|
Disaster Management in
India
Vishal Singh
vsingh@devalt.org
D isasters
and their management generally get discussed in their aftermath but
practically it should result in planning and preparing the strategy to
tackle and mitigate disasters in a responsible and effective manner.
Disasters, both natural and unnatural, are macro level events or
processes, which induce disturbances and turmoil for a prolonged
life-threatening environment for a community.
World
Development Report (IFRCRC, 2001) categorizes natural disasters into
hydro meteorological (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc) and
geophysical (landslides, droughts, etc) categories. The scope of
unnatural disasters broadly encompasses conflicts, civil strife, riots
and industrial disasters.
In the past
decade (1991-2000), natural disasters have killed 66,59,598 people,
accounting for 88 percent of all deaths due to disasters. Similarly,
unnatural disasters have killed 86,923 people during the decade. Nearly
two-thirds of the people killed in these disasters hail from developing
countries like India, with only four percent of the casualties being
reported from highly developed countries (IFRCRC, 2001).
Disaster
management is essentially a dynamic process. It comprises the classical
management functions of planning, organizing, staffing, leading and
controlling. It also involves many organizations, which must work
together to prevent, mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from
the effects of disaster. Disaster management would therefore include
immediate response, recovery, prevention, mitigation, preparedness and
…..the cycle goes on.
India is
considered as the world’s most disaster prone country. Like many other
countries in this region, India is plagued by various kinds of natural
disasters every year, such as floods, drought, earthquakes, cyclones and
landslides. Millions of people are affected every year and the economic
losses caused by natural disasters amount to a major share of the Gross
National Product (GNP). Natural Disasters are huge economic burdens on
developing economies such as India. Every year, huge amount of resources
are mobilized for rescue, relief and rehabilitation works following
natural disaster occurrences.
In India, a
closer analysis of what transforms a natural event into a human and
economic disaster reveals that the fundamental problems of development
that the country faces are the very same problems that contribute to its
vulnerability to the catastrophic effects of natural hazards. The
principal causes of vulnerability include rapid and uncontrolled
urbanization, persistence of widespread urban and rural poverty,
degradation of the environment resulting from the mismanagement of
natural resources, inefficient public policies, and lagging (and
misguided) investments in infrastructure.
Development
and disaster-related policies have largely focused on emergency
response, leaving a serious under-investment in natural hazard
prevention and mitigation.
Conventional
response t o
Disasters
Humans have managed
disasters and an overview of our past experiences shows that management
of disasters is not a new concept. For example, in ancient India,
droughts were effectively managed through conventional water
conservation methods, which are still in use in certain parts of the
country - like Rajasthan. Local communities have devised indigenous
safety mechanisms and drought-oriented farming methods in many parts of
the country.
The subject
of disaster management is not mentioned in any of the three lists in the
Seventh Schedule of the Indian constitution, where subjects under the
Central and State governments are specified. In the post-independent
India, a journey through the five-year plans points to the fact that the
understanding of disasters was to mitigate droughts and floods; schemes
such as the Drought Prone Area Program (DPAP), Desert Development
Program (DDP), National Watershed Development Project for Rain fed Areas
(NWDPRA) and Integrated Water Development Project (IWDP) are examples of
this conventional paradigm (Planning Commission, 2002).
Recent
changes
The late 1990s and the early
part of this century marked a watershed in Disaster Management in India.
The Orissa Super Cyclone and the Gujarat Earthquake taught the nation a
hard lesson. The experiences of the stakeholders like the state,
voluntary sector and the communities at large helped in initiating the
planning process pertaining to preparedness and mitigation of disasters.
A welcome
step in this direction was setting up of a High Powered Committee on
Disaster Management in 1999, which submitted its report in 2001. An
important recommendation of the committee was that at least 10 percent
of plan funds at the national, state and district levels be earmarked
and apportioned for schemes that specifically address areas such as
prevention, reduction, preparedness and mitigation of disasters. Also
for the first time in the planning history of India, planners devoted a
separate chapter titled ‘Disaster Management: The development
perspective’ in the tenth five-year plan document (Planning
Commission, 2002).
More
recently, several institutions with a focused mandate on disaster
management have come up in various parts of the country. The Ministry of
Home Affairs (Disaster Management Division), National Institute for
Disaster Management (New Delhi), Gujarat State Disaster Management
Authority (GSDMA), Orissa State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA),
Disaster Mitigation Institute (Ahmedabad) can be seen as initiatives
taken in the right direction.
There has
also been a concerted effort on the part of the state to mainstream
Disaster Mitigation initiatives in Rural Development schemes. One of its
example is the coordination between the Ministry of Rural Development
and the Ministry of Home Affairs, which is now the nodal ministry for
coordination of relief and response and overall natural disaster
management, for changing the guidelines of schemes such as Indira Awas
Yojna (IAY) and Sampoorn Grameen Rojgar Yojna (SGRY) so that the houses
constructed under IAY or school buildings/community buildings
constructed under SGRY are earthquake/cyclone/flood resistant.
Role of NGOs
Since the
community is the first responder in any disaster situation, there is a
great need for community level initiatives in managing disasters. The
initiatives taken by various agencies, including the state, need to be
people-centric and the level of community participation should be gauged
through the role played by the community in the process of planning and
decision-making. Efforts should also be made to strengthen local
economies, thereby making people independent of external assistance
(Gupta, www.gisdevelopment.net).
