Sasakawa Award for outstanding work in the field of disaster management and risk reduction- Gujarat

Sasakawa Award for outstanding work in the field of disaster management and risk reduction (with inputs by Deepak Sinha)

Over the past ten years, Gujarat has made excellent progress on all fronts – whether it is rehabilitation of earthquake victims or e-Governance implementation for transparency; best practices in solid waste management or environment consciousness – Gujarat has pursued excellence in several areas and won over 60 accolades and awards all along the way.

Not only the number is large, if one looks at the list of awards, it includes awards and citations for a variety of sectors right from economic freedom to environmental protection, e-Governance to energy conservation, health to heritage protection and sanitation to software development, reflecting holistic development of the state. The agencies conferring these awards also range widely from International bodies like the United Nations, World Bank, UNESCO, Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management (CAPAM), and to various Ministries/agencies of Government of India like Ministry of power, Ministry of non-conventional energy services and institutions like India Tech Excellence Foundation, Computer Society of India and Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

One of the awards - the UN Sasakawa Award for outstanding work in the field of disaster management and risk reduction was given to Gujarat goverment under Shri Narendra Modi in 2003.The United Nations Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction is awarded to an individual or institutions that have taken active efforts in reducing disaster risk in their communities and advocates for disaster risk reduction.

Early in the morning of January 26, 2001, as India were celebrating its 52^nd Republic day, an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 struck the northern Indian state of Gujarat. The region was thrown into turmoil as buildings and infrastructure crumbled. 20,000 lost their lives in a day and another 167,000 suffered severe injuries. One million homes were damaged or destroyed in the worst disaster in the state’s history. About2 million became instantly homeless. The economic effects of the earthquake have been estimated at $ 5 billion including $ 2.1 billion in direct asset losses, $ 0.7 billion in output losses, and $ 2.2 billion in fiscal constraints imposed on the state. To put this in perspective, the GDP of Gujarat was $ 24.336 billion in 1998 (with state revenues of $3.042 billion), which means the earthquake cost roughly 20% of one year’s GDP or 1.5 times the state budget. (Sourced from Journal of Development and Social Transformation)

The region was recovering from a terrible cyclone that struck just two years earlier in 1998. The 1999 and 2000 seasons brought severe drought that further affected this highly agricultural area. The state had been one of the fastest growing in India with a high amount of industrialization and trade occurring in the ports along the Arabian Sea, but the government was still in the midst of a fiscal crisis. According to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, 2001, the government was not economically prepared for a disaster of this magnitude.

The epicenter of the earthquake occurred in the district of Kutch, which bore a disproportionate brunt of the destruction. Over 70% of the buildings in the district were completely destroyed, and many villages were leveled to the ground. Most of the deaths resulting from the earthquake also occurred there. Based upon prior information on the severity of the earthquake and the conditions in the district of Kutch, one would expect that the event would have severe and long-lasting deleterious effects on the impoverished population. The surprising result is that it did not.

According to a research paper done by Jesse D Lecy of Syracuse University, there are three possible reasons for dramatic recovery in Kutch despite the large-scale disaster:

(1) economic dynamics of the district,

(2) social networks in the communities, and

(3) an effective disaster relief strategy implemented by the state.

Evidence for the third theory is found to be most compelling, and it is argued that much can be learned from the unique way that aid was distributed in Gujarat. Disaster risk reduction is a complex issue requiring involvement from both public and private sectors and media as well. The insights into Gujarat case study provide valuable lessons for future relief and development efforts.

Kutch experienced some growth in years prior to the earthquake, but it has traditionally been one of the poorest districts in the state with most families living close to subsistence levels. A large proportion of the district’s population is comprised of individuals belonging to the scheduled castes: 12% in Kutch compared to 7% throughout the rest of Gujarat. The dynamics contributed to a population that was extremely vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters as severe as the 2001 earthquake (World Bank and Asian Development Bank, 2001).

A case for poverty reduction attributable to effective relief efforts is strong from a variety of perspectives. The government was able to secure funding quickly, thus providing resources necessary for relief on a wide scale. They created mechanisms by which the aid could be distributed appropriately. In addition, communities were engaged at multiple levels of the relief projects, giving people influence over aid expenditures. Decisive action by the state of Gujarat was essential for raising the capital necessary to deal with the disaster.

The government began negotiating loans with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank immediately following the earthquake. The loan packages were signed within a month – a record for the two banks (Shri Narendra Modi, 2003). The timeframe was possible because the banks had previously established relationships with Gujarat and were comfortable with the state’s financial accountability (Asian Development Bank, 2002). The government was not only proactive in securing funds for reconstruction, but they were also proactive in establishing fund dispersal mechanisms. Within 9 days of the earthquake, the government of Gujarat created the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority (GSDMA). This organization’s responsibility was to direct the government relief efforts and coordinate autonomous relief agencies, thereby providing a centralized command structure. Through the authority’s actions, rehabilitation packages were available within a month of the disaster.

