Law to manage natural disaster neglected, needs more teeth

The Kerala temple tragedy has drawn attention to the neglected disaster preparedness across states and their inability to enforce any measures. Despite the laws, like the National Disaster Management Act, which list out a host of steps to be taken both at the Central and state level as well as district level to avoid both natural and man-made calamities or disasters, the implementation remains an uphill task. Former NDMA vice-chairman Shashidhar Reddy says that if the Central and state governments are serious, tragedies like the Kerala temple can be averted.

“There has to be political will at every level to enforce any kind of rules and regulations. The district administration could have enforced the ban on fire crackers at the temple if there wasn’t any political interference. Similarly, at the Central level if the NDMA would have been an active body, it can prevail upon the state chief ministers to make disaster mitigation an important part of governance. But what has happened instead is that the apex disaster management body is unable to discharge its duties for want of resources and manpower and in turn whatever steps were being taken during the UPA regime, is not happening today,” Mr Reddy said .

While the blame-game may have started following the horrific tragedy in Kerala, officials involved with the disaster mitigation admit there must have been lapses at every level for such a tragedy to occur. The NDMA through state disaster management authorities and the district disaster management bodies can be actively involved in issues concerning places of public footfall to ensure guidelines are followed.

From fire tragedies to stampedes, the threats at places of high footfalls are known to everyone and it is mandatory that rules and regulations are followed by the authorities who are incharge there. “All states are required to have SDMAs and district disaster management bodies. They need to hold regular meetings and bring out guidelines and ensure they are followed or enforce denial of permissions if the requirements are not met,” an MHA official said.

At places like temples and other public places, it is mandatory to have fire services which are readily available, fire extinguishers, limit the entry of persons at a given time and monitor any hazardous activity that may take place,” the official said. But with the law not being given any teeth and the issues of disaster mitigation being centred around more “talks than action”, the unfortunate part is that ground realities remain ugly and tragedies continue to take place.