Disaster management

A tropical country situated at the sub-Himalayan plains, Indian peninsula has a mix of all the three forms of climate viz. bitter cold, very hot and moderate. It is in the monsoon range, and thus gets heavy rains in many parts during the rainy season. All this put together makes our country prone to vagaries of nature, which more often than not, are disastrous causing loss of life and property. We may have heavy snowfall, avalanches and landslides during winter in the regions closer to the Himalayan ranges. We may have heavy rains during monsoon causing floods in rivers and streams and we may have cyclones causing immense damage to coastal areas. Three years ago we had the disastrous cloudburst in Leh. Recently earthquake in erstwhile Doda region and heavy rains and landslides in Uttrakhand are other instances of disaster that befell. More recently, the cyclone in the Bay of Bengal raged furiously on the coastal areas of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Earthquakes, floods, cyclones, storms, fires and the rest are natural calamities.  Human beings have not been bestowed with capacity to control these. But what we can do is firstly to prepare ourselves in anticipation of these happenings, and secondly to manage the post-disaster scenario by providing succour to the affected people. Keeping this in mind, the Central Government constituted the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) eight years ago and advised the States also to formulate Disaster Management agencies.
Addressing the 5th meeting of the NDMA, the Prime Minister has made some solid and important suggestions to strengthen the formidable task of disaster management in a realistic manner. The point is that streamlining the early warning system and taking preventive measures whatever possible costs much less than the loss suffered by the victims of disaster including their rehabilitation in post-disaster period. As such it becomes incumbent upon the administration to streamline in whatever ways possible the early warning and preventive action. The case in point is of Andhra and Odisha where, as a sequel to early warning nearly a million people were shifted from their homes that were threatened by the rising cyclone in the sea. Thus a big loss of life was prevented and life was restored to normalcy soon after the cyclone receded. The Prime Minister said that the possible casualties of human lives could be averted because all agencies involved in disaster prevention exercise were geared to the task and they worked in unison to meet the challenge. Over the years NDMA has gained good deal of experience of what is the consequence of the disaster and how prevention can be made or how pre-disaster planning should be formulated and warning system streamlined. This experience has to be communicated to the States with the advice that implementation of the schemes and preventive measure need to be upgraded.
Nearer home, our State is also exposed to natural calamities owing to the fact that it is a hilly and mostly snow bound region where snow storms, heavy rains, landslides and floods in rivers and nullahs have been happening every now and then. More recently we had the floods in some areas in Jammu region. Therefore for us having a well-equipped and well-managed disaster management system is of prime importance. We have a small unit of disaster management in the State and it is partially funded by the Union Planning Commission. But the funding is very small and inadequate to meet preliminary requirements. We had touched upon this issue in these columns at the time when recent floods threatened Pallanwalla and other sites in Jammu.
It is, therefore, important that the State disaster management agency is streamlined in terms of funding, technical and trained manpower and infrastructural facilities. Post-disaster management has to be given full attention and all exigencies have to be taken care of. We in the state don’t have very efficient and comprehensive disaster warning mechanism. First of all this has to be streamlined. Maintenance of the system is very essential which means that the entire system has to be in a state of readiness. Nobody knows when the disaster may strike.
Along with this, we would also suggest that various NGOs should coordinate their relief and rehabilitation activities with the disaster management agency in the state so that in times of need, all concerned work together to meet the challenge. Civil society has a role in prevention and management of disaster. Volunteers can do good job in bringing relief to the victims. Therefore coordination among all stakeholders is of primary importance and the Prime Minister has also touched on this point in his address.

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