In addition, unlike many disaster strategies that focus on short-term food supplies and temporary shelter, the relief efforts in Gujarat were implemented with long-term objectives in mind. Specifically, the government was interested in providing permanent housing for about 2 million people who were left homeless and to repair the infrastructure necessary for normal economic activity (GSDMA, 2007). Their allocation of funds closely followed these stated objectives. The efficiency of this large-scale operation of Gujarat government under Narendra Modi is evident.

In addition to creating the bureaucracies necessary to handle the aid influx, the government was also able to address the specialized needs of specific constituents. One such population was the group that suffered deaths or serious injuries in their households. The family members of the deceased were compensated for their losses. Over 97% of the applications for these funds were awarded benefits (IndianNGOs.com, 2007). On a broader scale, though, the most serious vulnerabilities stemmed from the massive loss of housing, as this problem affected the entire population. As a result, the majority of assistance came in the form of housing reconstruction and rehabilitation. Despite a modest amount of aid spending in absolute terms, these programs were extremely successful in many regards. Gujarat represents the largest successful housing reconstruction project in the world with over 900,000 houses repaired and close to 200,000 completely rebuilt (Shri Narendra Modi, 2003).

During the process, many homes received infrastructure upgrades: the percentage of houses with toilets increased from 32% to 53% and the percentage of houses with plumbing increased from 30% to 34%. While repairing and rebuilding over 50,000 schoolrooms, another 4,200 were added. Public infrastructure was also upgraded, including 640 km of state highways and 3,061 km of rural roads. The most remarkable aspect of all of these projects is that most of them were accomplished within two years of the earthquake (Shri Narendra Modi, 2003).

Relief work is effective for a variety of reasons. For instance, projects may be well-planned and well implemented after vulnerable populations are properly targeted. In Gujarat, it appears that careful management is a more plausible explanation than that of an aid windfall because only a modest amount of aid was dispersed. The majority of the funds for earthquake relief actually came from loans rather than grants. In 2001, the WB and the ADB both loaned large sums to the state government of Gujarat ($400 and $500 million respectively) followed by similar packages in 2002 (Asian Development Bank, 2001). These loans became part of a fund for rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts and were dispersed through the GSDMA.

The protagonists in the Gujarat story are not the donors, but rather members of the state government who were able to orchestrate the efficient disbursement of these funds and local community organizations that mobilized beneficiaries. GSDMA was effectively used by the Gujarat state government as the main coordinating agency to ensure funds were distributed appropriately and non-governmental organizations were properly managed. They allocated the rights to implement projects to only one agency per village in order to avoid redundancy. These villages did not get to choose the agency; however, their agreement to the partnership was a stipulation of implementation

Furthermore, an effective relief strategy requires a proactive central coordinator even as participation of the beneficiary population is equally important. The accommodations made by the GSDMA to recipient communities did not come about by accident. Many communities organized themselves for protection from corruption and increased bargaining power. These groups influenced many important policy decisions, such as favoring reconstruction of completely destroyed villages in situ rather than moving them to a different location, demanding re-evaluation of houses when initial surveys were problematic, and forcing the government to create a housing package that allowed owners to receive assistance for rebuilding their own homes. This last initiative proved to be the most important. Over 72% of the villages took advantage of owner-driven reconstruction, and approximately 87% of the destroyed homes were

rebuilt by their owners. In the first program of its kind, the government offered financial, material, and technical assistance for these projects.

In general, beneficiaries protect themselves from abuses of implementation schemes, donor

agencies also guard against improper uses of funds by beneficiaries. The inherent system creates additional layers of rigid bureaucratic control. However, through the owner-driven reconstruction program, the GSDMA created a clever incentive scheme to avoid this kind of scenario. Villagers received 40% of their housing benefits in the initial stages of reconstruction, 40% upon completion of the walls, and the remaining 20% once the house was finished. The second and third installments could only be disbursed after the work was certified by government civil engineers who were stationed in each village in order to supervise construction. In addition, a massive training program was undertaken to teach earthquake resistant construction to local masons and engineers so that government standards would be met. In this way, not only did the program enable citizens to receive money for the rebuilding of their homes, but it also ensured that building standards would be sufficient to withstand future earthquakes.

Conclusions

One would hope that other humanitarian efforts would put as much thought into implementation policies as went into the Gujarat relief efforts. Unfortunately, aid is often poorly coordinated, with project designs that distort normal community activities. The poverty data from Kutch, as well evaluation reports from relief projects, suggest that Gujarat succeeded where others have failed.