Government Information Dissemination Structures and Processes in Disasters

Abstract

The massive earthquake that hit India on the 26th of January 2002 in Bhuj in Gujarat was a wake-up call for a coordinated response to disasters in the country. Seventeen thousand people lost their lives and over 165,000 were injured following the earthquake. By August that year, the Government of India had signed an agreement for a Disaster Risk Management program with the UNDP. By 2005, the National Disaster Management Authority, NDMA, a single-point entity for disaster management under the aegis of the Ministry of Home Affairs, was in place with “the ethos of Prevention, Mitigation, Preparedness and Response.” The system got tested over the years in the wake of many natural and man-made disasters such as the tsunami of 2004, cyclones, etc. But the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic which started in 2020, being declared a disaster, has pushed the disaster management system in India under even greater strain. The mechanism under the NDMA, with state governments having their own Disaster Management Authorities, has never before faced such a challenge. As per the National Policy on Disaster Management 2009, “Communication and sharing of up-to-date information using state-of-the-art IT infrastructure remain at the heart of effective implementation of the disaster management strategy.” This chapter makes the case that ineffective communication as part of the disaster management strategy led to avoidable hardship to the common man during the pandemic in India. The chapter presents a case study of the pandemic as a lesson in communication during a disaster.