Improving Standard of Education through Citizens Engagement

Context

With a population of 103.3 million in 2010), Bihar is the third most populous state in India. In all the socio- economic parameters it ranks a bottom of development index. But the state has done some good intervention in the area of primary and elementary education in last few years. Number of schools per 1 lakh (Hundred Thousand) population had increased from 60.2 in 2005-06 to 114.3 in 2008-09. Along with the expansion of schools, the state government had also recruited 1.50 lakh additional teachers in elementary schools. Inspite of the increased government intervention, the condition of school in Bihar has not improved much. Though the enrollment rates of children have increased, rate of children leaving school after class V or VI is also increased. One of the fundamental reasons for high rate of attrition is poverty and distance to be covered by children while going to school. But the most important factors above all are the poor quality of education being imparted in schools. Parent’s paid high fees opted for private schools mushroomed in every nook and corner of the villages and town.

 Key Players- The citizen group, the local elected representative, block development officer, other government officials, and civil society organization        

Initiatives –

Implementation of education requires involvement of diverse parties in both public and private sectors, including the national and local governments, schools, guardians of children, citizens of local communities, companies, social and educational organizations, private educational enterprises,  media, etc. For improving quality of education citizen can participate in following ways

Development of local education mechanism- Civil society organizations (CSOs) and citizens are expected to participate in local education governance formed at the provincial, city, and municipal levels. The local education governance committee can discussed

• Planning and budgeting – Through local education governance, the budget deliberation for schools can be discussed and debated containing the development strategy for schools.
• Implementation – Citizen engagement can  also  be in implementing education programs/projects/activities as sponsors or implementing partners;
• Accountability – By being part of school management committee civil society organization or citizen groups can take the role of a monitoring initiative, serving as observers in procurement or by participating in the Project Monitoring Committee (PMC).

Involvement of Citizen  in Teacher recruitment process – The citizen engagement would be vital in appointing quality teachers for imparting education. It is found that more than 30% of primary teachers engaged in government schools have not well versed in several teaching methods and still being driven by traditional mode of teaching.    

Regulations to bring uniformity to school syllabus- The teaching syllabus at schools vary from district to district. It also varies between government and private schools. The citizen engagement can play a substantial role in developing and recommending uniform syllabus to department of education.           

Performance matrix of teachers- The local education governance mechanism would also evaluate the performance matrix of teachers. Feedback student peers and school principal and government education officer can be taken to determine the parameter of performances.           

School Management Committee- The active citizen group can be part of school management committee, to oversee the overall development of schools    

Avoidance of private tuition- Because most of the government school teachers are engaged in offering private tuition due poor salary structure. it is essential  that citizen engaged should urge the local education governance to take steps to discourage the private tuition.     

Decision Support System-The decision support system would act an interface between the citizens and government representative and informed about all the important decision being taken into that region by the government. The system would also deliberate upon the types of funds available for development works, how citizen can approach them, etc. Primarily based on inputs from diverse pool of society helped to take decisions on important issues pertaining to improvement of quality of education. For ex decision support system can entails the local education governance about the funds available for school development and how it can utilized. It would also act as transparency and accountability tools for education system as whole. Connected with central server of Department of Education, it will connect with other government schools and draw a lesson for further improvement.                        

Outcome- Establish a new integrated mechanism that combines school education with social education or schools with local communities. Such mechanism will make it possible to provide people with sufficient learning opportunities responding to diverse needs in the society and also further improve the quality of education thanks to combined effects.

    

Resource on Assignment Submission , Turn Down the Heat

Explanation for Target audience

One  of the target  audience  of this resource material  would be fellow colleague and  friends working in the related  field  of Disaster Management, Climate  change at community  level to the national level. It will also try to target some of the key stakeholders involved and emerging enthusiast/students working in the area of climate change. Through this resource I am trying to generate at least some   inquisitiveness and awareness within the group mentioned. That may be helpful for them to develop at least general perspective on climate change and its impact. An issues indeed a very serious issue to work on.         

