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Vulnerable India: A Geographical Study of Disasters FRANKLY, a geographical study is not something which normally grips the attention of a lay reader. It can at best appeal to academics with adequate grounding in the subject. However, Anu Kapoor, who is Associate Professor of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, has managed to do the impossible through her riveting style of writing. She makes even those for whom geography is only slightly less alien than Latin to want to read the book from cover to cover.
Her premise is that these natural disasters are made far worse by human failings like weak infrastructure, corrupt leadership and a complacent civil society. She presents rich empirical data in support of her brilliant thesis which was the subject of her research at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. No human contributing factor is corrected despite numerous tragedies which cost the country dear. Living and constructing on the flood-prone sites, steep slopes or building incompatible structures and practising faulty land use is the order of the day. Anu Kapoor weaves in history, philosophy, art, literature and sociology with geography to scan the country’s "disasterscape" and underscore the point that a vulnerable India gives the natural permission to create disasters. Yet, there is no single organisation engaged in the task of compiling a record of those killed and affected in a disaster. The bureaucracy, and even the relief agencies and media, treat each of these as an isolated event. The book is divided into three parts: Fact, Response and Reality. In the first, data from 1977 to 2002 is analysed as to how India is affected by 16 geophysicals like snowfall, cold wave, etc. The second part is perhaps the most interesting. It details how people react to such happenings. Here the matter is not at all geographical but metaphysical. Dr Kapur delves into questions like what is purpose of life? Who created this world and why? Is there a God? How can disasters thrive in His domain when He is said to be benevolent and kind? Both elite and the common folk search for reasons and seek to relate natural phenomena, calamities and non-calamities within the framework of causality. She goes over the entire Indian belief about how the universe originated and evolved, plus also the concepts of Brahman, samsara, Prakriti and Purusa. Then she focuses on the doctrine of Karma and the religio-cosmic causes for disaster. Nor does she pooh-pooh traditional systems of forecast disasters. Many such beliefs, like forecasting drought by signs of divination such as jackals howling in the evening are enumerated in detail. The tragedy is that in India, the traditional explanation for nature’s wrath was man’s immoral deeds and lurking behind the fury of nature was the role of man, his thoughts and actions. The end result was that all this was thought to be preordained and even those who were to take remedial steps were lulled into believing that not much can be done against God’s will. Thankfully, things are changing but all too slowly. Even after Independence, administrative laxity, failure to plan, limited funds and missing legal window were attributed to helplessness before natural forces. There is a collective apathy towards disasters. The third and last section of the book, Reality, poses some uncomfortable questions: why is it that the disadvantaged people are the most vulnerable, be they female illiterates, marginal workers, agricultural labourers or Scheduled Caste/Tribe population. What stands out starkly
is the disaster divide, be it between the developed nations and the
underdeveloped ones, or between workers and owners of industry. Those
who are least equipped to cope with a disaster are the most affected.
Dr Kapur shows forcefully that it is not "nature" but human
resilience that dictates who are picked to be killed. It is conditions
of living which make people vulnerable. They do not just die; they are
"killed" by the apathy of an insensitive India. "To say
that someone was killed rather than ‘died’ carries an entire
burden of responsibility and need for serious investigation of the
situation," she concludes.
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In
the process, she breaks the commonly held myth that India is
vulnerable merely because it is prone to every sort of disaster like
floods, cyclones, hailstorms, cloudburst, heat and cold waves, snow
avalanches, drought, sea erosion, thunder and lightning, landslide and
mudflow, earthquakes, dam failures and dam bursts, mine fires,
chemical and industrial accidents, fires, oil spills, major building
collapses, bomb blasts, air, road and rail accidents, boat capsizes,
biological disasters, epidemics, pest attacks, cattle epidemic and
food poisoning `85(phew).