'Migration a symptom of distress'

Author of Oxford University Press publication, The Natural Disaster & Indian History, Tirthankar Roy was in Mumbai for his book launch.

Yogesh Pawar caught up with this Professor of Economic History and Political Science at the London School of Economics to find out what he feels about disaster management in India for an interview. Excerpts

How did you think of linking natural disasters with history through your book?

Well you see, disasters keep happening from time to time. They are not only frequent but also leave a lot of impact. I wanted to look at the macro picture and understand what we can learn from past events so that it can equip us better for the times to come. So the lessons we learn from each episode becomes critical to how we will cope with the next one. Indians have lived with a high risk of suffering famines, floods, and earthquakes.

How have they gone about rebuilding lives? Have responses changed over time?

As I analysed some of the greatest natural disasters from 1770 to 1935, these were some of the questions I sought an answer to.

I see the point you are making but natural disasters are very different from man-made ones where a disaster is deliberately unleashed by a powerful group or individual. In natural disasters, we can't clearly demarcate victims and perpetrators. In fact most natural disasters are described as great levellers since they affect both poor and rich alike. If you are at the wrong place at the wrong time, irrespective of your circumstance you will be hit. In fact finding themselves in the midst of a disaster often ends up creating a bond between sufferers. Post-disaster of course, class comes into play again and different people and their capacity to rebuild will be different depending on their access to money and resources.

Since most natural disasters cannot be prevented, what social/economic preferences can India adopt to lessen the impact?

While it would be great to be able to, one just can't wish away or prevent natural disasters. What can be done however is create large scale collective insurance which affords at least basic minimum cover for losses people might or will suffer. The problem with that kind of insurance is that there aren't too many players in the insurance business who will be willing to sell it. The government should explore ways of doing this in league with state players at least. But you see insurance will come into play only after disaster strikes. Even basics like strict implementation of building construction codes itself could work in big way to prevent compounding disasters like earthquakes.

Would you agree that replication, turf fights and poor coordination have been the hall marks of disaster management in India?

Yes this is a huge problem. After every single disaster there is complete lack of coordination between the various relief agencies. The thronging of several international NGOs - each working independently-also leads to lots of wastage of time, money and effort. This could be more judiciously managed. Creating a plan of action which will kick in every time a disaster strikes would help. It of course may need some minor tweaking to take care of individual incidents.

In the book you also talk of other lessons...

That's right. Trying to understand why a disaster happened and creating a knowledge base for the times to come. This works very quietly, but very effectively in helping minimise the effects of the next similar disaster in the long term. For example look a the 19th century famine in India. Though I know there will always be complaints that there is more scope for improvement some of the lessons learnt then have stood us in good stead down the years in looking at agricultural policy.

Like the world over, altered demographics caused mainly by migration due to a disaster is seen India too. Would you agree that this compounds the narrative of the disaster for a long time to come?

You are right. As disasters go crop failures lead to more migration than other natural disasters. In fact it is one of the biggest contributors to migration in the Tropics. Look at how farmers from Bihar ended up as indentured labour in sugar cane plantations as far as Mauritius or the Reunion Islands. It is difficult to suggest policy intervention in this situation. Migration post-disaster is actually only a symptom of long-standing distress. Unless those factors are individually addressed it is impossible to stop migration or reverse it. Most people who leave have very little or nothing to come back to.

I ask this since migration is increasingly being frowned upon by regional political players, like we see in Mumbai. What do you make of this dynamic?

People who oppose such migration need to look at the complexities involved. Much of this migration is involuntary. These are people who harbour an antipathy towards the government for looking the other way during their misery and not creating any kind of insurance which would have stopped their displacement. Then to come here and find themselves at the receiving end of “anti-outsider” tirades must come across as grossly unfair and unjust, adding insult to injury.

As the powers that decide, think of big dams, mines and massive destruction of forests as the way to becoming a super-power, are we planting the seeds for future disasters? What are the lessons for India from others’ development narratives?