The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), has reported that the impact of human activities on climate and a climate system is unequivocal. It is no longer a scientific enquiry but the concern now. Considering the physiographic settings of India and the unique climatological features, the climate change on India cover almost every aspect of climate change, right from the causes to the impacts & associated vulnerabilities; the institutional mechanisms that address climate at national and state level; the adaptation and mitigation actions taken or envisaged to be taken, within the context of its current national circumstances, its developmental goals, financial and technical capacities.

Source and projected impacts

According to the report published by Stockholm Environment Institute 2009, India possess unique problem in climate change scenario .On the one hand by virtue of her very large population, India is a major emitter of greenhouse gases, ranking fourth globally in overall terms (behind the US, China, and the EU) and contributing around 5.5 per cent of global emissions (FIIA, 2009).However India’s cumulative historical emissions remain low relative to most industrialized countries, and its per capita emissions of 1.7 tCO2  (WRI/CAIT) are very low, even relative to other major developing economies (the world average is around 5.8 tCO2  per  capita)[1]. 

Per capita carbon dioxide emis­sions of some regions in the world in 2004 are as fol­lows:

A comparison of India's per capita GHG emissions with some other countries

Country	Per-Capita Carbon-dioxide emissions (metric tons)
USA	20.01
EU	9.40
Japan	9.87
China	3.60
Russia	11.71
India	1.02
World Average	4.25

Source- National Action Plan Climate Change Report, India 

The largest bulk of India’s emissions come from the energy sector. In 1994[2] energy accounted for about 61 per cent of total CO2 e emissions – of which almost half came from electricity supply, 20 per cent from industrial fuel combustion and around 11 per cent from transport. Road transport accounted for nearly 90 per cent of transport emissions (the remaining 10 per cent coming from rail, aviation and shipping). Word Resource Institute estimates suggest that the overall contribution of the energy sector is rising (around 66 per cent by 2005). Of the other sectors, agriculture accounted for 28 per cent of total emissions in 1994 (around 22 per cent in 2005), industrial process emissions contributed around 6-8 per cent, 3 waste disposal accounted for 2 per cent (rising to nearly 7 per cent in 2005), and land use and land use change accounted for 1 per cent (net carbon storage in 2000)

Impact of climate change on key sectors agriculture, water resources, energy

Methane is the principal greenhouse gas emitted from agriculture, primarily from rice cultivation and livestock, with India again the largest source, though per hectare emissions are only 20–30 percent of the global average, reflecting such factors as poor soils, low levels of chemical application, and continued use of low-yielding rice cultivars and traditional planting regimes[3].

Climate change is impacting the natural ecosystems and is expected to have substantial adverse effects in India, mainly on agriculture on which 58 per cent of the population still depends for livelihood, water storage in the Himalayan glaciers which are the source of major rivers and groundwater recharge, sea-level rise, and threats to a long coastline and habitations. Climate change will also cause increased frequency of extreme events such as floods, and droughts. These in turn will impact India’s food security problems and water security[4].

IMPACTS ON WATER RESOURCES

River systems of the Brahmaputra, the Ganga, and the Indus, which benefit from melting snow in the lean season, are likely to be particularly affected by the decrease in snow cover. A decline in total run-off for all river basins, except Narmada and Tapti, is projected in India's NATCOM I. A decline in run-off by more than two-thirds is also anticipated for the Sabarmati and Luni basins. Due to sea level rise, the fresh water sources near the coastal regions will suffer salt intrusion

Mitigation Measures

National Environment Policy, 2006 outlines essential elements of India’s response to Climate Change. These, inter-alia, include adherence to principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities of different countries, identification of key vulnerabilities of India to Climate Change, in particular impacts on water resources, forests, coastal areas, agriculture and health, assessment of the need for adaptation to Climate Change and encouragement to the Indian Industry to participate in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) coordinated by the Ministry of Environment and Forests is being implemented through the nodal Ministries in specific sectors/areas. The plan identifies eight core “national missions” viz. National Solar Mission, National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency, National Mission on Sustainable Habitat, National Water Mission, National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, National Mission for a “Green India”, National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change. Under advice of the Central Government, State Governments are also preparing State Action Plans on Climate Change that are aimed at creating institutional capacities and implementing sectoral activities to address Climate Change. So far, 21 States have prepared document on State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC).

