For a shift in gear

For a shift in gear

News:

1. Feroze Varun Gandhi, an MP has talked about the challenges associated with management of Natural Disaster in India.

Important Analysis:

2. Coastal plain of Kerala between Western Ghats and Arabian Sea is vulnerable to several natural hazard.

3. Landslide, Flooding, Coastal Erosion being the most common incidents.

4. Author has presented detailed analysis on Factors, Challenges and Measures India need to adopt to deal with Natural Disaster.

5. Factors leading to vulnerability of India:

• 70 % of area is prone to Tsunami and cyclones and 12 % prone to flood.
• 60 % of its area are prone to earthquake.
• Multi story buildings in the urban India is more prone to risk.
• Instead of reinforced cement and concrete houses are made up of burnt/un-burnt bricks.
• Lack of Civil Engineers who are specialized in Earthquake Engineering.

6. Challenges leading to collapse of Disaster management in India:

• No specialized team to deal with Disaster though it was proposed in 2003 for Kerala.
• Team had personal from Industrial Security Forces and Indo-Tibetan Border Police.
• Lack of Doppler Radars which are required for early alerts of cloudburst and heavy rain.
• Fail to comply with guidelines on construction in flood prone regions.
• Only few states have plan for large dams in India.
• Inflow forecast covers only 30 reservoirs and barrages out of 4,800.
• No upgradation in Observatory network.
• Shortage of trained manpower, training, infrastructure and equipment with national Disaster Response Force.
• Disaster plan is more focused to urban areas than rural.
• Exclusion of people living in unauthorized area (agricultural labors are also included)
• They are more prone to disaster as they are excluded from rural credit market.
• Prevalent corruption in the revenue officials department.
• Finally only 10 % of fund under Calamity Relief Fund can be allocated to unlisted disaster.

7. What India Need to do:

• Constitute specialized agency to deal with disaster.
• Revise the norms for disaster relief. (E.g. compensation amount paid to build an infrastructure is not uniform and it varies from state to state.)
• If amount paid is not adequate it may lead to incomplete recovery.
• Need of Planned urbanization like Japan.
• To have a strong disaster management plan which can focus on immediate contingency.
• To bring long-term rehabilitation strategy.
• NDRF must fill vacancy.

8. Finally, focus need to be re-orient from managing disaster to improving resilience.