Some lessons from Orissa

With support from the United Nations, Orissa makes a beginning in putting together a plan for disaster management and preparedness, involving the people in a big way.

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI in Bhubaneswar and Astarang

IN the wake of the Gujarat earthquake, another disaster, which occurred in Orissa not far back in time, offers several lessons in disaster management. A Community Contingency Plan which seeks to involve the community in the management of floods and cyclo nes has been prepared jointly by the United Nations and the Orissa State Disaster Mitigation Authority (OSDMA). The State, which has not yet recovered from the impact of the "super cyclone" that devastated its coastal districts and interior areas in Octo ber 1999, has a long way to go in being prepared to meet such disasters; but it has made a beginning in that direction.

When the cyclone struck, western Orissa was already in the grip of a drought. It hit the landfall point near Paradip coast on October 29 with a wind velocity of 270 to 300 km an hour. That cyclone and the one that preceded it on October 17-18 together up rooted over 19 million people, including 3.5 million children. They affected some 128 blocks and 46 civic bodies in 14 districts. The worst-hit districts were Jagatsinghpur (see separate story), Khurda, Cuttack, Puri and Kendrapara.

Torrential rain that accompanied the cyclone caused floods in the basins of the Baitarni, Budhabalanga and Salandi rivers, affecting vast areas of Jajpur, Bhadrak, Keonjhar, Balasore and Mayurbhanj districts. Tidal waves five to seven metres high swept t hrough Jagatsinghpur, Puri, Kendrapara, Khurda and Cuttack districts; they affected Dhenkanal, Keonjhar and Nayagarh districts too. Bhubaneswar, the capital, and the commercial centre of Cuttack were hit. The ingress of seawater ruined agricultural land.

An estimated 10,092 people died and more than 300,000 head of cattle perished. Crops on 21 lakh hectares were damaged and the monetary loss, according to a study sponsored by the OSDMA and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and conducted by the Centre for Disaster Management in the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA), was Rs.1,800 crores. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the two cyclones destroyed 1.6 million homes.

Soon after the cyclone, the UNDP engaged the Centre for Disaster Management to prepare a comprehensive plan concentrating on six areas of disaster management: preparation of response plans for all the 30 districts of Orissa, covering all hazards, includi ng earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, cyclones, heat waves and epidemics; preparation of a geographic information system with spatial and non-spatial thematic overlays, with specific reference to disaster management and development planning; designing and i mplementing training programmes for and training modules on disaster management for senior administrators, elected representatives, community-based organisations and so on; assessment of early warning systems; strengthening of the disaster management uni t of the OSDMA; and setting up of a satellite-based control room network with satellite-based hotlines, e-mail links and so on.

The UNDP, as the convener of the United Nations Disaster Management Team, has been coordinating the activities of various U.N. agencies in the State. Maharashtra is the only State that has prepared a multi-hazard disaster management plan for all district s.

From rehabilitation and relief, the focus shifted to preparedness as the people as well as policy-makers realised that this was the only way to check loss of life and property during disasters. While preventive operations have not been undertaken on the required scale, some initiatives on the lines of a community contingency plan have been. It is now recognised that development work that has been taken up as part of relief efforts only aims to restore normalcy; it does not have any long-term perspective of the problem and is hardly sustainable in an area prone to droughts, floods and cyclones.

In the first phase of the OSDMA-UNDP initiative of preparing a Community Contingency Plan, a common model for community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP) to cope with disasters, was translated into Oriya from English. About 1,000 of the most vulnerable villages along the coast will now be identified for the CBDP and non-governmental organisations will be entrusted with the responsibility of implementing the plan. U.N. volunteers will train people in these villages.

Sundar Khatiari in Astarang block of Puri district is one of the villages identified for CBDP. Here, a shelter project is under way. It envisages the construction of 40 low-cost demonstration houses and the training of 600 engineers and masons.

In Khatiari, the UNDP has set up a summer-cum-monsoon shelter. A total of 500 shelters are planned, with support from UNICEF as well. Another project, at Sundar village in Astarang block, envisages supporting 250 self-help groups of women. A grant-in-aid of Rs.35,000 is given to these groups to restore agriculture and allied activities.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) helped the State government set up a disease surveillance system, which will give early warning in case of an outbreak of diseases following a cyclone. In the worst-hit areas, several U.N. volunteer-doctors are involved in training field staff and improving the quality of disease surveillance.

However, according to Dashrath Pradhan of Patala village in Astarang block, drought still remains one of the prime concerns of the people. Patala, which normally produced two crops a year, had to make do with only one crop in the past two years following drought. He said there was no development work linked to drought relief in his village. People in the village ate only twice a day. The village had a multi-purpose building that served as a cyclone shelter as well, he said.