Twelfth Five-Year Plan and Climate Change the Government has a domestic mitigation goal of reducing emissions intensity of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 20-25% by 2020 in comparison with 2005 level[5].

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[1] Stockholm Environment Institute, Project Report – 2009, page8-9

[2] Official data of India’s GHG emissions is available only for 1994 (MoEF, 2004), when aggregate emissions

amounted to around 1229 MtCO2e. More recently, the World Resources Institute (http://cait.wri.org/) has

published unofficial estimates for the years 2000 (1560 MtCO2e) and 2005 (1860 MtCO2e).

[3] South Asia Greenhouse Footprint World Bank  Report

[4] India, Ministry of Finance, Economic Survey, 2012-13, pp. 256-572

[5] Twelfth  Five year paper  and Government of India  Lok-Sabha Report     

LEARNING FROM UTTARAKHAND

The sun had been playing hide and seek through the day, and the enthusiastic pilgrims were more than ready for trekking to Kedarnath. An IMD(Indian Metrological Department) forecast about strong cloudbursts and three-day long heavy rains had no impact on their trekking plans. Especially in a religious journey, people are charged up and charmed under a different kind of spell, nothing can impede their enthusiasm. On June 17, 2013, calamity struck the region. Torrents of water got unleashed by burgeoning rivers and glacial lakes devastated the area. According to an estimate, that region lost more than four thousand lives in that incident.           

Current chairman of NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority), in an interview, candidly accepted that we were not prepared to face such a massive catastrophe and that we could learn many lessons from this tragedy. But still a question surprises if we really need to go through such a devastation to learn such lessons?

One of most common arguments that did the rounds in media and prompted the policy-bearers was that disaster management is a State subject, so bodies or institutions from the Centre cannot act on their own unless they are called upon by a State to act. However, we must understand that in a federal structure of government like ours, subjects are categorized for the ease of administration and governance and for defining job responsibilities for the people concerned. But nobody could ever deny that the Centre cannot take up initiatives of change. Lack of coordination from the Centre cannot be justified in the light of poor State-Centre relationship.

So, there are lessons that we could learn from this catastrophe which are:

No Timely Action - It is known that the IMD had given the specific warning about cloudbursts on specific dates. But the government authorities either did not take the warning seriously or forgot to act on that, and did not do anything to stop the pilgrims from continuing their voyage.

Communication Network- Inefficient communication was quite noticeable. Then, the unique topography of the State made the matter worse. Though the NDRF was given about 120 satellite phones during the rescue hours, they could not find the desired infrastructure and, therefore like the paramilitary forces, were dependent on the existing development were.

Pre-Disaster Management Efforts- In spite of the fact that disaster management programmes in India are in the second phase of implementation, outcomes are quite haphazard. Seldom, the Central or State Governments have taken the monitoring and evaluation of such programmes seriously. In fact to begin with, one of the most effective ways would be to first take the pre-disaster management measures seriously.              

