"Public awareness is the most fundamental building
block of disaster risk reduction, and organised planning and investments
towards this are critically important in the fight against disasters." -Anil Sinha, Vice-Chair, Bihar State Disaster Management Authority, India
Although much has been done in the last ten years, from
the state and district perspective, an area least addressed, both for action and
budget allocations, is public awareness.
Knowledge abut risk is the first step towards disaster reduction. However, in India the kind of public
awareness and education campaigning required at national level led by NDMA and
at state and sub state levels by SDMAs and other agencies has not
happened. There is thus inadequate
understanding of hazards and risks. In
Bihar itself, since there has been no major earthquake for 80 years, other than
small events of 1988 and 2011, people have low recollection and appreciation of
earthquake risks. The problem is acute
for such events that take place at long intervals, and for risks such as those
arising from climate change, since there is no precedent.
Building codes have been improved, guidelines for safe
construction and non structural mitigation have been prepared, but basic demand
for safety is not there since people are not aware and interested. People here need to understand that there are
different kinds and levels of risk in North Bihar, Central Bihar and in other
parts. There is a need for better public knowledge than the mere name of the
hazard, though less than what a professional needs to know. At the local level
the range of risks is lesser than the national spectrum. The High Powered Committee had identified
thirty two hazards for India, but only about twelve are prominently valid in
Bihar. This also means that there is
greater need as well as scope to have better awareness and preparedness for
these twelve.
With the philosophy of 'be the change you want to see',
we have embarked on office disaster management planning starting from our own
offices. Within this realm also there is
much to be done in government agencies cutting across all sectors such as
health, education, rural development etc.; PSUs; private sector and so on. We initiated an intensive programme for
training of officers across various sectors, as these duty-bearers are the
spine of any change we want to bring about in the system. This started as a one day training, carried
out at least twice a month. The interest
from participants has been immense and they are demanding that the duration of
the training be increased to 3 or 5 days.
We ourselves are going slow on this because the participation is higher
in training programmes of shorter duration and we want to reach the maximum
number of people before embarking on more in-depth training.
In parallel we have invested heavily on preparation of
primers, calendars, booklets, comic books, posters and outreach in mass media
on disaster risk reduction. I believe
that the need of the hour is to create a foundation with knowledge,
appreciation and understanding that goes beyond the existing basic perception
of disasters. Informed decision making
by the general public and all stakeholders will lead to a cultural of
prevention that we have spoken about for so long. We are also working closely with the inter
media committee at the state level for pushing this agenda.
Lastly, generation of local content through research and
documentation is a priority need for creation of appropriate knowledge tools
and awareness campaigns. While we are
very rich in traditional knowledge that has been socially validated over
generations, it has remained oral and anecdotal, leading to a situation where
we are sourcing our knowledge base from alien contexts of the developed
countries. This is currently becoming
very evident in the work on climate change action planning. I believe that valuing, collating and
promoting such knowledge will yield most appropriate, cost effective and
impacting tools in our efforts for disaster reduction.
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