Odisha has coastlines of near about 480 km with Baleswar on the north to Ganjam in south drained by six peninsular river systems like Subarnarekha, Budhabalang, Brahmani, Baitarani, Mahanadi, Rushikulya and their distributaries.
The area has been home to some of the largest urban pockets of the State, which forms part of India’s multi-hazard zones exposed to some of the worst forms of disasters ie cyclone, floods, earthquake and sea erosion, etc.
Various reports during the last decade explain the State has faced one or other forms of disasters like flood, cyclone, tornado or drought every year. According to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), from 1,891 to 2,000, 98 cyclones of various sizes had crossed the Odisha coast.
This is more than that of the coast of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat and Kerala. However, irrespective of all odds, the coastal Odisha continues to absorb more urban population from rural pockets since 1999 Super Cyclone, which came either in search of job or for a better living.
Very little was done so far to accommodate the bubbling urbanised population into planned and safer concrete jungles not because the State does not have the will but it has obstacles to meet the desired expenditure. As a result, it continued over the years in building more temporary evacuation centres in forms of schools, colleges and cyclone shelters, etc.
The question that comes to mind after over a decade is whether our towns showed their effective disaster management system or they are still buildingIJ Perhaps, the answer seems our towns are still learning as is understood from recent Phailin.
The lesson that every town needs to accept is that community reflected a greater degree of resilience by bouncing back in less than 24 hours or in some cases 72 hours but they didn’t receive expected support from the systems of governance. In some cases, towns are still far from power distribution, water supply, garbage lifting etc over a week now and many may wait for another week.
In this phase, perhaps the only groups of community that received main attention are those few lives under the
banner of poverty. The authorities claim that since the poor are more vulnerable to calamities, they need more attention than others.
Why such a mindset developed over the years when many cities of the world accepted zero discrimination in disaster response system, particularly when it affects urban areas and wonder why disasters have not yet become part of the image and psyche of our society when we face disaster so frequently at a time when the State is in transition towards peaking urbanisation.
Perhaps, Phailin is a
wake-up call for a State like Odisha, which received recently applaud from the World Bank and United Nations for successfully evacuating India’s largest ever human beings into temporary evacuation centers. It certainly deserves
an appreciation.
But at the same time, every town missed to achieve many of the indicators that should have been in place. It was observed many leaders kept themselves out of their own town or remained busy in providing relief materials amongst the poor without understanding whether it was a necessity or not but to ensure that poor recognised their presence, which later can be converted into votes.
In some cases, the matter went so serious that even relief materials were distributed based on political party lines and in some cases the relief vanished before reaching even the poor.
Some may argue why our towns are at risk when they should have been model for villages due to its planned development but sadly our towns reflected, over the years, negligence to urban management or towns remained within a shadow zone of disaster management that focused much around
villages. The result is every other day we keep on reading news reports about towns struck by natural or technological disasters.
Perhaps, this is likely to continue, and become worse unless we change our policies and actions towards disaster resilience investments.
Unfortunately areas vulnerable to hazards are the first which get populated no matter whether in developed or developing world due to various reasons. However, a resilient town can address these issues with proper plan of action to protect its people from disasters.
As towns continued to grow exponentially over the years, marginal land around flood plains, river beds or industrial factories etc, are often used by the urban poor or middle income for building houses which make them vulnerable to disasters.
Conventional solutions do exist for urban disaster mitigation in developed countries but are not easily applicable to the urban poor.
Consequently, these measures have had little impact in reducing vulnerability of the urban poor or town at large. More importantly, building codes, zoning measures and urban planning techniques, for example, are difficult to enforce when people occupy land illegally or do construction by flouting rules.
The damage done by Phailin is over; it is now time to rebuild. Therefore, instead of a rigid land use plan, every town should focus on having a people centric land use that is understandable to both rich and poor community along with incentives by focusing on early recovery in restoring ecosystems and habitats with the active engagement of affected people, experts, volunteers, and the private sector.
At the same time, the Government machinery must commit itself to protect their communities from future disasters. It is also time for the State to think of its reconstruction phase so that its focus gradually shifts towards reducing economic and infrastructure loss in future disasters.
(Dr Piyush Ranjan Rout is cofounder, local Governance Network, and an advocate of ‘Making Cities Resilient Campaign’, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction)