Live
- Casual yet stylish office outfits for all-day comfort
- TTD to suspend all special darshans from January 10 to 19 amid Vaikuntha dwara darshans
- Naidu pats TDP leaders, cadres for enrolling 73L members
- Rupali Ganguly says for 20 years she never got an award
- Advanced anti-drone systems deployed for devotees’ safety at Mahakumbh
- Workshop on ‘Industry-Academia Practices in Civil Engineering’ concludes
- Revanth assures Kurma community of its due
- 204 cadets pass out of AFA
- Youngest chess king wins laurels for India
- FairPoint: Rahul’s rhetoric falls flat as PM Modi steals spotlight
Preparing India to tackle disasters
Highlights
At age 50, a person, it is said, has the face he or she deserves. I looked at India’s face in 1997 – 50 years after her birth as in independent nation on the whole; I liked what I saw. A successful struggle for independence based on non-violence, a democratic polity that has emerged unscathed by over five decades of repeated tests of its sustainability, the green and other multi-coloured revolutions in the agriculture sector, a sterling record of competence and probity on the part of many constitutional authorities such as the Supreme Court and the Election Commission, a dazzling array of spectacular achievements in fields spanning the entire gamut of human endeavour from space and ocean exploration – through education, health, industrialisation, creation of infrastructure in the communication, transport, irrigation, power sectors - to sports and culture brought a sense of comfort and contentment. The country appeared also smoothly to have adjusted to the need for management of c
At age 50, a person, it is said, has the face he or she deserves. I looked at India’s face in 1997 – 50 years after her birth as in independent nation on the whole; I liked what I saw. A successful struggle for independence based on non-violence, a democratic polity that has emerged unscathed by over five decades of repeated tests of its sustainability, the green and other multi-coloured revolutions in the agriculture sector, a sterling record of competence and probity on the part of many constitutional authorities such as the Supreme Court and the Election Commission, a dazzling array of spectacular achievements in fields spanning the entire gamut of human endeavour from space and ocean exploration – through education, health, industrialisation, creation of infrastructure in the communication, transport, irrigation, power sectors - to sports and culture brought a sense of comfort and contentment. The country appeared also smoothly to have adjusted to the need for management of change caused by the forces of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. I did not, however, like all that India could see of her past.
.jpg)
Hunger and poverty, inequity and exclusion, an unstable equilibrium between the need for exploitation of natural resources and the imperatives of their sustainable use, and the looming threats of food and nutritional insecurity and climate change were writ large on the emerging scenario. Fresh lime juice is usually offered to a person breaking a prolonged fast. Clearly a seven–course is not the best alternative! I have, on occasion, felt that at the time of independence, the country may have bitten off much more than she can chew. Universal franchise, abolition of evils such as child marriage, an industry–friendly environment in which trade unions also flourished, a planned economy and a democratic polity – not to mention many other positives - all happened literally overnight. A relatively peaceful transition from colonial suppression to the status of a sovereign republic also meant that the new born baby was delivered much like a caesarian product - not subjected to the travails and pangs of a normal delivery and thus, more fragile and vulnerable to the risks associated with infancy.
Today at 70, she can look back, once again, with pride and a sense of achievement at her record in the two subsequent decades. Once again, there is as much to cherish in terms of past success as there is to fear by way of the challenges ahead. One thing is certain. This is no time for the country to rest on her oars. There is much that needs to be done. To begin with, it can hardly be gainsaid that the preservation of the fruits of development thus far achieved must take precedence over all the fresh initiatives on the anvil. Disaster management is one such concern. We can hardly remain in a state of fatalistic resignation to havoc wrought by the fury of nature, when the fruits of patient development effort are being neutralised literally instantaneously. The world as well as India needs a tool that can measure readiness for facing disasters. A tool that can calibrate the rate and direction of journey towards the destination of achieving the most desirable levels of preparedness to manage disasters; a tool that can monitor the progress from time to time. There is one area where I would like to see India take the lead, and set an example for other countries to follow.
