From floods to foresight: India’s disaster management at crossroads

No other city in India probably suffers as much damage and as frequently as Mumbai does. One of the worst such calamities the city faced was in 2005. While it is not as much of a suf-ferer as Mumbai is, Chennai is another city where frequent and extensive damages take place on account of flooding caused by excessive rainfall.

The twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad are no strangers to the urban flood disaster either. The city’s drainage systems, particularly the storm water drains, date back to the Asif Jahi (Nizam) era, prepared by the legendary Mokshagundam Visweswaraya which it was ne-cessitated by the 1908 floods in Musi River. Over 117 years old!

Work is underway for the preparation of a storm water master plan for the Telangana Core Urban Region (TCUR), GHMC and the surrounding areas. It will use geo– referenced data-bases and hydrological modelling to map the interconnected drainage network, including the Musi river and associated lakes, to improve flood resilience and such a sustainable drainage system.

Many lessons were thrown up in the aftermath of the floods in 2005 in Mumbai and again 2015 in Chennai. Both the events, in a manner of speaking, were disasters waiting to hap-pen. Given the experience of Mumbai and Hyderabad, as also its own past events fresh in one’s memory, one would have expected more effective preventive actions in Chennai. As a matter of fact, however, nearly all actions, before and after the 2015 floods, unfortunately presented a study in negligence.

Many events led to the disastrous situation in which the city unfortunately found itself. The systems were simply unable to cope with the sudden and vast increase in the volume of water. The public was caught by surprise and subjected to totally avoidable misery. The complete absence of coordination between the various agencies concerned, the regrettable lack of dele-gated authority as well as disrupted lines of command and chains of control caused untold misery to millions of citizens.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was another tragic event in recent history, ranked as the third most intense tropical cyclone ever in the history of the United States. The disasters resulted in the death of 1245 people. The damage to property was estimated at $108 billion. Analysts have commented that the actions taken, especially in the first few hours and days after the disaster, were undoubtedly good examples of what not to do. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was accused of delayed and insufficient response and had to resign.

FEMA in its subsequent report to the US Government brought out many lapses in the man-agement of Katrina including the collective failure of the various plans created at the local and the state levels. Clearly the system was structurally flawed in regard to the imperative of unified management of national response, the command and the control structures, knowledge of the extant preparedness plans at the local level and, finally, regional planning and coordination. Valuable lessons were however learnt from the unfortunate experience.

Disasters affect unprepared communities more than others. With no sense of immediate need, preparedness rarely enjoys the priority it deserves in the national agenda. The recognition, and reward, that acts of boldness and bravery attract, are rarely associated with prevention and preparedness. Thus, political leadership and administrations, at the national, state and local levels in India, have tended to neglect this critical aspect of the disaster continuum.

While the incidence of disasters is almost uniform in all parts of the globe, their impact affects only some parts of the world. Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and the South Asia/Pacific countries suffer the most on account of inadequate preparedness and insufficient coping ca-pacity. Significantly these are the countries that are home to the majority of the population of the world living below the poverty line and are ranked extremely low in the Human Devel-opment Index prepared periodically by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Internationally, the need is now recognized for a paradigm shift from the reactive approach to a proactive regime –from relief and rescue - centric response to prevention, mitigation and preparedness- moving away from the ‘Rs’ to the ‘Ps’.

The NDMA has, since its inception, issued a slew of guidelines on the management of various types of disasters (earthquakes, cyclone, floods etc.) and also put out reports pertaining to themes (including preparedness for pandemics, revamping of civil defence, role of non-governmental organizations, etc).

There are now in place a National Disaster Response Fund and State Disaster Response Funds with the size of their corpus determined by the Finance Commission.

NDMA, in the initial years, look several measures to improve the disaster management regime in the country. Feeling that knowledge of the essentials of disaster management is a necessary part of the equipment of every educated person, regardless of the profession, NDMA initiat-ed steps to include, capsules of the subject, in the curriculum and syllabus, of every course at every level of the education system, from the high school to the postgraduate level.

To begin with, material appropriately, designed was built into the syllabus of the high school students in institutions following the CBSE system. In order to ensure that knowledge of the subject, with appropriate details suitable to the level and field, is made part of the pedagogy, steps were taken to constitute a High-Level Committee in the Ministry of Human Resource Development to build in appropriate capsules in various disasters, such as the humanities, the life sciences, and professional fields such as engineering, medicine, law, and accountancy.

Efforts were made to introduce DM in the course content for inservice training institutions for personnel in different fields, such as the All India Services, banking, and insurance, and the corporate sector.

To ensure that the extant as well as all proposed infrastructure of the country is made, disaster resilient, steps were initiated.

Whatever one might say about the management of resources in the country and the achieve-ments and failures of the country’s agencies, including the premier institutions such as the NDMA, it cannot be said that the raising, training and equipping of the NDRF has been one of its signal achievements. Until that was done, the states largely depended on the centre rushing in the Armed Forces or Para Military forces when so requested after the occurrence of disasters.

Those forces, no doubt, are professionally competent, and well trained still they suf-fered from the disadvantages of being unfamiliar with the terrain of the areas to which they were in which they were deployed, and lack of training and equipment suitable to the type of disaster.

With the raising of the NDRF, battalions are now positioned in different parts of the country, capable of dealing with different disasters and, thanks to mock drills and rehearsals, which are conducted regularly at times when disasters are known to be likely to occur, they enjoy similarity with the terrain, knowledge of the people and their cultures, as well pos-sessing the equipment and technology to make them capable of dealing with the particular type of disaster that area is vulnerable to.

Another feature in the cap for the Force was its performance of that force in Japan in 2011, following the massive earthquake and tsunami in that country. A fully trained, and self-contained, team comprising 46 personnel, was deployed for duty in the affected areas of Ja-pan, marking India’s first International disaster response mission.

And that, at the request of a country normally in the habit of seeking assistance! The team successfully not only extricated dead bodies from the debris, in a very delicate operation culturally inconsistent with the psy-che of local people, but also recovered a substance amount of cash and other valuable items. Its professionalism, cultural sensitivity, and effective work earned encomiums from the local officials, the media, and republic, as well as the Japanese government, much to the gratifica-tion of the government of India.

(The author is a former Chief Secretary in united AP)