Frequent natural disasters including cyclones, sea storms, floods, coastal erosion and droughts are not alien to Odisha as the State is geographically situated in the eastern coast with three geomorphologic divisions. The State withstands at least one of the severe natural disasters every year. To count a few, in the recent years we have faced very severe cyclonic storm Phailin (damaging over five lakh hectares with an economic loss of USD 696 million) and the extremely severe cyclonic storm Fani, reminding us of the Super Cyclone of 1999 and making the capital city Bhubaneswar again dark for days after twenty long years. However, we have as a State withstood the vagaries of nature and have shown remarkable resistance to this ‘New Normal’. At the same time, we have developed a sound coping mechanism to adapt and, to some extent, mitigate the erratic climatic phenomena thanks to the developed weather forecasting, real time warning, advanced planning, evacuation process and restoration operations.
This adaptation has myriad linkages with socio-economic-political factors and governmental interventions. During Phailin, the State Government evacuated over a million people, the highest-ever evacuation in India in last three decades thereby minimising the casualties as compared to the heartbreaking scenes of mounds of dead bodies of the Super Cyclone of 1999. But how is this possible? How the Government is able to persuade the people to shift to safer places during the time of pre- and post-cyclonic phases? According to a paper by Saudamini Das of the Institute of Economic Growth, cyclone evacuation being a socio-cultural process, public response to risk communication is linked to perceived risk (understanding, belief, and personalisation), where perceived risk is defined to be a function of the features of warning information received (specificity, consistency, certainty, accuracy, clarity, channel, frequency, source) and personal characteristics of the warning recipient (demographics, knowledge, experience, resources, social network, cognition).
Empirical observations show that literacy levels, presence of children, disaster awareness and better economic conditions and female head of the family propel more compliance and acceptance in the evacuation process. It’s also seen that no mechanism for livestock in cyclone shelters, socioeconomic issues of theft and mass poverty and unemployment low capacity building programmes and maintenance of critical infrastructure affect proper evacuation and thus lower the community participation in disaster preparedness.
While adapting to this new normal, the major boosting factor has been the governmental interventions in all phases of adaptation and mitigation. For instance, formation of the Cyclone Shelter Management and Maintenance Committee (CSMMC) in each shelter village to manage the shelters and mobilise the community members for annual awareness-generating cyclone drills has been the guiding policy and innovative instrument for both administration and people at large. Other village-level groups like village taskforce, village volunteers and disaster management teams also help mobilise people.
Having said this, the State is yet to adapt the role of indigenous knowledge in disaster management. The indigenous knowledge about disaster management is all about how the natives perceive disasters and how their indigenous response and the first line of adaptations to face the natural hazards are. Multiple ethnographic and micro studies show that the orally-transmitted knowledge of local and indigenous people has prevented mass destruction of lives and properties. For instance, the Simeulueans living off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia and the Moken living in the Surin Islands off the coast of Thailand and Myanmar both used knowledge passed on orally from their ancestors to survive the devastating tsunami of 2004.
It is pertinent to note that many tribal and indigenous societies have better adapted to the local environmental set up based on the practice of their own knowledge, also known as ethno-science or ethno-semantics or people’s knowledge. What we need to emphasise in the present context is that this knowledge should be more systematically explored and documented by trained social and environmental scientists as incorporating this in the modern-day scientific parlance would go a long way in adapting and mitigating some of the deadly natural hazards. The Government should form an expert advisory group on indigenous knowledge consisting of anthropologists, ecologists, environmental experts, social activists and NGO representatives as members under the Ministry of Science and Technology. The successful models of local adaptation should be made more popular and can be transferred and implemented to similar environmental circumstances for disaster risk reductions. Moreover, the incorporation of indigenous models into the science-based models would encourage the community participation as the locals are well-acquainted with their own knowledge systems. Further, in the lines of CSMMC, village-level expert groups on local knowledge should be set up, which will be the first point of giving response to any disasters and they can better mobilise their people during pre- and post-disaster periods. Thus, there would be no forced evacuation and people would spontaneously organise themselves and it will be a demand-driven process of disaster management and mitigation. Lastly, formalising this knowledge in the school and college curricula is the most vital aspect of environmental education. This will let the children know that there exist immediate and better response systems of various disasters. Also, self-defence courses in schools and colleges against natural disasters and simulated drills would help materialise an enhanced understanding of disasters by students as they too can be helping hands during disasters.
(Jyotiranjan is an Additional Central Government Standing Counsel, Central Administrative Tribunal, Cuttack and a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law and Media Studies, School of Mass Communication, KIIT University. Prof Sahoo is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at FM Autonomous College, Balasore.)