Disaster Management: Educating The Masses

The day was 26th January 2001 and the country was busy preparing for the celebrations of the 51st Republic Day, when a natural disaster shook the country and devastated the Gujarat state. About 20,000 people died. On Dec 26, 2004, one of the deadliest catastrophes hit the coastal region in Asia. About 2,25,000 lives were lost as a result of the destruction by Tsunamis. In the morning hours of October 8, 2005 one more cataclysmic earthquake hit the north of Indian landmass and adjoining country Pakistan. More than 80,000 people died.

All these events that resulted in havocs have impelled many people and representations to think about solutions and handling the crisis as it occurs, in a better way. The most talked about concept has been disaster management. Its importance got so much magnified in the past decade that hundreds of agencies were set forth to arrive at possible solutions.

Our education institutions also provided their helping hand and introduced education programmes related to disaster management. Disaster management has become quite popular, nothing less than a cliché. Its importance and growing popularity can further be estimated by its recent incorporation in the CBSE and ICSE high school syllabi. All this points out to the fact that the country is trying to educate the masses as how to handle crisis situations and save human lives.

At the moment the trailblazers in the new field are of the opinion that knowledge sharing is the best way to avert the maximum damage. By imparting knowledge to the people, who are prone to such risks or people living in areas where seismic activity and other natural disasters are more likely to hit, many lives can be saved. The same idea has been conceived the education institutions that are trying to educate the people as how to survive in those trying times. As there is no guarantee about the contingency plans, the mass mobilization and sharing of knowledge seems to be the best precaution.