At the U.N. House in Bhubaneswar, Saroj Kumar Jha, Team Leader of the U.N. Inter-Sectoral Team, explained the role of the community in disaster management and preparedness. The first task, he said, was to rehabilitate the widowed and the orphaned. He sai d that the novel experiment of roping in civil society groups for disaster management had been tried out. Apparently, after the initial concern over the cyclone waned, it was left to these groups to carry forward a community contingency plan to deal with natural disasters. During the monsoon, when cyclones usually strike, these groups would meet and if there was a likelihood of a cyclone, the message would be passed on. Jha, who worked extensively in Ersama as Additional Relief Commissioner for Jagatsin ghpur district in the aftermath of the cyclone, feels that the large number of civil defence National Cadet Corps and Junior Red Cross volunteers could be effectively relied upon for disaster management. "We roped in some 150 civil defence volunteers to burn carcasses," he said. (Ersama is one of the worst-hit blocks in Jagatsinghpur district.)

Speaking generally on disaster mitigation and preparedness, Jha said that taking recourse to a calamity relief fund has its limitations as most of it went into wage employment. He felt the need to draw up long-term plans for watershed development, water harvesting and rejuvenating water bodies, which will mitigate the effects of calamities like drought to a considerable extent. He said that big farmers in the lower reaches of the watershed were seldom affected by drought. Water was always stored in the middle and lower reaches, areas which were never in the control of the small and middle class farmers. Droughts would continue to occur as long as there was no long-term perspective of watershed development and planning. Every village ought to have its o wn water harvesting plan, he said.

Describing Orissa as a microcosm of global development, UNDP Director Mark Malloch Brown, who visited some of the U.N. project areas in Astarang block, said vulnerability got multiplied by problems like poor quality of health, lack of housing and so on. The UNDP has launched a United Nations Information Technology Service project in at least five blocks: Ersama and Balikuda in Jagatsinghpur district, Astarang and Kakatpur in Puri district and Mahakalpada in Kendrapara district. A computer with a printer and a modem is provided to each block, and U.N. facilitators organise the training of community members, including gram panchayat members, in creating an information base for improved coordination in developmental activities.

The prime need was to have community shelters that could withstand cyclones and floods. Jha said that people had never felt the need for such features in their individual homes. In an environment of agro-based economy, he said, concrete structures such a s those found in urban areas never worked. In this situation, traditional homes with some improvements in the foundation and elevation and with details such as cross bracings on the side walls that saved on bamboo, wall corners strengthened with "knee b racing" and "plain bracing" and triangular trusses used to prevent the verandah roof from being blown away had been experimented with successfully. This has been recommended for replication. Such homes could withstand cyclones with a speed of up to 180 k m an hour, Jha said.

He said that a real assessment of their needs would reveal that people preferred community shelters and normal housing with the kind of special features that had been tried out in other coastal areas. Unfortunately, he said, the government did not have m uch faith in using low-cost technology in traditional housing. The idea of building too many concrete houses may lead to other attendant complications; for instance, in their desire to save cost, contractors may not follow the norms of construction, Jha said.

On the lines of a manual brought out by the State Engineering Resource Centre (SERC) in Chennai seven years ago for the entire coastal area, 500 structures using traditional building technology and incorporating some cyclone and flood-resistant features had been built, Jha said.

He said that unlike an earthquake, a cyclone threatened food security. With cultivable agricultural land going under water, farmers, especially small farmers, are the most affected. Communication is one of the more important elements in the entire exerci se of preparedness, and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) was wanting in this aspect. Of the 31 early warning dissemination centres along the coastline, 25 were not working, said Jha. Orissa's low level of infrastructure development added to the problems. In Balikuda and Ersama blocks there were areas that were still inaccessible. At least 512 cyclone shelters were needed for people living 10 km from the coastline, but there were only 23 now, which meant that no new shelters were built after the cyclone. Work on 489 shelters was yet to begin, though funds for 240 had been allocated, he said.

In Orissa, 60 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and 53 per cent is malnourished. The female literacy rate is 35 per cent and school dropout rate for girls is high. Only 49 per cent of the population has access to safe drinking water . These figures make it clear that in the eventuality of a disaster, the poor are hit the most. Among the reasons for the U.N. presence in the State are its poor public infrastructure, poor sanitation coverage, low per capita income and proneness to disa sters. In a State where resource inequities are glaring and land reforms non-existent, disaster mitigation and preparedness can only be temporary solutions for long-term questions of livelihood.