India's disaster management is itself a disaster

THROUGHOUT history, India's disaster management has never been stellar. In recent years, it has become worse.

Take flood-related disasters. The September floods in the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) ran up losses of one trillion rupees (S$21.3 billion), said chief secretary Mohammad Iqbal Khandey; of the sum, losses in the housing sector accounted for 300 billion rupees and losses from businesses, a further 700 billion rupees.

He said, as is often normally said after Indian disasters, that the main reason for the heavy damage was that such a flood had not occurred before; the reason the people suffered so much was that "this was no ordinary event." Given this, how could the bureaucracy anticipate such a calamity - let alone plan for it?