Keep the memories alive for awareness and urge concrete State action - Hari Kumar

"The world has changed in the last 10 years and our DRR framework needs to adapt itself to new challenges and situations. It has to help all hazard prone nations catch up so that we try and reduce the human and economic impacts of future hazardous events." - Hari Kumar, GeoHazards, New Delhi, India

We realise that ten years is such a long time when we look back at where we were that December morning in 2004.  It seems like a different India existed before that morning where the DM Act had not been passed (though the draft had been put up in Parliament twice if I remember right), there was no NDMA, INCOIS or NDRF (organisations that we depend on now) and even NIDM was still in the process of being revived by the MHA. India was seen as a country that could not handle disasters like these on its own then and it came as a shock to several International donors that we refused all external assistance. I was attached to MHA in those days and remember several phone calls from donors who could not believe that we didn’t give appeals for ‘help from the International Community’. And from their voices and the way the callers passed on their contact details, it was evident that they expected this ‘foolishness’ (of India not taking aid) to last just a couple of days and they knew that we will be appealing for help soon. But not only did we provide assistance to our affected States/UTs of Andaman Nicobar islands, Tamil Nadu, Kerala (and even Andhra Pradesh), we rushed to assist Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand as well quickly. This kind of an immediate response which involved the Army, Air force, the Navy, Railways, Shipping Corporation of India , Governments of the affected States and many other agencies required immense coordination and that task was done by the team at MHA working round the clock.

That for me was a turning point in the way the world perceived us and even how we looked at our own abilities to handle disasters.

Key lessons

• Need for focussed programmes on DRR: Following the Orissa Super cyclone of 1999, UNDP and MHA had initiated the Disaster Risk Management Programme in 17 States of the country in 2002.  Tamil Nadu was the only tsunami affected State that had been part of this project and the results were encouraging. In spite of the fact that tsunami was not considered a likely hazard in India then, we had success stories like the one from Samiyar Pettai village where people used their community based disaster preparedness plans to evacuate and save many lives. Neither Andaman Nicobar Islands nor Kerala had prior experiences in focussed Disaster Management and suffered the consequences. I wonder how things have changed in Kerala and the Andaman Nicobar Islands. It is important that the States/ UTs with a Tsunami/ cyclone risk pay enough attention to preparedness and mitigation. In this regard, we should also focus some attention on the preparedness measures at Lakshadweep which has a fortunate escape from the 2004 tsunami being shielded by the Sri Lankan landmass. A tsunami generating earthquake in the plate boundary south of Aceh could very well take a direct hit on our coral islands.
• Keeping the Memories alive: I am glad that these online discussions are happening to keep the memory of this event alive, but how many of the affected districts are marking the event? We would be doing the younger generations a huge disservice if we allow the memory of this event to fade. We allowed the effects of previous tsunamis (the 26 June 1941 Andaman’s earthquake and tsunami on our Eastern coast and the November 1945 Makran earthquake and Tsunami on our Western coast -from Kutch to Mumbai) to be forgotten and were caught completely by surprise in the 2004 event. If we do not mark these anniversaries, we will forget the word tsunami again and future generations will suffer. Many a time we hear DRR ‘experts’ telling us that the time for awareness is over. Of course, we must make rapid strides in Preparedness and mitigation, but we should always keep the awareness activities on.
• Challenges: In India, the main challenge is obviously our size and diversity. States which have been part of national disaster management programmes such as the DRM have gained a lot in the field. Many states which have been affected by major disasters also seemed to have made a lot of progress (such as Orissa) in reducing their risk. However, some other States do not seem to have learnt much from past events and continue to increase the risk with their half-hearted approaches to DM. Even if the MHA and NDMA (when fully revived) take up far sighted initiatives, it will be up to the State Governments to take concrete steps towards risk reduction. States have to be assisted and mandated to develop their long term risk reduction plans.

India may have made rapid strides in DRR in the last decade, but the preparedness levels of our islands remain almost where it had been ten years back and we risk losing much in future events.

Message to WDCDRR: The Hyogo framework was an excellent framework for the world to work on. Several goals remain unachieved and several more will have to be added now. As India has changed in the last ten years, the world has changed as well and our DRR framework needs to adapt itself to new challenges and situations. Many countries have achieved much, but several countries are lagging behind. The new framework has to be able to help all hazard prone nations catch up so that we try and reduce the human and economic impacts of future hazardous events. As in a polio campaign where we cannot miss vaccinating even a child, our DRR mission cannot have some countries and their people exposed to the effects of such events.