Manu Gupta

Compounded loss: the post tsunami recovery experience of Indian island communities

Purpose – It has been observed in a number of recent disasters, and most evidently after the South Asian tsunami, that remote, underdeveloped, and most vulnerable communities take the longest to recover, in‐spite of an abundance of resources available for supporting them. The loss compounding approach of analysing the tsunami impact is a useful way of identifying those factors within the recovery process that need attention for helping affected communities get rehabilitated in a better and faster manner. The paper seeks to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – The paper looks at how and why the recovery process has been slower and less efficient in the tsunami affected small island communities of India as compared to the mainland communities. This is further analysed in terms of the physical, social and environmental impacts and their recovery aspects.Findings – The paper identifies good governance and social capital as important elements for ensuring equitable recovery processes, and for ensur...

Community Based Response and Recovery: Specific Issues

The chapter deals with the two projects set in the post disaster scenario of Kosi floods in year 2008, in State of Bihar, India. The chapter depicts the experience of the authors, who have faced the challenges during its implementation, specifically while linking recovery to larger rehabilitation and mainstreaming DRR process in the developmental plans of the state. The chapter realizes the fact that the while the key identified areas such as shelters and health were important, it was more important that these sectors were also assessed in light of the prevalent socio economic conditions, eco systems and governance. The chapter also lays emphasis on the need to strengthen the resilience of the communities through knowledge enhancement and training and capacity building.

Chapter 4: Information, education, and communication for urban risk reduction

Risk management is one of the most important means of achieving sustainable development, while education is the most basic intervention required for addressing attitudes and changing community practice. Education for sustainable development is in this light a relatively passive yet extremely important intervention for ensuring long-term urban risk management, particularly if we want such risk management to be participatory and deeply engrained in community level practices. Information and communication management is the backbone of all the participatory processes involved in urban risk management. It is a cross cutting theme that touches each stage of the urban risk management process and is critical for ensuring that all the various stakeholders engaged in the activities operate in a coordinated, efficient, and effective manner. Education for sustainable development needs to identify and target such stakeholders who will, in the long run, make a sizeable difference by bringing about sustainability factors within urban field practice. Information and communication management is a means of smoothening the problems in the participatory processes, and for ensuring collectivity.