Effective Recovery as a Path for Progressive Development

Rimjhim Agrawal is a first year MPP student at Harris School of Public Policy and a Graduate Assistant at the University of Chicago with the Dean of Students Office.

India faces rising threats due to natural and anthropological hazards owing to its unique geo-climatic conditions, growing climate change concerns, and high socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Frequent and increasingly intense disasters threaten to exacerbate pre-existing inequalities related to ongoing crises including poverty and marginalization, gender and caste-based prejudice, lack of formal employment opportunities, and a high dependence on primary economic activities such as agriculture, fishing, forestry, and mining.

Around 12% of India’s land area is flood prone; droughts, landslides, and avalanches are seen across 68% of the area; 58.6% of the landmass is earthquake-prone; tsunamis and cyclones are a regular phenomenon along 5,700 km of the 7,516-km coast (NDMA). At the same time, 90% of India’s rural population (close to 70 million people) depends on rain-fed agriculture. Degrading agricultural land, greater variability in precipitation, and rising extremities in meteorological events (heat waves and cold waves) pose an immense risk of pushing a large proportion of people at the lower social strata into vicious cycles of poverty.

While disasters seem like a once-in-a-lifetime event, studies indicate that extreme events are likely to become more frequent and intense due to rising global temperatures (IPCC). Such events leave lasting impacts on mental and physical health and damage assets, livelihoods, and security nets in the affected community. For instance, in Balakot (Pakistan), people affected by the 2005 earthquake are still living in temporary earthquake-resistant shelters without basic social services. People in Uttarakhand, India, are still struggling to recover from the aftermath of the devastating flash floods in 2013, and rebuild their residences with little compensation and institutional support from the administration. In parts of Bihar and Assam (India), annual flooding diverts large proportions of funds from developmental activities into reconstruction efforts, pushing development to the back-burner.

Disasters often set back development as they destroy infrastructures and livelihoods, and often disproportionately impact communities that are relatively more vulnerable or marginalized. Hsiang and Jina’s 2014 study looks at the influence of cyclones on long-term economic development and find, alarmingly, that permanent losses to income are large, frequent and generalizable to populations around the globe, regardless of their income level, geography or the scale of the disaster.

I personally experienced this phenomenon while studying social vulnerabilities in a population of 12.5 million in Jammu and Kashmir (India). I discovered through analyses a strong correlation between hazard frequency and lack of access to essential infrastructure and amenities. Frequent hazards can create significant impediments to holistic development, leading to a concentration of socioeconomic vulnerabilities in more susceptible areas.

India’s approach to disaster management has been adopted through the National Disaster Management Act (2005) and associated policies (2009) and plans (2019). These acts mandate institutional arrangements for disaster risk management at various levels of government; however, the interventions are highly focused on preparedness and emergency response. In contrast, advanced nations that are highly susceptible to natural hazards have established dedicated institutional mechanisms to facilitate post-disaster recovery. For instance, the USA’s FEMA National Disaster Recovery Framework (2011) sets a precedent for recovery to extend beyond reconstruction to include the continuation and/or restoration of services critical to supporting the physical, emotional, and financial well-being of impacted communities.

In this sense, recovery is more than an immediate clean-up effort, it’s the “decisions and actions taken after a disaster to restore or improve the pre-disaster living conditions of the stricken community while encouraging and facilitating necessary adjustments to reduce disaster risk” (UNISDR). As stated above, post-disaster recovery in India is primarily limited to rehabilitation and short-term reconstruction. Present policies delineate recovery as a restoration of pre-disaster normalcy and, even then, often fall short in practice. However, the recovery process offers the opportunity to integrate resilience into development to foster more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable communities. Recovery is a crucial facet of disaster management that can open windows for shaping the future relationship between the community, civil society, and local and state government.

A formal, systematic recovery process is essential to prevent the affected community from sliding into further poverty and deprivation. A toolkit for pre-disaster preparedness can empower communities by accelerating the recovery process, coordinating with community stakeholders, mitigating risks, incorporating continuity planning, and identifying resources, roles and responsibilities for government and non-government actors. This toolkit goes hand-in-hand with developing the capacity to effectively manage the recovery process, through collaborative and inclusive planning processes.

Multi-sectoral planning strengthened by a model disaster recovery framework would provide indicative steps to facilitate a sequenced, prioritized, and flexible guide for recovery programs in India. It provides an opportunity to incorporate hazard risk reduction into development through land use planning, disaster-resilient structure design with enhanced building codes, and institutional capacity building.

A comprehensive and holistic post-disaster recovery framework would prepare India for future catastrophes. The primary value of the framework would be federal- or state-driven support to the affected population in the form of schemes or fiscal incentives in addition to existing developmental plans. This would include the identification of explicit roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders for ascertaining needs based on impacts and allocating adequate finances. In addition, effective monitoring and feedback mechanisms would help to gauge the outcomes of implemented schemes and enable flexibility in implementation.

Collaborative and inclusive planning processes can bolster effective recovery across the disaster cycle (preparedness, mitigation, response, recovery). Together, these elements of recovery contribute to rebuilding resilient communities equipped with the physical, social, cultural, economic, and natural infrastructure required to meet future needs.