Disaster means different things to different people in different places. If you are in Delhi, and avidly following the discourse of the day, you may be tempted to think that there are only two kinds of disasters: either not having foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail or having it.

It depends on your politics, economics and perhaps aesthetics. In Kolkata, filmmakers are reportedly the latest to join the chant against FDI in retail.
And then there is the Northeast, whose second name is “disaster” but which does not get top billing in the national discourse even as it is being battered by floods and landslides. In Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, where I have been the past week, disaster talk is all about floods right now. Meghalaya has not been directly hit by any big disaster recently, but the tragedy in neighbouring Assam resonates in conversations with ordinary people. Last week, Seven Sisters Post — a broadsheet coming out of the Northeast — led with the story of a 55-year-old woman who was washed away by the surging waters of the Brahmaputra at Dibrugarh while she was trying to save her only source of potable water — a tubewell.
As I write, the death toll is rising and there is a health alert in Assam, which is facing its third wave of floods this year. Half the state is flood-affected. Over a million have been forced to leave their homes.
Disaster has struck not only in Assam but also other states in this part of the country. Parts of Sikkim are completely cut off due to landslides while floods also wreak havoc in Arunachal Pradesh. The images of death and devastation are heart-rending and yet so familiar. The focus, typically, is more on the ongoing rescue and relief work — “what” is happening, rather than “why” it is happening and “what” needs to happen.
Take Assam, for example. Is “disaster” its default mode? Floods are an annual calamity in Assam. Are people getting used to such serious losses every year? Is the feeling of déjà vu coming in the way of exploring long-term solutions and is it derailing the state’s development?
Local experts say that while floods will continue to hit Assam, their trail of death and damages need not be what it is. Heavy rain and the consequent rise in river water levels are not the only factors at play behind the breaching of the riverbank embankments. This July, when floods hit upper Assam, the media reported that out of the 4,459-km stretch of embankments in the state, 950 km was in extremely vulnerable condition. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced a `500 crore special package for the flood-ravaged state to strengthen protection measures. Why had things been allowed to come to such a sorry state to begin with? Why are embankments along Brahmaputra and its tributaries being breached so frequently?
The reasons are known. Most of these embankments were built in the 1950s. Maintenance has been poor. Many such breaches could have been avoided if there was regular monitoring of maintenance work and if there was community involvement in the monitoring process. But as Partha Jyoti Das, well-known climatologist and head, Water, Climate & Hazard Programme of Guwahati-based NGO Aaranyak, says: “People have been complaining about poor quality of embankment maintenance. But nobody listened. Why was nothing done to plug the breaches during June, July and August?”
Additionally, deforestation over the years has led to heavy siltation. This, in turn, has resulted in the rise of river beds which at some places are almost level with the embankments. So every monsoon, flooding becomes almost inevitable.
The draft Assam State Action Plan on Climate Change, 2012-2017, prepared by The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi, raises several more concerns — lack of proper measures to improve carrying capacity of the major rivers, sand deposition on agricultural land, floods created by large dams built to produce hydropower, encroachment on wetlands and natural reservoirs; permanent settlement in char areas (sand bars/island) of the rivers and so on.
What should be done?
The critical issue is clearly lack of a long-term disaster mitigation strategy. Local experts like Mr Das say that while people in places like Assam have to live with floods to some extent, there is a lot that can be done to strengthen their resilience. There is no dearth of studies, reports and recommendations on how this can be done. But as in everything else in India, the missing words are implementation and accountability.
While embankments need to be maintained, they are not enough and whether new embankments will provide better protection is highly debatable. Mr Das talks about the vital need for complementary “non-structural measures” such as timely flood warnings, and preparing the community well before the flood season. Other well-known indigenous disaster mitigation practices include building on stilts that can be up to 12-feet high. This need not be only for huts raised on bamboo stilts. Brick and mortar buildings can rest on concrete stilts that — if built according to known guidelines — can also provide earthquake-resistance to buildings in this quake-prone region.
The media in Assam reports that while the state is being ravaged by successive floods and erosion of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, its plan to set up an early flood warning system is being thwarted by tardy flow of data from the Central Water Commission (CWC).
Floods are not the only hazard in the Northeast. The region is also in India’s highest earthquake-risk zone. A report from a February 2011 workshop on Earthquake Risk Mitigation Strategy in the Northeast listed vulnerable buildings in all the capitals of the northeastern states. Appearing seven months before the Sikkim earthquake, it had warned that buildings in Gangtok were highly vulnerable due to excessive height and insufficient breathing spaces. It also pointed out that earthquake resistant construction measures were routinely flouted.
This is the story in every major city in the Northeast. Haphazard urbanisation continues across the region. Sikkim’s neighbours seem to have learnt little.
When disasters strike, they nullify years of development work. To continue to see disasters only through the lens of emergency response and not equally in terms of how one can reduce disaster risks and improve community preparedness, that is the ultimate disaster.
Talking to college students in Shillong last week, I learnt that many new high-rises in the city were flouting building codes and that earthquake evacuation drills were rare. But here is the good news: they were eager to know if calamities can be opportunities for course-correction. Disaster-hit Northeast has a chance to show the way to the rest of the country.

The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies.