Disasters...

It happened again. Disaster struck South East Asia in the early hours of today morning, exactly a year after the violent earthquake that shook Bam. Last year, within hours we had sent various intervention materials to Iran. As a mental health professional working in disasters for the last two and a half years my instinct was to just call and see what the organization I had worked with in Delhi was doing. I was wondering if there was some way I could help. Well, the senior administration is not yet thinking of doing anything as they are waiting for ‘things to develop’. Appalling. Would it have made a difference if thousands had died instead of hundreds? Is human life dispensable? I may be sounding a tad dejected and cynical, but I have seen many situations where the lackadaisical attitude of administrators has cost lives.

What bothers me is that for a country like India that is so prone to disasters, there is no clear disaster response protocol. Who does what when a disaster strikes? How do we streamline the relief operations? Research in the area has shown that to build up the resilience of the affected community, efforts have to be immediate. But these disaster myths seem to be too difficult to fight (I urge everyone to read them).

After the earthquake in Bhuj the disaster management section was shifted from the Ministry of Agriculture (Can you believe that? Till Bhuj happened the Ministry of Agriculture was in charge for all matters related to disasters!) to the Ministry of Home Affairs. Things are moving slowly. There are disaster management and response manuals in the ministry but I don’t think they are directive enough.

I also couldn’t help but think about how lucky I was that I wasn't travelling yesterday. Because both the stopovers we had, in Male and Colombo are now grappling with floods and deaths. All in all, a sad way to end the year. But, I am becoming increasingly convinced that my chosen area of interest has loads of challenges. I like challenges.