The country’s leading corporates have unleashed their pent up feelings, severely complaining that India is ill equipped to face disasters as it is yet to put in place an effective Disaster Management Plan.
In a survey conducted by industry body Assocham, nearly 78 per cent of the country’s 400 corporates have admitted this.
312 CEO’s mostly belonging to companies in telecom, power generation and transmission, oil, gas, sugar, infrastructure, hospitals, railways, textiles, agro products have strongly felt the need for creating a sound and proactive disaster management team to respond to contingencies arising out of natural calamities.
Nearly 65 per cent of the respondents felt that Tusnami which struck coastal part of India about 4 years ago had galvanised the Indian administration to come out on war footings with disaster management plans.
However, around 300 CEOs still hold that after Tusnami settled, the disaster management was not given the required attention.
Over 55 per cent corporates participating in the survey said that the involvement of private sector, common man, institutions like schools, colleges and even NGOs in handling disasters is extremely negligible.
Even, media does not play a required role to suggest measures to handle natural calamities, barring reporting them in a sensitive manner, they added.
The Chamber has also emphasised that Disaster Management should be made a permanent chapter in curricula of all schools so that students are imparted necessary physical training to handle disaster like situation before the forces are called upon to take on such exigencies and calamities.
Over 70 per cent of the respondents, however, expressed satisfaction that in order to respond effectively to floods and earthquake risk mitigation, Ministry of Home Affairs has initiated National Disaster Risk Management Programme in all States but much more needs to be done.
According to them, a comprehensive programme should be taken up to forewarn the people about possibilities of floods and earthquake so that they evacuate themselves to safer places and sites in advance as precautionary measures.
The Chamber is of the view that just a territorial army has been created in the oil sector particularly in its downstream branch to meet any sort of exigencies happening in refining and exploration front, a similar force is recommended to be made to handle disasters.
A special corpus needs to be created for this purpose in which the private sector should be asked to make 50 per cent contribution and also send their experts in schools and institutions that are mandated to create the suggested force.
There is a need of greater emphasis on infrastructure in large cities and the government has to set aside a dedicated fund.
Over the last 15 years, there has been a 30-35 per cent increase in urban population and most cities suffer from water shortage.
