By Mihir R. Bhatt, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, India

For the past two decades, I have come to a growing realisation that without the initiative, active participation, and self-rule by the men and women of the vulnerable communities affected by disasters, it is almost impossible to achieve any credible degree of disaster risk reduction (DRR). When the victim or affected person uses his or her own time, resources, effort, and good ideas and exercises his or her sovereignty to self-rule during, before, and after a crisis, we can see sustainable and long-lasting disaster risk reduction.

A community cannot be rendered dependent on government-sponsored DRR—whether it is by an outside government or its own government if one wishes to avoid a colonial approach to DRR. Rather, the state and civil society should help and support what the affected community wants to do for relief and recovery while making sure never to take over, destroy, or weaken the agency and self-rule of the affected individuals or community.

For example, the people of Kutch, India, since the Gujarat Earthquake of 2001, have depended more and more on the government’s public action, neglecting traditional local practices of managing cyclones, droughts, and heavy rains at the community level. As protection from the heatwaves, villages and towns in Gujarat, India, had a long tradition of building parabs, or drinking-water stalls, in public places, a practice that is disappearing rapidly for lack of support from DRR programmes. Supporting community efforts to revive old practices or implement new innovations of their own choosing would go a long way in ensuring the self-rule of local communities, as well as the longevity and sustainability of a postcolonial approach to DRR.

In truth, any community exercising self-rule during “normal” times, in the absence of disasters, is already engaged in disaster risk reduction to some extent. It is imperative that the support they receive reinforces their agency and participation and does not make them dependent on the charity of individuals, authorities, or foundations. This does not mean that poor, disaster-affected persons, are to be left helpless and to their own devices; rather, it means that any intervention must fully follow local interests and initiatives.

These ideas regarding the self-rule of victims being central to any postcolonial DRR are based on my disaster-mitigation work with women, children, workers, minorities, migrants, and other marginal citizens. The following four insights are the result of three decades of my experience working with them.

1. When the affected population develops DRR plans based on their own experience, ideas, and insights, their impact on the community is remarkably greater and longer lasting. Such DRR leads the victims, their families, and communities towards greater self-sufficiency and self-rule. When one understands how floods affect one’s village, one’s farm, one’s income, one’s future, one’s neighbours, and one’s leadership, one is in a better position to design and implement postcolonial self-ruling disaster risk reduction strategies. Self-awareness of the risk one faces is one of the most important factors for DRR.
2. Risk-informed investment comes from risk-informed citizens. In postcolonial, self-rule DRR, local money is used for local relief; reaching out to local people under their own self-rule has a greater and more sustainable impact in terms of risk reduction and preparedness. When society uses its own money, it thinks more carefully about the allocation and the return on those funds, reducing costs, reducing corruption, and reaping the fruits of good DRR investment. Self-saving, or saving from one’s own income, is one of the most meaningful DRR relief strategies, reducing the need for government funds that come in the form of relief or reconstruction investment.
3. Self-management is the best kind of DRR management because self-rule yields direct and more successful results. There are several reasons for that. DRR planning for one’s self and one’s family fosters a greater engagement with others in the community. At the same time, accountability of governance to one’s own self is more effective than accountability to each other, and accountability to each other is far more powerful than accountability to a third party.
4. The range of disasters and the rate at which they are increasing, spreading, co-locating, and impacting communities across the nation has engendered greater involvement and dependence on government, private, and civil society relief. The gap between the need for relief and actual relief is increasing manyfold. The best and fastest way to reduce this gap is to create space and support for millions of affected citizens to take their own measures for DRR. Self-action is the best preparedness. To dig a well before there is a fire in the village is risk reduction planning at the community level of the best kind that is not dependent on national DRR structures. “We know what to do when there are four heatwaves in a row over one summer season. Just allow us to do it,” said a rural hot-pepper vendor in northern Gujarat this May 2023.

Based on the above insights, it is evident that DRR needs a bottom-up approach. DRR that moves ahead on the strength of budgets, and external structures, causes greater inequality between those who have ways to face risk and those who cannot face the risk on their own. Despite scientific and evidence-based DRR resources, technology, ideas, and vision, such DRR is bound to remain colonial in character. Postcolonial DRR, on the other hand, builds on or leads to self-rule.