3rd Anniversary of the Uttarakhand floods

17 June marked the third anniversary of the Uttarakhand floods that killed more than 5000 people and left the infrastructure of the state in shambles. The intensity of the floods was such that the state government has not been able to arrive at a number of ‘official’ deaths in the disaster, with many families of the deceased yet to receive a death certificate.

In the aftermath of the disaster, a report by the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) has indicated that unregulated construction of dams in the Alaknanda and Mandakini basins, along with adverse weather conditions, could have led to the flooding.  Human intervention is increasingly seen to be the cause of disasters in the Uttarakahand, with recent reports that the fire in April 2016 leading to a large-scale destruction of trees and forest cover could have been man made.

Despite the widespread destruction of infrastructure and huge toll of the floods in the state, there are signs of recovery: people are making their way back to the pilgrimage site of Kedarnath, and the ‘Valley of flowers’, a popular tourist destination, opened to the public for the first time in 3 years. There are untold stories of the strength and resilience of survivors in the face of calamity, everyday individuals building their lives from scratch, after they saw it washed away three years ago.

Pragya has been working to rehabilitate the livelihoods of the people in the areas that are worst affected by the floods, by providing the people with alternate sources of income, in a state whose economy is geared toward revenue from tourism. We are also piloting a grassroots, citizen - led early warning system to be implemented in the districts of the Uttarakhand in the coming year. 3 years on, we remember all the people who lost their lives in this tragedy, and the lessons remain clear: concerted conservation efforts and minimizing human intervention in the environment are a necessity if we are to avoid tragedy on such a scale in the near future.

A brief overview of the Disaster Management System in India

India is a disaster-prone country, unique in its disposition towards the elements: a prolonged drought and heat waves of record-breaking temperatures are followed, or even co-exist with floods due to heavy rainfall in parts of the country. The focus in India has been of relief and rescue after the fact of disaster; the legislation establishing government agencies were enacted after the occurrence of a major natural disaster.

A case in point: the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority (GSDMA) came into existence after the Earthquake of 2001, and it was only after the 2004 Tsunami that the DM Act of 2005 was passed, which paved the way for establishing the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Disaster Management Authorities at the national, state and district levels.

The UN Climate Change conference in Paris, France and the third world conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) held in Sendai, Japan in 2015 addressed the threat posed by climate-change and natural-disasters. The National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP) released by the Prime Minister on 1 June 2016, which focuses on all the phases of disaster management - prevention, mitigation, response and recovery - is a step in a new direction.

The framework of the DM Plan of 2005 established a response-centric, bureaucratic system that relied heavily on national level response, with the local institutions inadequately prepared to immediately respond to the challenges of natural disasters. This was evident in the floods in Uttarakhand in 2013 and the Chennai floods of 2015, where the effects of the disaster was heightened by reckless development, lack of early-warning systems or risk mapping.

The NDMP, with its emphasis on reducing risk and mitigating disaster, means that India has voluntarily put the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction into action. Another key aspect of the NDMP is the integration of risk reduction at all levels of the government, and more importantly, an increased engagement with civil society and grassroots organizations working in the field of Disaster Management.

Pragya recently participated in a dialogue organized by the NDMA with members of civil society and other government organizations, where we presented the DMS-Himalaya, a disaster management manual based our experience in responding to floods in Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir in 2013 and 2014 respectively. The recommendations made in the manual, including a grassroots, citizen-based early warning systems are to be piloted in the districts of Uttarakhand in the coming year.