Response Fund shall be available
with the State Executive Committee
for emergency response, relief and
rehabilitation at the State level,
while the State Disaster Mitigation
Fund shall be made available to
the State Disaster Management
Authority for mitigation projects.
For the allocation of CRF to
the states the successive finance
commissions have taken disasters
and expenditure occurred in
managing the disasters as one of
the important criteria which itself
has inherent lacuna. Firstly, many
states have very long return period
of big disasters leading to huge loss
but that doesn’t get reflected in the
expenditure. On the other hand
they keep facing smaller disasters
on a regular basis which becomes
the basis of funding. Secondly,
few states fall in the category of
low probability high risk area and
many are into high probability and
low risk area, this may also be seen
and analyzed. Thirdly, many states
are willing to spend more money
for managing disasters but they
are constrained to do that due to
financial health of the state. Hence
considering the expenditure criteria
only is not an appropriate indicator
for the allocation of funds to the
state. This may be revisited by the
finance commission. Vulnerability
of the states could also be seen as
one of the criteria for allocation.
All these provision of disaster
funding is limited to immediate
and intermediate disaster recovery.
Still, long term recovery funding
is an unaddressed issue. In India,
long term recovery programmes
conducted can be counted on
fingers. After so many disasters in
the country , India has just gone for a
few long term recovery programmes
with objective of ‘build back better’
by incorporating mitigation into
reconstruction programmes such
22
as Maharashtra Latur earthquake
(1994), AP Cyclone (1997), Orissa
Cyclone(1999), Gujarat earthquake
(2001), Tsunami (2004), Leh cloud
burst (2010) and now Sikkim
earthquake (2011). Many recent
catastrophic disasters remained
unattended for long term recovery
(Bihar, Orissa and Assam successive
floods, Karnataka and Andhra floods
2008, Bengal Cyclone 2010).
It is important to highlight that
direct damages (stock) induce
indirect damages (flow). If the long
term recovery goes unaddressed,
the loss of flow gets added every
day and in ultimate analysis it
creates huge pressure on economy
and the development process. Along
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