The voluntary
sector has been in the forefront of mobilizing communities, enabling
them to cope with disasters in the past decades. Their initiatives and
experiences have been consolidated and demonstrated on a larger scale
with the help of the state. Development organizations working in
communities share a good rapport with the community, which helps the
state in implementing its plans more effectively; village level plans
prepared after the Super Cyclone in Orissa could be seen as an example
of the same.
The focus of
any disaster management plan now incorporates the following:
| 4 |
Community Based Disaster Preparedness |
|
4 |
Development of block, Gram Panchayat and Village disaster management
plans |
This has been
made possible through continuous advocacy by development organizations
like Action Aid, Oxfam, CARE- India, etc. These initiatives have been
scaled up by the state, which has taken efforts to integrate disaster
management plans with the larger developmental plans at all levels such
as Village/Panchayat/Block/District/State.
Government
has got the whole machinery in place and the relief work is carried out
with the help of the following agencies- Indian Red Cross Society
,Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, UNDP India, Tata Energy
Research Institute, Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd.,
Ministry of Urban Development and Council for Advancement of People’s
Action and Rural Technology (CAPART). All these agencies in the past
responded to major disasters in the country. For example, in the state
of Orissa in the aftermath of Super Cyclone in 1999, they provided
immediate relief services to the affected families. Further, they
collected and distributed relief material, helped in providing immediate
shelter, supported voluntary organizations for implementing activities
pertaining to the relief and rehabilitation work and provided training
to masons for repairing damaged houses. The vast network of partner
voluntary organizations provides the Government with a greater
opportunity to implement Disaster Management plans at the grassroots
level much more effectively.
Challenges
for the future
There is a
growing need to look at disasters from a development perspective.
Disasters can have devastating effect on communities and can
significantly set back development efforts to a great extent. But then,
it could also offer an opportunity to invest in development efforts in a
post disaster scenario. Disasters are opportunities for communities to
reinvent themselves.
Disaster
prevention, mitigation, preparedness and relief are four elements, which
contribute to and gain from the implementation of sustainable
development policies. These elements, along with environmental
protection and sustainable development, are closely inter-related. The
Yokohama Strategy, emanating from the international decade for natural
disaster reduction in May 1994, emphasizes that disaster prevention,
mitigation and preparedness are better than disaster-response in
achieving the goals and objectives of vulnerability reduction.
The
Government of India has adopted mitigation and prevention as essential
components of its development strategy. The Tenth Five Year Plan
emphasizes the fact that development cannot be sustainable without
mitigation being built into the development process. In brief, Disaster
Management is being institutionalized into development planning. But,
there are various underlying problems in the whole process. In fact, a
number of problems stem from social inequities.
In the long
run, the onus is upon the local communities to handle disasters with the
help of the state and other such organizations. It is a well-known fact
that the community dynamics is quite complex in a country like India.
There is a need to address specific local needs of vulnerable
communities through local traditions and cultures. Restoration of common
property resources with the participation of the local level bodies is a
real challenge. The historical focus of disaster management has been on
relief and rehabilitation after the event but now the focus is on
planning for disaster preparedness and mitigation. Given the high
frequency with which one or other part of the country suffers due to
disasters, mitigating the impact of disasters must be an integral
component of our development planning.
One of the
glaring lacunae in the process of Disaster Management in India has been
the overlooking of unnatural disasters. The recent efforts focus purely
on natural disasters, whereas the current global situation also demands
initiatives in managing the impact of unnatural disasters. Developments
at the international level, particularly the civil wars and civil strife
in Eastern Europe and Southern America culminating on 9/11 have brought
the issue of unnatural disasters at the forefront of disaster
management. The global community has recognized the serious consequences
of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) warfare. This remains a
serious challenge for India to address in the near future.
The need of
the hour is to chalk out a multi-pronged strategy for total disaster
management comprising prevention, preparedness, response and recovery on
the one hand and initiate development efforts aimed towards risk
reduction and mitigation on the other. The countries in the Asia-Pacific
region should establish a regional co-ordination mechanism for
space-technology based disaster mitigation and strengthen co-operation,
Luan suggested, adding that they also need to set up an all-weather and
all-time comprehensive space-based disaster mitigation system and share
the information.
A pro-active stance to
reduce the toll of disasters in the country requires a more
comprehensive approach that comprises both pre-disaster risk reduction
and post-disaster recovery. It is framed by new policies and
institutional arrangements that support effective action. Such an
approach should involve the following set of activities:
|
4 |
Risk analysis to identify the kinds of risks faced by people and
development investments as well as their magnitude;
|
|
4 |
Prevention and mitigation to address the structural sources of
vulnerability;
|
|
4 |
Risk transfer to spread financial risks over time and among
different actors;
|
|
4 |
Emergency preparedness and response to enhance a country’s readiness
to cope quickly and effectively with an emergency; and
|
|
4 |
Post-disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction to support effective
recovery and to safeguard against future disasters. q |
References
|
1. |
Planning Commission
(2002); "Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-2007) - Vol.1"; Planning
Commission, Government of India; New Delhi. |
|
2. |
Gupta A; "Information
Technology and Natural Disaster Management in India"; www.gisdevelopment.net |
|
3. |
www.ndmindia.nic.in |
|
4. |
International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (2001); "World Disaster
Report - Focus on reducing risk"; IFRCRCS;
Geneva |
Back to Contents
|