The Hindu Business Line : Disaster management in shallow waters

As they waded through neck-deep waters to safety, the passengers must have wondered if they could have survived the long wait for official assistance.

It is not for the first time that disaster preparedness has been one big disaster in the country.

As the media conjures up familiar images of flood disaster and as large parts of Western India brave another bout of nature's fury, the question is whether disaster preparedness could be more precise and prompt.

Conversely, disaster management appears to have inherited inefficiencies and corruption to remain chaotic.

And, so, as fresh disaster strikes, the out-of-sync `disaster management' mechanism struggles to get its act together. Human misery continues to grab headlines while the cause-effect relationship of disasters skips careful diagnosis.

Was it possible to predict the intensity and magnitude of the recent floods? With the India Meteorological Department restricting itself to tracking the monsoon calendar and recording rainfall distribution, predicting the location and extent of impending disasters remains unattended.

Monsoon clouds are traditionally regarded with awe and hope in a large agrarian economy, growth rate being measured on the timeliness and distribution of precipitation. Maybe it is time to rethink the cardboard theory: Monsoons not only spur `growth' but they often cause `disaster' too.

As seen in the two recent disasters — floods in high reaches of Himachal Pradesh and in the unsuspecting plains of Gujarat — monsoon aggregation in pockets of the country can no longer be termed `freak'. The fact that monsoon winds traversed the distance between the eastern fringes of Uttar Pradesh and the western extreme of Rajasthan in less than ten days, against the usual thirty, is sufficient explanation for the unprecedented monsoon turbulence.

Unfortunately, the increasing unpredictability of monsoons has yet to spur serious scientific enquiry into the phenomenon. Bringing disaster management under the governance of the Ministry of Home Affairs will not, as is believed by the government, lead to monsoon preparedness and management.

In fact, experts argue that bringing disaster management within the purview of the Ministry of Home Affairs may obscure the understanding of the critical dimensions of crises that are interdisciplinary in nature.

For instance, what has unplanned urban growth at the rate of 5 per cent per annum, steady decline in forest cover to a mere 10 per cent, and land use changes on 20 per cent of country's land mass got to do with disaster management, in general, and disaster preparedness in particular? Similarly, the unprecedented high temperature of 54 degree Celsius in the small town of Talcher in Orissa may be as remotely related to disaster management. As the world debates the causes of global warming, there is a growing consensus that `abrupt climatic changes' are commonplace and that these must be interpreted as warnings to the impending disasters. That rapid urbanisation promotes such changes gains greater currency among environmental scientists.

As the G-8 Summit discussed global warming in the light of the unusual flood-drought conditions in many parts of the developed world, India can no longer take refuge in the fact that its high-profile ministry is at the forefront of disaster management. The fact that the current nature and magnitude of disasters is not only complicated but may well go beyond conventional disaster management practices are reason enough for a paradigm shift in disaster preparedness.

So far, Indian meteorologists have been slow in responding to dramatic changes that indicate environmental turbulence along restricted corridors.

That each town and/or village clusters presents a microcosm of impending environmental change has yet to catch the imagination of both scientists and government alike.

This explains why the recent floods in the Sutlej and the floods in Gujarat have escaped serious attention.

The country must enlarge its disaster protocol to include the Ministry of Science and Technology as well as the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

As natural disasters strike with increasing frequency and unpredictably at newer locations, conventional disaster management may well leave trails of death and destruction behind.

It is time disasters are viewed comprehensively and not myopically, as just doling out relief.

(The author, formerly with the World Bank, is a water expert and attached to the Delhi-based the Ecological Foundation. He can be reached at sudhirendar@vsnl.net.)

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