Sudden Thunder (1990)

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS IN AGRICULTURE IN INDIA

                                                                                        By Dr. Ashok Kumar Panigrahi

Definition of a Disaster

The National Disaster Management Act 2005 defines disaster is a disaster, accident, disaster or serious incident affecting an area due to natural causes or human intervention, or by accident or negligence that results in substantial loss of life or human suffering or injury and property destruction, or damage or degradation of the environment, and is of a nature or magnitude as beyond the response capacity of the community area affected.

It remains to see how it will interpret an event when words like disaster, accident, natural disaster, serious accident and will co-exist naturally regarded as interchangeable. As to complicate things, the definition hangs on knife edge capacity of local adaptation. Suppose there are two identical events in two locations A and B, and adaptability to the local A is higher than that required to manage the event as B in the capacity of local adaptation is much lower . Clearly, this would mean that the same event would be recognized as a disaster at location B, but not in the location A?

The Office of the Coordinator for United Nations Disaster Management Training Manual defines disaster as a serious disturbance of the functioning of a society, do many human, material or environmental losses which exceed the capacity of the affected society to cope using only its own resources.

UNDRO 1987, cited in Hanisch 1996, define disasters as follows: "A disaster is an event that is concentrated in space and time and that, subject to a corporation to a grave and serious such casualties or material damage such as breaks in the local social structure and society is unable to perform all or part of its main functions. "

The High Powered Committee of the Government of India in its October 2001 report defines "disaster is an event of such severity and magnitude that normally results in deaths, injuries and property damage that can not be managed by routine procedures and resources of government. It usually develops suddenly and unexpectedly and requires immediate, coordinated and efficient government and several private sector organizations to meet human needs and a speedy recovery "

The definition of disaster provided by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) is relatively simple. CRED defines, "A catastrophe is a situation or event that exceeds local capabilities, requiring a request to national or international level for external assistance, an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering . Then he goes on to add that for a disaster to be entered into the database, at least one of the following criteria must be met: (1) ten or more people killed recorded (2) 100 persons were affected (3 ) declaration of emergency rule and (4) call for international assistance. Obviously the difficulty encountered in this type definition in the Act does not arise if such a definition is used.

Distinguishing disasters and crises

Natural

* Droughts
* Flooding
* Earthquakes
* Landslides
* Cloud Erupts
* Cyclones

Made Man

* Air, rail and accidents

* Accidents at work

* Civil strife and disorder

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