Badly prepared
The recent tsunami has again shown that India lacks an effective disaster management system. Debates over how best to create such a system have again heated up in the aftermath of the tragedy. Technological solutions to forewarn disasters as well as to reduce reaction time have also been mooted. But the debate is unlike to bear much fruit till we make two fundamental shifts. Firstly, the focus has to shift from relief to community preparedness that addresses long-term recovery. Secondly, affected communities have to be given a central role in this process.
Large disaster preparedness programmes are in place in India as well as in other developing countries for quite some time now. However, these programmes have had very limited success. This author had undertaken a survey of three states
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