Massive floods across India demonstrate that few lessons have been learned in natural disaster management, writes Rajeshree Sisodia from New Delhi When the tsunami sounded her death knell across India less than a year ago, the wake-up call to the nation to co-ordinate and implement effective disaster management policies was resounding. But as the death toll after the worst rains to scar India nears the 1,000 mark and the magnitude of last week's tragedy unfolds, the floods have once again exposed not only the resilience and fortitude of ordinary Indians but also the incompetence of officialdom and the gaping loopholes in policies designed to deal with humanitarian disasters. In a country where large-scale deaths -- be they through terrorist attacks, communal violence or natural disasters -- galvanise little more than political divisiveness and inefficiency, individual tales of public courage formed a watermark which spread across the monsoon-ravaged landscape of Maharashtra state and its capital Mumbai (formerly Bombay) after heavy rains paralysed the region. The floods, which started last Tuesday and continued into Sunday, were the heaviest in India's history with 944mm of rain recorded in the 24 hours up to 8.30am last Wednesday, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The majority of the victims, around 370 of which were in Mumbai, drowned, were electrocuted or killed in landslides -- the latter an avoidable tragedy exacerbated by the city's increasing number of poorly designed and badly built buildings. Hours after the onslaught of rain crippled the state's infrastructure, cutting off transport and communication links for more than 48 hours and marooning thousands of people, the central Indian government pledged seven billion rupees ($162 million) of aid, committed 10,000 tonnes of food supplies and one lakh (100,000) Indian rupees to each bereaved family. New Delhi was also swift in deploying armed forces to help rescue efforts in Mumbai with army helicopters used to pluck survivors from their flooded homes. Praising the people of Mumbai who opened their homes and hearts to destitute neighbours and helped rescue workers locate the dead and missing, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: "I would like to place on record my admiration for the citizens of this great city... You have suffered a lot, but have shown resilience, fortitude, courage and patience in dealing with this calamity." Premlata Rai, a 23-year old teacher from the north Mumbai suburb of Saki Naka, saved three neighbouring families when the hill they lived on collapsed. "When the hill broke, I could just hear the children screaming," Rai told The Sunday Express. "All I could think of was how to save them." But the disaster has also spawned a new reality; that the tsunami's dire warning, her clarion call, has remained largely unheard. The Maharashtra government and Mumbai city administrations' responses to the floods are pockmarked with a myriad of systematic errors. The state failed to communicate the severity of the floods to the public. Mumbai's municipal corporation failed to relay the gravity of the situation and provide advice to the public and state government departments, practices which should have been carried out as part of the state's disaster management policy. The result -- as almost one thousand Maharashtra families stand testament to -- is clear. Though little could have been done to prepare the state for the severity of the rains, better co-ordination may have saved lives, minimised civilian panic, spared 48,000 people the ordeal of being evacuated and reduced economic losses incurred. Mumbai is the avant-garde nerve-centre of India, its financial and communications heart. The city's inhabitants are fond of saying "what we do today, the rest of India does tomorrow", yet despite its well-founded self-pride, Mumbai's municipal corporation on Sunday admitted it was overstretched, again crippled by further heavy rains. Thousands of people, some of whom claim to have been without power for five days, took to the streets on Sunday in protest against what they believe is state governmental incompetence. Perhaps most alarmingly, the echoes of governmental inefficiency appear to reverberate across the length and breadth of the country. Officials in Delhi, Calcutta and Bangalore have admitted their disaster management policies fall woefully short of adequacy. While some states and the centralised Irrigation and Flood Control Department in Delhi have drawn up contingency plans, the stark reality is that politicians have failed to implement much of the rhetoric, with a collection of bills still sluggishly inching their way through parliament. Against this political backdrop aid workers, volunteers and officials in Maharashtra have embarked on the painstaking process of locating the dead and missing, a task hampered by the second onslaught of rains over the weekend. UNICEF, which estimates around 7.7 million people have been affected by the floods, was last weekend due to start a relief effort, including distributing water purification supplies and medicine to Maharashtra villages amid concerns the tragedy may spawn disease. "Our focus is to make sure not even a single life is lost to waterborne diseases," said Emergency Programme Officer Vinod Menon. While inspiring tales of individual courage in the face of such adversity rightly deserve praise, they cannot overshadow administrative shortcomings bolstered by the government's reticence to be proactive rather than reactive. Unless politicians, at local, state and national level, work with aid agencies to implement effective disaster management policies, the forecast for India, a country which international charity Christian Aid warns is one of the world's most disaster prone nations, remains bleak.
