Each State Needs A Well-Informed Action Plan For Disaster Readiness

Context: Administrations must invest in resilience against increasingly frequent health and climate crises rather than react afterwards.

Successful disaster resilience policy models around the world

• Singapore model: Bloomberg ranks Singapore highest in covid resilience, based on fatality rates, test rates and vaccination rates. Strategies adopted:
  • Prioritised disaster preparedness in its investments, seen in the building of digital infrastructure and engineering capabilities that can be deployed during and after the calamities strike.
  • E.g. Tools for contact tracing, like SafeEntry and TraceTogether, enabled swift response during Covid.
• New Zealand model: Ranked second by Bloomberg index in covid resilience.
  • Makes intense use of scientific expertise: Spanning public health, infectious diseases, genomics, modelling and immunology.
  • Ensured access to safe and effective vaccines: Through the help of a vaccine task force.
  • Proactiveness: Cancelled all international flights while rigorously adhering to public health guidance even when its cases were only a few.
• Australia: Post deadly bushfires of 2018 and 2019, the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index now assesses the risk profiles and resilience of communities faced with bushfires.
• Japan: Post Great East Japan Earthquake and 2011 tsunami, invested in the improvement of the relationship between a national government that oversees policy and local governments in charge of implementation.
• Kerala model: Despite high levels of recorded infection rates, Kerala has a 0.3% death rate from covid, same as Singapore’s, which has the world’s lowest death rate.
  • Early detection, swift isolation and speedy contact-tracing.
  • Use of frugal innovative methods as platforms for decision-making.
  • Oxygen management policy, direct procurement of vaccines, policy of zero vaccine wastage.
  • Prioritising needs of frontline workers, elderly living alone and of migrant labourers.
  • Effectively used the E-Sanjeevani telemedicine portal, offering psycho-social support for the sick.
• Odisha cyclone management system:
  • Invested in early warning systems and timely evacuation, which resulted in dramatic fall in fatality (10,000 during 1999 super cyclone) to 44 and 89 during Cyclone Phailin in 2013 and Cyclone Fani in 2019.
• Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group: Came up with climate-resilient methods for vulnerable communities, where local communities use nature-based solutions to boost resilience against floods.
  • Switched from mono-cropping to rotating multiple crops to improve soil health and drainage.
  • Adoption of organic practices which reduce harmful run-off in nearby rivers.
  • A weather advisory group helps farmers use a text message-based early warning system to schedule irrigation and harvesting.

Disaster resilience policy initiatives by India

• Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure: Announced by the Prime Minister at United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019.

Policy gaps in Disaster Management

• Implementing vital investments: In infrastructure, education and health needed for disaster mitigation. Covid has exposed glaring gaps in health systems, poor governance and lack of trust in governments.
• Inter-state variations: E.g. Kerala’s per capita public health expenditure is twice that of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Way forward

• Audit covid crisis: To offer valuable lessons to guide State/Central governments to upgrade hospitals, increase medical inventories and create/update crisis response plans.
  • Conduct ‘stress test’: On how well State/Central government can cope in the event of even more frequent and intense calamities.
• Improving coordination capacity: Inter-state pooling of technical capabilities, supplies and staff power to manage deficits and gaps.
• Make more and better investments in health, education and social safety nets.
• Proactive measures: Local initiatives will continue to aid disaster preparedness, but governments must act in anticipation of emerging calamities rather than scramble to respond after they strike.