Integrated Development Model for Mountain Regions- The Himalayan States are still fragile and require urgent infrastructural development. Blame the mother nature that new mountains are prone to torrential rains, including cloudbursts. States like Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh will have similar consequences if they encounter that disaster. Thus, the need of the hour is that all alternative development plans and programmes proposed should be integrated and then evaluated before their implementation.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
One can say that “Social development is a process which results in the transformation of social structures in a manner which improves the capacity of the society to fulfill its aspirations”. Society develops by consciousness and social consciousness develops by organization. A social development approach integrates as far as possible the generation of poverty and policy analysis with the process of including citizens and service users in policy cycles. In recent years, participatory processes have evolved from their roots in community development and micro-project design to become mainstreamed in macro-level policy discussions. For the past several years, social development has acquired a new salience in development thinking. Traditionally, development was seen mainly in terms of accretion in the material wealth of nations, and was measured in terms of rate of growth in domestic product. Economic growth itself was regarded as a function of capital inputs, both foreign and domestic. The main pursuit of economic policy was to mobilize the resources required for achieving a desired rate of growth. Acceleration in the rate of growth was supposed to take care of both economic and social problems.
In contemporary India the social problems are the result of a complex nexus between the factors of exclusion and inclusion rooted in history, values, and cultural ethos. Many of these problems based on the policy of segregation have not been addressed by the development strategy launched since Independence. Today, however, in the policy debate, orthodox economic liberalism is giving way to concerns regarding social consequences of globalization, as it affects the poorest and the marginalized sections of the population. Thus, a number of highly important and far-reaching social policy measures have been brought on to the development agenda, in the form of the Right to Information Act, Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and the Rural Health Mission among others and finally constitution of national advisory council chaired by Mr’s Sonia Gandhi is an open illustration of importance of social development at national level. This is also an indication of today’s scenario at the government level importance of inclusion of social policy in to variety of development plan and programmes being executed at top to bottom of the country
The current ongoing debate across the nation in food security bill also reflects that social developments have become an area of paramount importance for them. It has been emphasized that bill in current form is more of a food entitlement bill rather than a food security bill. One of the key area that is missing is to lack of measures to improve the nutrition status of general population and without them food security bill may not be as effective as it should be, given a fact that 19.8 % of children under-5 years of age are wasted or around 30 million children in India suffer from a form of acute malnutrition ,only the states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh account a number higher than the whole Africa in terms of SAM children for 2006, ,Acute malnutrition has higher concentration within children from rural areas (21 %), tribal & scheduled caste (28 % & 21 %), illiterate mother (23 %) and children under-3 (23 %). In one of the least developed state in India, Bihar the “Mukhymantri Balika Bycycle Yozna” which provides cycles to the girls of vulnerable community at free cost to enable them to cross some distance to complete their education is becoming highly popular. Number of civil society organizations, national and international organizations like DFID is also helping to achieve standard social indicators by number of prg on health, livelihood, Panchayati Raj, Urban Reform etc. Another flagship prg of government of India MNREGA which aims as enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteeing hundred days of wage-employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work is running quite successfully inspite of plethora of loop holes at the grass root level implementation. As per the latest 1.79 crore household has been provided man-day’s it includes 21.44% of SC population, 19.87% of ST population. If we discuss the penetration of this prg in Bihar according to the data available total

The whole idea behind this is to understand that how through the wheels of social development poverty and unemployment at mass level is being addressed in to various states and region of country. The introduction of smart card to the primary beneficiaries would also help to plug the leak in finance redistribution to the beneficiaries. If we analyse the expenditure on the basis of work division, maximum resources has been spent on rural connectivity with the village. Anther programme of immense social development launched by GoI is NRHM (National Rural Health Mission) recognizes the importance health in the process of socio- economic development of society. It adopts a synergistic approach by relating health to determinants of good health viz. segments of nutrition, sanitation, hygiene and safe drinking water The NRHM works within five different approaches namely community, flexible financing, monitor progress against standards improved management through capacity building, innovation in human resource management . If we talk about the achievement under this prg and considering the fact the health is s state subject and centre is trying to galvanise the state governments to resource the pool to achieve the set targets under NRHM gains are still considerable. As per the government data more than 8.09 lakh ASHA selected, 2.55 lakh trained and up to fifth module of health training standard and 5 lakh drug kits have been distributed. Around 1600 specialists, 8000 MBBS doctors, 26,000 staff nurses, 47,000 ANMS etc have been added in health human resource under the prg. Further around 3.5 crore women are covered under Janani Suraksha Yozna so far. What I mean to express by using these facts that social development has gigantic role to play in healthy and robust development of any society. Better social development indicator is one of the shining mirror of society through prism of development of human kind can be measured and acts as an imperative for further economic growth that brings more equity in the regionally imbalanced Indian states in terms of economics and social scale.

