters in the local area.In most cases, local officials have to solve it themselves.As for the grain directly controlled by the county magistrate, in addition to the county grain depot, there are also warehouses such as private grain storage.

Generally, the local gentry and grain households donate some grain every year, store it up, and take it out for relief in disaster years.The idea and method are good, but they go out of shape as soon as they are implemented. The grain reserves in Changping warehouse are often seized by the government, so they have always been in name only.The Changping warehouse in Lingao is very magnificently built, but not a single grain of rice has been left inside for more than a hundred years.

What Xiong Buyou meant was to ask County Magistrate Wu to issue a notice asking the gentry and landowners to "donate" to the Changping warehouse. Anyway, this kind of trick happens every year, and the gentry have long been used to it.When the county magistrate came to "persuade donations", he always had to spend ten or twenty shi to entertain them.In this way, two or three hundred shi of grain can be collected.

"It's easy," Wu Mingjin was quite satisfied with the fact that the Traveling Group had the actual power of the county government, but they still came to ask for his approval in everything. "It's just a notice from the students."

At present, the caretaker issued a notice asking the gentry and grain households in the county to donate happily to supplement the Changping warehouse rice for disaster relief.

"We still have to pay most of the relief food." Xiong Buyou said to Wu De, "I asked the county magistrate, and he said that we can raise about [-] shi of brown rice and miscellaneous grains every year."

"How much is the relief?"

"The Planning Commission is calculating the disaster situation," Xiong Buyou said, "but two hundred shi plus the county treasury is definitely not enough."

"Let's go out, let's go out. Being a ruler still has to bear some responsibilities." Wu De said angrily, "Now I have to exempt part of the money and food. This business is a bit of a loss!"

The Australian was the first, and no one else dared not to buy it.This time, the "Happy Donation" was surprisingly enthusiastic, and soon [-] shi were raised from various places.

Wu De took care of people to distribute some of the rice to various porridge sheds to cook porridge and distribute it to the victims.

"Attention, the ration of food should not be too small—it should not be less than their daily calorie intake." Wu De told Jiang Qiuyan, who was in charge of the health of the victims, "and mobilize some pickled vegetables to ensure the intake of salt."

"Is this necessary? Maintain the minimum physiological needs to prevent them from starving to death, and just feed them until the beginning of next spring."

"No, I don't intend to support them," Wu De said confidently, "They support themselves."

"what do you mean?"

"Next, we have to feed them better." Wu De said the plan that he had already discussed with the executive committee.

His disaster relief plan is simple: cash for work.

Relief with work has always been an effective method in the history of disaster relief and famine relief in China. It not only saved a large number of victims, but also created large-scale projects in many places.The successful experience of the ancients can also be used by modern people.

At the disaster relief meeting, the executive committee decided to use the victims of the disaster as the main labor force to start a comprehensive road construction project in winter, including the hardening of all roads.

"Facts have proved," said Shan Daoqian, "that simple projects built in pursuit of cheap and fast construction are the least economical." He then added, "This is the lesson that this typhoon taught us."

The damage to traffic and communication lines was the most serious. The hastily built roadbed had already been loosened after a summer of rain. This typhoon caused more than a quarter of the road to be destroyed.Only the county-Nanbao road is unimpeded. This is because the inland area was relatively less damaged by the typhoon, and it also benefited from the earliest roadbed and road surface reconstruction for the convenience of heavy vehicle transportation.

Wen Desi said: "All the victims of this disaster will be assigned to you as laborers. Is it enough to repair the roads by March next year? Don't talk about anything else, first clear all the roads!"

"I'm afraid not so fast..."

Wu Nanhai said: "The beginning of March is spring sowing. We need to help the victims resume production and let them return to the land as soon as possible..."

"In my opinion, why help them resume production?" Ma Qianju said leisurely, "We don't need a lot of small agricultural producers, so we might as well take this opportunity to turn them into industrial workers. We will buy back the land. This is A good opportunity to promote large-scale agricultural production!"

This idea is a bit reversed, jumping from simple relief to the overall situation.The participants exchanged glances with each other tacitly: the idea is not bad.The guiding ideology of the time-traveling group in agriculture is large-scale production, which does not require a large number of small farmers.Taking advantage of the opportunity of natural disasters to transfer this group of farmers from the land not only increases the labor force directly controlled by the crossing group, but also has the effect of disintegrating the old countryside.

"Since most people don't like land reform," Ma Qianju said, "we will seize this opportunity."

"Isn't it too shameful to take advantage of others' danger?" Wu Nanhai expressed concern.

