Are we really building back better? - Anindya Sarkar

"Most housing, infrastructure development and structural vulnerability reduction are concentrated on only post-disaster and not in developmental policy and implementation. There is a bare minimal effort to create disaster-resilient housing stock, roads and infrastructure. So are we really building back better?" - Anindya Sarkar, Architect Planner, India

I, Anindya Sarkar, am an Architect Planner have been working as a Consultant in the fields of Shelter, WASH, Infrastructure development, guiding post disaster recovery and DRR with various organisations including the World Bank, UNDP, NDMA, State Govt. departments and various I/NGOs in India for about 15 years now. At the time of Tsunami of Dec 2004, I was in the province of Odisha working in UNDP in the DRR Shelter project towards promotion of appropriate climate change adaptive multi-hazard resilient construction technologies.

In the beginning of January 2005, I reached the province of Tamil Nadu, and on behalf of the UN (which later became UNTRS) led a team in conducting an intense field assessment of the habitat scenario and evolving shelter rehabilitation strategies. The proposal for shelter rehabilitation was primarily based on this assessment. We formed the 8 member Advisory Committee on housing in which I played a lead role in bringing out the Technical guidelines and Housing designs on behalf of Govt. of Tamil Nadu.

Post Tsunami of 2004, I also helped in designing and guiding WASH rehabilitation efforts, in Baratang islands, in the Andaman 7 Nicobar islands.

I would sum up the following:

Achievements:

The innumerable disasters that south and south east Asia have been pounded with in the last fifteen years along with concentrated efforts  from the administration have been able to put DRR as a strong agenda. The sensitisation regarding how to face calamities and design post-disaster recovery programmes among all stakeholders from Govt. at the centre to the state govts, IMD as well as local communities in India have been an achievement.

Challenges: 

Having said the above, however, mainstreaming of CCA and DRR in our developmental policies and programmes are still awaited. This, I feel, is the strongest challenge ahead. For example, in India, the most popular Indira Awaas Yojana targeted for housing the rural poor and the Rajiv Awaas Yojana for housing the urban poor do not necessarily account for basic DRR features in the grant, other than a simple statement as a guideline, nor is the grant varying for hazard prone regions.

Ground level capacity building is still required in terms of developing the required skill sets.

In a post disasters recovery project, speed of delivery is the most important agenda but the quality of intervention takes a back seat. Speed is of course of highest priority but then adequate measures for quality control are still amiss. Are we really Building Back Better?

Message to WCDRR:

Especially in the fields of Housing, Infrastructure Development and Structural Vulnerability Reduction, most and almost always all efforts are concentrated post disasters as part of Recovery projects, and not included in developmental policies and implementations of developmental projects. Barring a few projects for example, the WB funded National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project, there is bare minimal effort to improve the housing stock, roads and infrastructure in a manner so that these are more disaster-resilient.