understanding livelihood

I have been associated with project named “Uday Uttrakhand” a livelihood intervention in the hills of Uttaranchal for last six months and have seen many notable changes within a short span of time. As one of the top priority of my organization named Access Development Service (ADS) is to make the market work for poor, and the foremost aim of the project is to increase the livelihood opportunities of the community of our project intervention area by designing the cascade of interventions in a hope that these intervention will increase the level of income generation and community will be largely satisfied with the project end scenario. We work in the area named Kalsi “famous for its Ashokan inscription” small block around 40 km from Dehradun city. The project have seen the two annual crops season and I am sure to say that lot of work have been achieved in the area and overall responses are quite fulfilling. It is also true that there are some gaps within the project which is yet to be bridged and chances are likely that it will difficult to put the cap on it simply because of the nature of gaps rather than putting an honest effort behind it. I meant to say that these gaps are institutional by nature and only institutional arrangements can fill these. The issue of governance with right approach is a critical missing link and continuous effort would only prevail. Before explaining much about the current interventions, I would like to have some understanding of nature of livelihood interventions being practiced in developmental sector.
Livelihood interventions are conscious effort from an outside agency or government institutions, departments to increase the livelihood opportunities of people living in bottom of pyramid of income generation. MNREGA implemented by Govt of India across the country can be termed a largest conscious effort by the Govt agency in recent decade .Number of Indian states like Bihar, MP, Uttaranchal, AP , Gujarat have also launched livelihood intervention prg with help of external agency like World Bank etc named “Ajivika” or related terms.. One of the major impediments in prg implementation come in form of supply of resource, skills, market linkage, credit facility to the community etc “In 1989, Vijay Mahajan and Thomas Dichter proposed an Alternate Livelihood Promotion Strategy through a paper: ‘A Contingency Approach to Enterprise Promotion’. They argued that promoting enterprises was complex and a better approach was to identify the bottleneck and work on that. In many cases, credit could be the only constraint. In such cases, minimalist credit was right and does work well. In other cases, credit is needed but is not the main constraint, what are needed could be skills, inputs or markets. Their argument was, though a large variety of services are required, all of them are not required at the same time and in every case. Thus the offering should be contingent upon what is needed in the situation. They also asserted that only a specialized type of organization could do it. And as it is difficult to build competencies to address all these factors in-house, collaboration becomes necessary”. Further coming to livelihood interventions there are number of approaches adopted by plethora of developmental agencies for their work in Indian context. Some of the approaches can be categories as
Spatial Approach: Promoting livelihoods in a specified geographical area, such as a region, sub-region, command area or a watershed

Segmental Approach: Promoting livelihoods for a vulnerable segment of the population, such as landless households, tribals, women and the disabled.

Sectoral Approach: Promoting livelihoods along a sector of the economy such as agriculture, or a sub-sector such as cotton.
Cluster Approach:-Usually a cluster arises around a particular activity, and eventually a number of related and supporting activities emerge leading to all round livelihood promotion. The activity may be agricultural, product like sugarcane or non farm products like Bikaneri Bhujia. There are several clusters in India, which are known for their products, such as, Shivakashi for matchbox, firecrackers, Ludhiana for woolen garments, Patiala for machine tools, Moradabad for brassware, Ulubedia for badminton shuttle corks, Lonavala for Chiki, groundnut molasses sweetmeat, etc.The twin pronged approach adopted by Access Development Service is mostly based upon cluster approach and SPARC MODEL of intervention. Before dwelling further I would also like to share the brief about the SPARC model of intervention. “SPARC – Small Producers and Artisans Resource Centre (SPARC) is a small team of professionals engaged to provide technical services to the primary producers in the farm and non-farm sectors. SPARC would be instituted by ACCESS, after the initial assessments to intervene in a specific subsector and an identified cluster within that. Located in the cluster the SPARC would initiate the activities to form the producer groups and producer company. In addition to providing technical service by itself, SPARC would leverage technical, financial and other business services from external agencies in the market. In doing so SPARC would make express use of the linkages forged by ACCESS at the national and sub-national levels. SPARC would thus act as a gateway for the primary producers to access resources, finance, input supplies, technology, information, markets and entitlements”[1]. This is meant to say that, to make the project sustainable SPARC model will be set up in each cluster and at end of project life line entire SPARC will be hosted by the project itself. Academically it can be viewed that cluster approach and sparc model will be sustained in coming days. But as far as current scenario are concerns practical testing of model itself has not been done till now. Further there are few examples in the development sector where clusters have been induced by external intervention. Most of the clusters have grown naturally meeting the demand of consumers and gradually expanded in a cluster approach.
In my point of view, the most important task of any livelihood intervention is to rescue the people from the clutches of poverty. It is often claimed that most of the livelihood programme are designed and implemented for the poor and vulnerable but there are very few studies or research are available to validate the objective of project intervention that can be shown to the policy makers, government representatives and other civil society organizations comparing ratio of investment made by organization, and alleviation of poverty from the masses. In our project intervention area we are trying to collect the data on project beneficiaries who actually got the benefits from the projects and how livelihood interventions are changing their status. The evidence based advocacy would be an ideal way to initiate this work. We are sure that in coming days at the fag end of project intervention there will be much to show off at grass root level.


