How India’s experience in managing disasters can inform our COVID-19 response

The state’s handling of the current crisis betrays a tendency to reduce risks faced by people to the hazard event alone, overlooking livelihood challenges and resource poverty

A week after cyclone Fani wreaked havoc in Odisha in June 2019, survivors, particularly the poor living in Bhubaneshwar and Puri’s slums, reeled under severe food and water shortage as homes and livelihoods were lost, and relief announced by the state failed to reach them. Their stories are comparable to the plight of migrant and informal workers across the country ever since a lockdown was imposed, over a month ago, to contain COVID-19.

While the impact of this pandemic is unprecedented and unlike any disaster we have encountered before, the response to it is familiar. It appears to stem from the widespread belief that the sole culprit of this crisis is the disease itself and not the precarious socio-economic conditions that a majority live under. The state’s handling of the current crisis betrays a tendency to reduce risks faced by people to the hazard event alone, overlooking ‘big-picture’ factors such as challenging livelihoods and resource poverty that determines their overall well-being and ability to recover.

While measures such as this lockdown and physical distancing have proved to slow down transmission, these measures have vastly different impacts on different social groups. For informal workers and poor families, the onslaught of the virus worsens existing vulnerabilities and creates new ones that could have severe and irreparable impacts on their well-being. Much like disasters such as cyclones and floods, these are not just one-off events in people’s lives. Their impacts run deeper.

Given this, it is useful to consider India’s handling of hydrometeorological hazards such as cyclones to draw lessons on how to or how not to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.

How India deals with disasters

On March 24, the government invoked the Disaster Management Act of 2005 (DM Act), the core institutional framework that guides disaster management in India, in an effort to battle the virus. The Act rightly emphasises the need to move from merely responding to disasters to effectively preparing for them. In terms of extreme weather events, the stress on preparedness has translated into early warning systems, relief shelters and massive evacuation exercises that have contributed significantly in reducing casualties. However, it has done very little in reducing entrenched vulnerabilities of affected areas and communities.

This arises from the patchy understanding of what constitutes vulnerability and risk, which are shaped by aspects of existing socio-economic structures such as caste, occupation and gender, policy interventions, individual capacity and access to resources. Vulnerability encompasses not only the likelihood of physical exposure to a hazard but also people’s susceptibility to its effects and their ability to cope and respond. Thus, for the poor, and marginalised, especially those that live in the cracks that run between welfare schemes, vulnerability is a continuous aspect of life punctuated by hazards.

However, the state often fails to treat disasters as processes with long-term antecedents and potentially long-term consequences. Instead, they are treated as temporary or one-off events, and recovery from them is limited to rebuilding what has been destroyed.

Way forward to recovery

How then do we respond to extreme events – whether hydrometeorological or public health hazards – in ways that limit their impacts and does not further marginalise or harm already vulnerable people?

The first step is to move beyond the idea that immediate response and post-disaster relief measures are sufficient to ensure that affected people and communities can recover. For disaster-affected people, in order to have ‘recovered’, not only should livelihoods and physical assets be re-established, but they should also be able to withstand the next extreme event.

In order to build greater resilience, it is crucial that fundamental developmental challenges faced by people are foregrounded. Post-disaster recovery measures should address inherent vulnerabilities pertaining to livelihoods, education, water, sanitation and health of the affected areas and communities. Similarly, while the possible discovery of a vaccine coupled with large-scale vaccination programmes can help fend off the threat of the virus itself, those impacted also need to recover from the social and economic losses as a result of the measures taken to address the spreading of the virus. Steps must be taken to improve our public health infrastructure and strengthen social security measures so that people and systems are more resilient in future, instead of being solely dependent on relief.

The current crisis has amply demonstrated the crucial role played by civil society organisations in providing relief and recovery, especially to the vast majority of domestic workers and several others in the informal sector. Events in the past like the Bhuj earthquake, Indian Ocean tsunami and the floods in Chennai and Kerala have shown the indispensable role played by civil society organisations in assessing the needs of a community and ensuring accurate ground surveys to inform state support. Their sustained involvement leads to long term recovery of the region and communities they work with.

The DM Act has been criticised for excluding the participation of civil society in its prescribed disaster management activities. Given the limited reach of the state, not only is there a need to consider amending this Act, but any legislations or plans drawn up to deal with public health hazards must also facilitate civil society participation to enable better recovery outcomes.

(Nihal Ranjit and Vineetha Nalla are researchers working on Urban Risk and Resilience at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements)

The views expressed above are the authors' own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.