Absolutely. There is lot to learn from others' mistakes and experiences, particularly tropical countries with similar geography and climatic conditions. After all the fickle monsoon and fragile eco-systems are common to the entire region. China and Russia have both diverted entire rivers and built massive dams to bring irrigation to their fields, but the difference between them and us is that most of the catchment areas are arid zones and not dense forests. But you see this has to do with policy on water. Doing anything with water is a massively risky game particularly given the scarcity. Yet one sees this game being played over and over again. Look at the over-exploitation of ground water in the east of India for example. People are going on digging deeper and deeper to get to the water, but once it is exhausted, this will unleash a really terrible crisis.

What is your take on India’s current disaster management?

Overall when one compares the past with the more recent interventions, one feels there has been a remarkable increase in relief points given the amount of money available and the sheer number of agencies involved. True there is the National Disaster Management Authority but we still have long way to go. Today, we have a far more denser population at stake in most areas and the sooner we get our act together the better it will be.

Most intervention in India is post disaster and only curative? Do you feel we simply miss out on the preventive and promotive aspects of disaster management?

Working on nature to an extent when you want to alter it, can only be counter-productive, so prevention has its limitations. But yet you are right. For example one often gets the feeling that water diversion through big ticket projects like in Thane from where water is being brought to Mumbai is wreaking havoc and creating potential for huge disasters in the future. Water today is much more scarce than land, particularly in the tropics. Being wealthy is no longer about how much land you own, but how much water you control. But then we have to look at whether we have the political will to create right kind of legal framework for democratic and equitable distribution of water.

Speaking of the preventive and promotive, do you feel we fail in our early warnings since the Met department almost always gets it wrong?

I feel the Met could improve its predictive model but forecasting rain is not yet an exacting science. In the West, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, certain kinds of weather repeats itself almost unfailingly in certain seasons, which makes predictions more easier. But our conditions, and theirs are totally at variance.

When the Morbi dam burst in Gujarat in 1979, it took authorities a whole 48 hours to even get to know. Do you feel we are better equipped in our response time to famines, floods, and earthquakes?

We have of course made quite a bit of progress since. Today we do not need to rely on American satellite images alone. We have our own satellites which beam down images. With the aid of the internet and telephony our response time has considerably improved. But given our sheer size and the numbers involved however there will always be a feeling that we can do better.

With time the interventions are getting increasingly complex as society, particularly urban, gets more and more complex thanks to dynamics that caste, region gender and other divides throw up. Responses still need to be devised and tailor-made for dealing with these new challenges.

Other nations have even gone on to provide counselling for post traumatic stress disorder after disasters. How much longer before we get there?

The problems we face in our part of the world are enormously larger. What happens in the West is that not only do they have the resources, but the media takes even the smallest disaster and highlights it in a way which makes it seem quite large. Of course the media here too amplifies (laughs) but the emphasis is more on attacking the government or party in power. This makes the coverage more political and often takes away from the real disaster. We cannot copy paste their solutions, but we'll have to find our own. After all the tropics have larger disasters like super-cyclones which hit with far more frequency than other parts of the world.

Which in your own opinion is the worst disaster to have struck India?

The famine that swept across large swathes of the country in British India is unparalleled given the sheer number of fatalities and the complete apathy in intervention. It is not like the government then did not have the wherewithal to do so. But they either did not know what to do or simply didn't care.

Would you be able to speak of any where the response was the best?

I think, relatively speaking, the government's response to the Bhuj earthquake of 2001 has been the best response one can think of. Both in speed and quality of intervention it was far superior to what was the response in say Latur. There was also quicker rehabilitation and return to normalcy.

As someone who has analysed some of the greatest natural disasters from 1770 to 1935 , you argue in your book that our understanding of these events depends on the time scale we adopt...

Yes. If you see the incident in three days, one sees still a lot of anger, name calling and pointing fingers as people try to struggle and figure why it happened to them. Three months later there will be a feeling of moving on and rebuilding. Three years later, new housing and new blocks will have come up and one expects more vigilantism in adherence to safety standards. So depending on your time scale understanding keeps changing.

Socio-culturally Indians have always looked at natural disasters which destroy lives, property as fate. Do you feel this contributes to the apathy and cynicism in demanding better relief and rehab from the system?

It has been classically true that human beings look for reasons like destiny and fate to explain phenomena which they find tough to find explanations for. In India too this has been the case. New rational approaches are gaining ground, though we still have a large number of people who like to look at these events fatalistically.