[1] Access livelihood incubation model developed by Access Development Service New Delhi.

In the summer night

In the summer night when wind blows with chirp
I stand alone to watch twinkling stars,
They offer hopes against all odds
Whether u are alone or not, hopes never dies, hopes never dies

In the summer night, I stand alone to watch sea shore near the sea
They offer hopes against all odd
That we will come back to be with you,
Hopes never dies, never dies.

In the summer night ,I stand alone to watch dark nights and moon shining like a diamond cut
They offer hope against all odd that
In the pitch of darkness, when all will be gone,
Beam of light will be still reaching from window
Hopes never dies, never dies.

In the summer night, when silence galore at his best
And suddenly feisty stormy weather threaten to takes things away
The morning always offers dash of fragrance of flowers and life goes with zoom
Hopes never dies, never dies.

I am always standing alone against all odds
The hopes continues to flow from the abode,
I am standing high and just soaking it.


Rajeev

Disaster Management

Disaster Management is the discipline of dealing with and avoiding risks. It is a discipline that involves preparing for disaster before it occurs, disaster response, and supporting, and rebuilding society after natural or man made disasters have occurred. In general, any Disaster Management is the continuous process by which all individuals, groups, and communities manage hazards in an effort to avoid or ameliorate the impact of disasters resulting from the hazards. Actions taken depend in part on perceptions of risk of those exposed. Effective Disaster emergency management relies on thorough integration of disaster management plans at all levels of government and non-government involvement. Activities at each level individual, group, community affect the other levels.

Recent earthquake in Haiti has again brought the issue of disaster management at the fore front in the development sector. The world communities have started relief and rehabilitation operation sincerely but the immediate losses could not be stopped. As reported the Presidential Palace was collapsed, one could under stand the plight of commoners. AP( Associated Press) reported, that after two months of devastation “Trash and sewage are piling up at the squalid tent camps that hundreds of thousands have called home — and with torrential rains expected any day, authorities are not even close to providing the shelters they promised. Two months since the Jan. 12 quake, the government has yet to relocate a single person, despite a pledge that people would be moving into resettlement areas by early February.” One has to understand that this is the condition after more than a decade when world over Disaster management was taken as a part of developmental process that concluded any major disaster is direct set back to ongoing development work.

In India, few lessons were learnt when major earthquakes in Gujarat and Super cyclone in Orissa had jolted the entire political and bureaucratic class. After the super cyclone it was primarily felt to work on Disaster as a part of developmental process and sensitizing and awareness generation at community level would reduce the risk of disaster when it struck. In another way the cost incurred during prevention of disaster and cost incurred after disaster to initiate the normal socio-economic life has a major fiscal difference. This leads to initiate a major community driven disaster management programme. Against the back drop The developmental arm of UN, UNDP with the help of Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI had started the Disaster Risk Management Programme in India across seventeen states and 169 districts covering substantial part of the country .The prg itself has completed its five years terms and second phase has also started but can we say that the prg has achieved its primary objective? Nature of work done and change in the people’s perception on disaster management has changed a bit or not? This may happen that the prg itself has given birth to hundreds of development professionals who have started making the living and livelihood on these activites and few more people who got self motivated by this cause are working tirelessly.

