India's disaster management is itself a disaster
New Delhi's main approach to disaster management continues to be rooted in crisis management only after the crises have occurred
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?
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