NDMA member highlights have to rethink Disaster Management Act

Reflecting on main classes from the Covid pandemic, National Disaster Management Authority member Kamal Kishore mentioned the National Disaster Management Act had main loopholes that should be plugged and that the “next generation of disaster management effort has to invent an urban model”.
“The pandemic has taught us that risk is not confined. Risk ripples across sectors and geographies. We have to address the notion of systemic risk as opposed to silos of different hazards. From that perspective, I think the Disaster Management Act has to play a role of managing risk as a whole. We may have had a mixed experience of application of the law,” Kishore mentioned at an Center for Public Research webinar taking a look at “Lessons for Urban Governance Futures from the Pandemic.”
“Whether (the Act) was sufficient, clearly not. Now we know that it was not sufficient because it never visualised the scale of the pandemic that could happen … There is a starting point there … which of course need to be revisited in light of what we’ve learned,” he added.
In one instance, Kishore mentioned that there isn’t any city-level catastrophe administration staff. Because of this, if a big metropolis has three districts, there are three groups beneath the supervision of the state.
“It is a huge omission. This doesn’t really work … The act doesn’t talk about how coordination will happen when multiple administrations are affected,” he mentioned, including the instance of coordination between states which can be sending displaced individuals and states which can be receiving them.
“Ninety percent of migrant workers did find a viable way of getting home but did we do that in the most efficient manner? Perhaps there is room for improvement there,” he mentioned.
He complimented the catastrophe administration constructions of Odisha, particularly with regard to cyclones. “A large part of that success is community-based mechanisms. The cyclone structures on the cost of Odisha are not managed by the government, but by communities.”
The legislation additionally speaks of minimal requirements of reduction for individuals affected by disasters dwelling in reduction camps. “Perhaps it is time to think beyond relief camps. The experience of the pandemic has taught us that people may be in relief camps but they may be affected and what are the standards we should apply when displacement happens.”
Finally, Kishore highlighted the impression of “an event like this on municipal finance”, particularly in India’s smaller cities closely depending on parking charges, lodge taxes, and extra.
Before NDMA, Kishore led catastrophe threat discount efforts on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Also talking on the occasion, Daksha Shah, Deputy Executive Health Officer, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) mentioned that there was vaccine hesitancy initially, however now many of the considerations have been allayed. Only the federal government has needed to persuade those who each vaccines are equally efficient, she mentioned.
“We have still not tapped the extent of the private sector. We already have models in TV … in the routine health services and access, can we use the private sector in a big way?” Shah mentioned.