Disaster Management and Contemporary Social Issues
Domain 6 - Disaster Management and Contemporary Social Issues
This part asks candidates to apply the disaster cycle to Assam's hazards and to reason about current social problems such as poverty, migration and misinformation.
Core concepts
- A hazard is a potential threat; a disaster occurs when a hazard exceeds a community's capacity to cope.
- Risk is roughly (hazard × vulnerability) ÷ capacity.
- Disaster cycle: mitigation and preparedness before; response during; recovery and reconstruction after.
- The Disaster Management Act, 2005 created NDMA, SDMA and DDMA, with the NDRF as the specialised response force.
Assam's hazards
- Floods in the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys; riverbank erosion at Majuli, Palasbari and Dhubri.
- Earthquakes - Assam lies in Seismic Zone V (1897 and 1950 earthquakes).
- Landslides, storms and lightning, urban waterlogging, fire in congested settlements.
- Mitigation is structural (embankments, spurs, raised platforms) or non-structural (flood forecasting, early warning, land-use zoning, insurance, drills).
Contemporary issues
Poverty and unemployment, migration, child labour, gender inequality, substance abuse among youth, fake news and cyber-safety, and the Right to Information as a tool of accountability.
Worked example
'Every monsoon a village is cut off for ten days.' Step 1: classify - seasonal flood, high vulnerability, low capacity. Step 2: propose one structural measure (raised community shelter, all-weather approach road) and one non-structural measure (SMS early warning and a school evacuation drill). Step 3: explain why - mitigation reduces risk over years, while relief handles only the current event.
Traps
- Calling every hazard a disaster; it becomes one only when losses exceed coping capacity.
- Confusing mitigation with relief.
- Naming Zone IV for Assam; it is Zone V.
- Treating an embankment as a non-structural measure.