World Bank praises India on its Phailin efforts

The World Bank gave a pat on India's back on successfully evacuating over a million people to avert the major impact of cyclone Phailin.

Phailin, with a wind speed of 200-km per hour, had made landfall near Gopalpur in Odisha on Saturday. "Successfully evacuating a million people is not a small task ", the Bank said on Thursday.  It said that this was not something achieved in merely 3-4 days but it was because of years of preparation that finally paid off.

"This has taken years of planning, construction of disaster risk mitigation infrastructure, setting up of evacuation protocols", the Bank said along with several other factors including the "local champions" who, it said, knew exactly what needed to be done when the time came to act.

The multi-lateral agency said that full credit needs to be given to the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) and the Odisha government for their "unwavering commitment to disaster preparedness and risk mitigation".

Phailin was the biggest storm to have hit Indian coasts in 14 years. According to news reports, the death toll as a consequence of the disaster rose to 38.

The multi-lateral agency is financing the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP), which is under implementation in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. " It is encouraging to witness, during the project implementation cycle, that these investments are contributing to the Government of India’s larger efforts in helping communities become more resilient to the impacts of natural disasters and a changing climate system", the Bank said.