Responding to floods is not new for
India. Responding effectively is work in progress. With the Rs1,000
crore relief for Bihar announced by the Prime Minister this week the
need for responding effectively becomes even more important.
During the past decade, since the 1998 Kandla cyclone, India has tried
to be more effective. After the 1999 Orissa cyclone, a high-powered
committee was set up; after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, an all-party
committee was floated; after the 2004 tsunami, a National Disaster
Management Authority (NDMA) was set up. After the 2007 floods in Bihar
and Assam, establishment of a national flood commission was discussed.
However, India is far from its potential and even further from what is
needed on the ground, especially in the case of flood response. Victims
repeatedly remain without flood relief or protection. The 2005 floods
in Mumbai, the 2006 floods in Surat and Rajasthan, and the 2007 floods
in Bihar and Assam demonstrated the need for improved action,
accountability to victims and joint performance rating.
The great need to put flood-affected people’s priorities at the heart
of flood response was most recently recommended by the people’s
commission on the floods in Surat.
Humanitarian agencies — private and public — time and again get into
crisis situations in large numbers and often leave the communities they
aim to assist undermined. There is tremendous need to do better by
actually supporting and facilitating flood-affected communities’ own
relief and recovery efforts and working alongside government
counterparts.
The necessity for the Union government, with state and civil society
organization support, to invest much more in risk reduction and
preparedness between two floods is suggested in the Disaster Management
Act of 2005 but NDMA has not yet found ways to fund state initiatives.
Like other states, Bihar has received national guidelines for flood
response but not the matching funds to apply those guidelines. The
National Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction at its 3-4 November
convention demanded immediate action in favour of states and added that
local communities are the first to assist in saving lives. With this in
mind the humanitarian community ought to provide ongoing countervailing
balance to national and local preparedness measures in India. The Hyogo
Framework for Action of the UN’s international strategy for disaster
reduction provides a blueprint for such effectiveness.
Perhaps the time has come to consider establishing a voluntary or more
formal certification and accreditation system for humanitarian aid
actors. Sphere India, a leading Delhi-based network of humanitarian
agencies, has done the basic groundwork in this respect. There are also
those who believe that it’s time to set up an effective inter-agency
oversight mechanism that has the authority to provide performance
feedback and measure improvements. These arguments need to be teased
out and developed into a formal citizens’ audit of flood response. The
tsunami experience, especially that of tsunami evaluation coalition and
the UN’s work in south India, has put these arguments firmly on the
agenda.
It’s important to translate lessons learnt after each flood into doable
action. Humanitarian agencies have individual and collective
responsibility to take forward the lessons. The first national congress
for disaster risk reduction, organized by the National Institute of
Disaster Management on 29-30 November 2006, underlined this knowledge
gap.
India has faced floods for the past 60 years. That must make the 2008
response more effective.
Mihir R. Bhatt is director, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute,
Ahmedabad. Comment at otherviews@livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/2008/09/03001955/Lessons-from-the-Bihar-flood.html
Copyright © 2007 HT Media All
Rights Reserved
