Laila has moved on. But more Lailas may yet come. No, this is not a story of love or adultery. Quite the reverse. This is the story of a Laila that separates families and breaks homes. This Laila affects not only people who are close by but also people who live far away. How prepared are we to deal with these kinds of Lailas? 

Yes, last week’s cyclone Laila led to death, displacement and economic loss even though it had weakened before it struck the Andhra Pradesh coast. Those of us who did not live by the coast but had invested in Ashok Leyland were aghast to see its stocks closed lower after the company’s operations were affected in the Tamil Nadu plant. Oil production took a beating as Reliance Industries shut crude oil and gas production from its fields in the Bay of Bengal as a precautionary measure. Crops were destroyed b the acres. So for all of us, it is prudent to invest in preparing for such natural disasters which we know will happen with cyclic regularity. These include floods and droughts which affect more than three-fourths of our states and union territories. Can we build public opinion on disaster preparedness and hammer the government to do the needful across India? 

Of course there are rules. India has a legal instrument to prepare for disasters –  the National Disaster Management Act. There is a national-level legal institution too - the National Disaster Management Authority. The law and the institution have their replica in several, not all, states even though many of the State Disaster Management Authorities have to yet get their act together. Yet, where there is some thought given to preparation, the results are clearly evident. 

Things could have been worse if the government of Andhra was not prepared for cyclones. High speed winds uprooted cell phone towers, damaged other communication equipment and snapped electricity supply to 11 towns and nearly 1,500 villages across six districts. Anticipating this damage, district authorities had arranged some ham radio networks and satellite phones for effective communication during rescue and relief works. The early warning system too worked fairly well with disaster management authorities  reaching 777 villages in coastal districts and evacuating over 50,000 people while thousands of others moved to safe places on their own.  There were reports of authorities running several sufficiently-stocked relief camps. Cyclone shelters were available and elsewhere schools were being used as cyclone shelters.

There are several initiatives started by NGOs on disaster preparedness along our 7500 km coastline, 75% of which is cyclone prone. I’ve been witness to one such village where villages have formed ‘task forces’ to deal with early warning, rescue, first aid, mass food preparation, child care, etc. They have done their homework and know which families are the closest to the shoreline, which homes have elderly people, differently-abled people or houses headed by single women. In a poor state like Orissa, these task forces act like lightening when they access the government early warning systems so that in these villages there are often no deaths and people have enough stored food to last them the first 48 hours which is what it usually takes for the first supplies of relief to reach the affected people. 

The cyclone season in India starts in April and goes on till December, with peaks in May and November. Thanks to climate change, tropical storms are becoming more frequent, less predictable and more intense according to scientists and fisherfolk who live these storms out. Over two-thirds of our cultivable land is also prone to droughts and at least 12% to floods and river erosion. South Asia is the world’s most disaster prone region and India comprises the bulk of S. Asia land mass. Unless we prepare for recurring natural disasters, like Japan has done for earthquakes, our hopes of becoming a global power may be undercut by our own short-sightedness. Law and institutions cannot save us unless these are translated into action. So let us talk and twitter and make disaster preparedness a focus of our political and economic debate, especially in the wake of climate change.