Coping with Natural Calamities

– Dr Arvind Kumar, President, India Water Foundation, New Delhi.

The recent havoc wrought by torrential rains, flash floods and landslides in various parts of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and other parts of the country in terms of massive loss of human lives and damage caused to property call for urgent disaster management measures. The tragedy that visited Leh area of Ladakh in J&K in early August this year had also claimed heavy toll in terms of loss of human life and destruction of property. The flash floods due to sudden cloudburst had proved instrumental in flooding Leh town and the surrounding villages, the main population centres of this thinly peopled district and also the focus of much of its economic activity. It is going to be a gigantic task for the local administration, state governments as well as the Centre to restore normalcy in these affected areas of India.

These natural calamities have necassitated the urgency of installing early disaster warning system in states having hilly areas, including other disaster-prone areas. Thus far, the early warning system has been installed in coasatl areas to warn about cyclones and earthquakes. After the tsunami tragedy of December 2004, the UN launched in January 2005 comprehensive plans for a global early warning system to reduce the deadly toll of natural hazards, combining speedy transmission of data with training of populations at risk in a strategy that can save loss of human lives and property.

In India, the Disaster Management Act, which has been in force since 2005, has established National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). The law also provides for “an enabling environment for institutional mechanisms at the State and district levels.” Provisions of the Disaster Management Act should be used to install early warning systems in the mountainous regions and the trans-Himalayan territory. At a time when there is no dearth of money and material, the advance warning systems can be installed with ease to save the people from falling prey to natural disastes.

Apart from installing Early Warning System in disaster-prone areas, there is also need for rpoviding storage facilities for emergency relief measures like medicine, packed food, etc. This also calls for better convergence between the local administration, state government and Armed Forces stationed in the border areas so that affected population is salvaged from the calamity. Apart from activating the National Disaster Management Authority which is still in evolving stage; priority should be accorded to establish State Disaster Management Authority in the affected states to start with. Emphasis needs to be stressed on facilitating inter-Sectoral convergence between various ministries of the Centre as well as between the Centre and tragedy-prone states. The time is ripe for generating awareness among the people about such calamities with the help of civil societies, and concurrently efforts should be made to make the native people aware about maintaining ecological equilibrium.