That is putting in place a Disaster Preparedness Index (DPI) for the country which can subsequently serve as a model for global organisations to adopt and recommend for use by other countries. Risk, exposure and vulnerability We may broadly define the vulnerability of an area as Vg = R x E (R being the risk to a disaster, E a measure of the exposure - in terms of the impact and Vg the gross vulnerability) Then, Vn = R x E/P (Where Vn is the net vulnerability of P, the area and the level of preparedness.
World Risk Index The 2014 World Risk Report (WRR 2014) systematically considered the risk of occurrence of natural disasters in various countries to determine their ranking. The World Risk Index 2014 (WRI 2014) calculated the risk of becoming a victim of a disaster for 171 countries. Special focus was on “Cities as an area of risk.” Elements of constituting risk such as susceptibility, coping capacity and adaptive capacity were observed from the perspective of urbanisation. Shortage of affordable housing space, for instance, enhances exposure. Marginalised urban communities, also, are more exposed to natural hazards. For the first time, 140 countries were analysed for urban risk, based on 21 indicators including the share of urban population living in slums, urban literacy rate and the percentage of female workers in urban areas. Indicators, benchmarks and targets Indicators are an explicit measure of important factors relevant to disasters, which enable measurement of what is actually happening against what has been planned for, offering a valuable insight into the efficacy of policies or programmes. Coping capacity is the ability to face and manage adverse conditions using available skills and resources. This can be assessed using: 1. Physical/ infrastructural Indicators; 2. Institutional/ procedural Indicators; 3. Social indicators; 4. Economic indicators; and 5.
Environmental/ecological indicators An ‘authenticated’ and ‘credible’ benchmark is a reference point or standard for measuring progress or achievements and can be set for any indicator. Benchmarks are not commonly used for DM because the field of DM is not a well developed discipline yet. Available data, however, is enough to formulate suitable benchmarks for various sectors such as land management, education, early warning and evacuations and can be readily formulated. Gathering comparative data on the value of each indicator before starting the implementation of actions enables establishment of reasonable performance targets and measurement of the degree of changes. India vis-à-vis the world The WRI 2014 report ranks India at 73 in the world with a rating of 7.04% placing it alongside countries such as Lesotho, Kenya etc., which have scores around7%.Verisk Maplecroft provides reports on global risks under three categories: hydrological and meteorological risks; Geophysical risks; and Socio-economic Resilience (eg: Community Vulnerability Index). Level of preparedness In 2009 Dr Manmohan Singh, the then Prime Minister of India and Chairman of NDMA, asked the members how prepared India was for disasters. The Vice-Chairman was a former Chief of Army Staff, and other members included retired civil servants, an Army doctor, a scientist, an academician and a political leader. They synthesised intuitive assessments in the form of gut-feelings based on their experience, made back-of-the-envelope calculations and produced some ball-park numbers. That exercise threw up 14 factors to which weights were given on a scale of 1 to 100, leading to a score of 29% for India in 2007, 47% in 2009 and a projection of 75% for 2012. That calculation can well constitute the beginning of a formal and rigorous exercise to be commenced now. The time has also come to initiate the construction of a national assessment tool, based on benchmarks and indicators.
In terms of risk and exposure, it must be designed for multi-hazardous situations with the in-built flexibility to rework it for a particular hazard. Also in terms of geographic regions, it could be designed for use at the national level and customised to meet specific local demands. The goal should be to improve proactive planning and implement effective and efficient actions that can mitigate vulnerability to disasters. The Government of India and the States/UTs need, urgently and purposefully, to engage in creating legitimate space in the national agenda for DM. Saving lives, property and livelihoods and preventing the gains of patient developmental efforts from being neutralised by familiar and predictable events can no longer brook delay. Clearly this is something that cannot wait and therefore needs to be addressed to the exclusion, if necessary, of all other items on the agenda of the Central and the State governments. (The writer is a retired officer of the Indian Administrative Service who was formerly Secretary to Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture, Chief Secretary to Government of Andhra Pradesh, Member, National Disaster Management Authority of India, Member of the Steering Committee (of erstwhile Planning Commission) on Agriculture and Allied Sectors for the 12th Five Year Plan, and headed the Crop Holiday Committee, Government of Andhra Pradesh, in the year 2011).
Dr.Mohan Kanda
Next Story
ADVERTISEMENT