Further one can argue that it is always easier to criticize than start working to filter on those deficiencies for the prg or person who has been accused. This may also be described as a fad of Indian middle class drawing room talks but issues; like Disaster Management has been making a great impact on most of the common people of our country. It may have less affect on citizens of developed countries but they also cdnt save them selves from Katrina or recent spate of urban floods being faced by them. Back to the issue, I would like to highlight few aspects of the prg being implemented by the UNDP along with the government departments in most of the district of various states .As a UN volunteer, I was posted at Begusarai one of the semi -urban district of Bihar. One of the major aspect of prg was to plan and prepare a disaster management plan for villages, tehsil, block, sub division and district and states against the natural disaster that particular place may face in coming days. But most of the plans prepared were of very poor quality and has no takers. Nor the implementing agencies neither the government who has mandate to adopt it could work accordingly. To make the matter worst, the plan was one-dimensional, apart from few socio economic basic data’s and name of few officials from district or village level there is hardly important information one can find. This is a story of most of the plans prepared at village, block and district level. At present I am not sure how many Indian states can claim that they have robust, tested disaster management plan.Mahatashtra was one of the early states who proclaimed state level disaster management plan but during Mumbai flood its utility was found to be zero. One of the glaring reason was they had not thought of that flood can occur in Mumbai so there was no established operational mechanism against it. But contradicting it at the same time some top class development also took place like setting up of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), an agency specially to look mainly after response during any natural disasters and setting some standards in relief and rescue measures with rapid movement and mobilization of their resources with minimum lapses of time. This is my firm belief that establishing an institution may be an arduous task but can be done, compare it with community mobilisation process that appears simple but complex to achieve. NDMA’s work during disaster struck due to change of course by river Koshi was remarkable.

Many more developmental agencies have also come in the filed of Disaster Management with grand agenda to serve the poor and vulnerable during an emergency. But whatever their vision and mission , most of them have started disaster management wing not because of their love and empathy for the common masses, but because the fund flow which has increased in this sector and that may make happy living of few disaster management experts ,directors and so called domain experts. They are never tired to boast about the importance of community participation in all the seminars and forums if given chance to speak up invited or uninvited. But again there are some good aspects also. European Commission have been sincerely sanctioning projects of relief, rehabilitation and preparation after every disaster in India and around the world. I had a personal experience of working in two of the project of relief and rehabilitation in Muzaffarpur on behalf of Care India and some good work was completed that really helped the affected community. Whether it was Koshi in Bihar or Tsunami, and recent Aila in West Bengal they have responded during every disaster. One can raise a question about the length of project that is small in nature with shorter time period. But this is one agency or organization becoming a ray of hope for many international agencies wishes to show their presence in the affected area but due to lack of fund for immediate resource mobilization they may not do much.

Thematically speaking because of the evolving nature of the subject itself quite a number of persons / organizations are not sure what and how they want to work in this area. One of the biggest concerns is that most of the organizational wings of Disaster Management takes a back seat during normal time where there is less work to do. It is the demand of the time that these issues should not be only taken at national level but must also be linked up with most of the ongoing developmental prg of public and private sectors. In India within a couple of years number of national level social development prg have been introduced by the government be it NREGS, NRHM, HIV- AIDS, SARVA SIKSHA ABHIYAN etc but none of them have addressed the issue of disaster. For them it is still being perceived as a one of the event that comes and goes. Where as now it has been clearly established that process of development and disasters are directly linked to each other and both can’t go into opposite direction..

What I meant to say from entire argument is that the discipline of disaster management should not be taken as a one of the subject to read and understand to produce few experts that may provide some tangible benefits to the society, rather it should be taken as subject in-built in most of issues. It can also be termed as “Hub and Spoke concept” where all the developmental subjects will be acting as spoke, executing some or other form of Disaster Management activities finally converging at pinnacle of development. In continuation the million dollar question that creeps in most of the development practioners that how much it relates with poverty?. Well if we view poverty alleviation as a matter of income generation it may or may not address it but if we can view poverty as a diverse and dynamic, social inferiority, isolation, physical weakness and vulnerability then certainly it has major role to play in all form of socio economic development (Poverty and Livelihoods: Whose Reality Counts Robert Chambers, ISD Papers). The complex relationship with poverty and disaster management is also well argued by Mr. S.Yodamani in his chapter “Disaster Preparedness and Management”