"Without sheep cannibalism, where would the industrial revolution come from?" Ma Qianju didn't care. "Besides, we are a fair trade. As long as we don't force everyone, we have nothing to say."

So a decision was made to transfer all the refugees taken in to laborers under the control of the commune on the spot, allocate housing and private plots according to the standards of commune members, and send their children to school.

If the land is willing to sell, it will be bought by the Agricultural Committee, and if it is not willing to sell, it can be kept. In fact, once you become a member of the commune, your production and labor will be completely controlled by the commune. Sold to the Council of Agriculture.This so-called betrayal of freedom is nothing more than a cover.

"This method is really..." Wu Nanhai expressed regret.

"Compared to the nationalization of land, don't you think we are quite benevolent." Wen Desi said.He is not interested in tricks like land reform, but he is very interested in a comprehensive land state.

Thus the fate of the hundreds of people who have already been taken in and the thousands of people who will be taken in the refugee camps has been decided in this way.This part of the land gradually fell into the hands of the Council of Agriculture.Especially in some severely affected areas, the entire village's land has been transferred in this way.However, the land benefits are not as great as expected.Families with more land tend to have better resilience to disasters, and most of the refugees are poor farmers and tenants with low economic capabilities.

In addition to establishing refugee camps to accommodate refugees fleeing famine, the Civil Affairs Committee also provides relief according to the disaster-affected conditions of each village-the affected villages are exempted from the "reasonable burden" of this year.For the villages that were not seriously affected by the disaster, but their crops were damaged, Wu De’s relief plan is to let them carry out production self-help activities, and the Delong Grain Bank will give them loans to rebuild their houses, and loan them back the seeds of buckwheat and other relief crops—these crops The growing season is very short and hardy, so it is very suitable for rushing to plant in late autumn and early winter.In the spring of next year, we will loan rice seeds and farm tools to the disaster victims.

Calculated, the food raised so far is simply not enough.Seeds during spring plowing alone are a huge expense.

With modern management experience and a large number of well-trained and trained junior administrators, the disaster relief was quickly on track.The original scene of refugees begging in the streets inside and outside the county quickly disappeared, and was replaced by well-organized refugee camps.At the same time, the operation of providing relief to the affected villages is also proceeding in an orderly manner.

But Wu De is not at ease about this.A major feature of grassroots administration is that no matter how good the will and determination of the upper strata are, it is still difficult to control the behavior of every grassroots administrative staff, especially when the rules and regulations are imperfect and have loopholes.However, the wrongdoing of a grassroots administrative staff is enough to tarnish the image of all administrative staff.This puts him in a situation he absolutely does not want to see.

Since ancient times, it has been an open secret that relief after natural disasters will always end up as a feast for those in power at the grassroots level.Even the imperial court is helpless—knowing that the relief money and food will be exploited layer by layer, and none of them will be kept in the hands of the victims, they still have to continue to allocate, otherwise natural disasters will trigger civil uprisings—sometimes it is the same even if it is allocated Arouse the people's upheaval.An important difference between the so-called prosperity and the end of the world is that the former can distribute some of the disaster relief supplies to the victims, while the end of the age has become a complete division.

"In the final analysis, it is the decline of administrative ability." Wu De said in the conversation with Ran Yao, "During the prosperous age, the organization was operating normally, and the degree of corruption of officials had not affected the ability of administrative execution. As the corruption became more and more serious, , the execution capacity of the administrative system has also declined.”

Now for disaster relief, many students who were in the training class yesterday have been mobilized to participate in the front-line work, and a large amount of disaster relief supplies have been distributed through their hands—a lot of supplies are not difficult to embezzle as long as there is a heart: mix some sand with brown rice Tares, as long as the amount is well controlled, will never be noticeable.And the common people do not have such a strong sense of reporting and rights protection as modern people.

Registering disaster victims is another job that has many loopholes to take advantage of.Just like the subsistence allowances Wu De has seen in the past.Those who need the minimum living allowance do not have the minimum living allowance, but many people who can afford to eat and drink take the minimum living allowance and play mahjong.With the government's strong control over the grassroots in modern society, it is full of loopholes, let alone the time-traveling group whose conditions are dozens of times worse?Wu De is very clear that it is impossible for him to check one by one whether the victims who received relief rice and were exempted from food were really affected by the disaster?If someone wants to fish in troubled waters, the possibility of not being detected is very high.

"You mean you want us to fight corruption?" Ran Yao understood what he meant.

(End of this chapter)