Invest in preparedness and mitigation; improve governance by making it more responsive; reduce inequalities; use sustainable developmental practices. Disaster Preparedness is better than Disaster Response. - Prof. P. C. Joshi, Professor of Social Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi, India
On the tenth anniversary of the
Asian Tsunami, it is worthwhile to consider how much progress we have made in
our efforts to reduce the vulnerability from the disasters. In the context of India, one question that all
of us must consider is whether we have the will to learn lessons from others
mistakes. My answer to this would be a
flat ‘NO’. After ten years, we are as
vulnerable as we were before although on papers we have made enormous
progress. Pardon me for sounding
misanthropist but while there was great success in managing Phailin it was
utter failure in management of Kedarnath and Srinagar floods. In both Kedarnath
and Srinagar, there was all round failure on all fronts, be is warning,
governance, vulnerability reduction and disaster preparedness. This clearly indicates that at least in India,
we only learn from our mistakes and are rather insensitive and oblivious to
incorporating lessons from other’s mistakes.
Year after year, the incidences of disasters have the capacity to give a
jolt to us and we wonder if the nature has become more enraged and
infuriated.
India has the best of disaster
management acts and policies. We are
very prompt in making commitment to international frameworks and
directions. The official commitment
towards a disaster resilience society has indeed gone deeper, from the centre
to states and the panchayats. Yet, we are not fully prepared when we confront
the incidence of disaster. The Indian attitude of ‘chalta hai’ and ‘kya farak
padta hai’ has been doing greatest harm to disaster preparation
mechanisms. As Indians, we love taking
risk. One can understand if a poor and
marginalized person chooses a disaster prone site for habitation as he has no
choice but to be there, but, when a person who can afford a better site decides
to live in a disaster prone zone, the Indian attitude has lot to explain such a
behaviour. And we continuously choose to
take risk and pay the painful price.
More than anything else, we need to make concerted efforts to change the
Indian attitude, which not only forces the individuals to make wrong choices
but also the decision makers and executives to remain complacent and unruffled.
1. Disaster response, disaster
management and disaster preparedness should become essential component of the
curricula right from the schools to higher and technical education. There is a need to disseminate the meticulously
accumulated knowledge, evidence and lessons through education. In fact, the schools, colleges and technical
institutions should also be seen as the producers of scientifically tested and
empirically verifiable disaster related knowledge. It requires the centre and state to allocate
additional financial resources for hiring of faculty, funding of conferences
and research to departments of
anthropology, geography, education, management, epidemiology, community
medicine, psychiatry, engineering, etc.
2. There are indeed new challenges
which are emerging over the last 10 years. The magnitude of disasters has been
extending beyond the human imagination.
The Fukushima disaster shocked us all and so were the Kedarnath and
Srinagar. In fact, it appears that the
very definition of the term disaster should change as what we have started
witnessing are not mere disasters but catastrophic disasters, which overwhelm
not only the capacities but even the imaginations.
3. My message to world leaders is very
simple. Invest in preparedness and mitigation; improve governance by making it
more responsive; reduce inequalities; use sustainable developmental practices.
My slogan is “Disaster Preparedness is better than Disaster Response”
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