What is the state of our
disaster preparedness?
Warned in time, they could have lived. But the India Meteorological Department made no attempt to issue warnings to people on the Indian coast for, as per the rules, the tsunami had occurred beyond Indian waters. But regulations have been flouted everywhere else. Over the years the natural protection along the coast, sand dunes and mangrove forests, have been consistently disturbed and destroyed.
Disasters are not predictable, disaster
preparedness is about managing the unknown.
Effective disaster
management depends on preparedness, mitigation before the event,
relief and rehabilitation.
There are serious limitations in India’s state of preparedness. India has no national disaster management policy, the state administration being in charge during a crisis.
Different ministries are responsible for different aspects of disaster management; this creates an administrative (man-made) crisis which is often worse than the natural crisis itself. Disasters are treated as a one-time calamity, with the result that they re-occur year after year with unfailing regularity.
The Geological Survey of India is mapping 22 cities to review their vulnerability to earthquakes. But what we need most of all is not yet more surveys, but the enforcement of earthquake-resistant building codes, as the standards are not being followed.
The centre has asked the state governments to convert their departments of relief and
rehabilitation into disaster management departments. Perhaps the
government feels that a change in nomenclature is all that is required. The fact of the matter is that disasters have to be planned for, and that disasters hurt less when planned beforehand. At present the states are being funded only for relief and rehabilitation; a policy shift is required to allocate funds for disaster prevention and mitigation instead. State governments are still being allocated funds according to their spending during the previous financial year.
The biggest violator of its own regulations has been the government of India; mangrove clusters have been destroyed to build the Konkan railway, forest cover has been lost to tree-felling, and the pressure of tourism has lead to sand dunes being flattened to build hotels. And the government has compounded its error by building settlements in these low-lying areas.
An effective flow of information has been identified as the single most important component of the disaster management system. The government says that it is prepared to face any situation. But the Indian scientists monitoring the tsunami were guided purely by past historical records. At the same time, the government readily admits that it has only limited data on previous tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. The scientists need to go beyond mere technology, and to start thinking of the people they are supposedly working for instead of the instruments they are working with.
More abstracts about the Article: Beyond Tsunami