Acehtsunami

Lighting is not recognized by Government of India as a disaster for Calamity Relief Fund (CRF) though large number of human beings, houses and Cattles were affected every year in particular areas, most of the time it affects individuals and limited people, no damage to total community. Incidences are less but have severe damage to life and property. Some states have taken initiatives and providing certain assistance to the affected people from state funds. Recently most of the states have already requested the Central Government to include Lighting as one of the disaster, so that affected people would get some benefit.

Lighting safety awareness has been under taken by some of the Eastern and North Eastern States to educate the people on lighting safety. In individual cases people have adopted the lighting protections to the houses and adopted safety measures to reduce the risk by staying inside the house and disconnecting the electronic equipments and avoiding the contact of any iron materials during lighting time. In community level some places are isolated because of more frequent lighting during rainy season.

Floods that have displaced and stranded at least 2 million people in Northern Bihar continue to worsen. The flooding began last week when the Kosi River, known as the Saptakoshi in neighboring Nepal, burst its banks and changed course, inundating three of Bihar’s northeastern districts - Supaul, Madhepura and Araria - an area that has not been affected by major monsoon flooding in more than 50 years.

Because prolonged flooding is a rarity in the area, it has been difficult for authorities to convince most people to evacuate. The Prime Minister visited the affected areas in Bihar and declared Bihar floods as national calamity. He also announced an immediate release of Rs 1,000 crores (US$244 million).

As of 28 August the damage details in the state (Central government figures) are:

· Population affected: 2,668,000

· No. of human lives lost: 47

· No. of districts affected: 16

· No. of villages affected: 1,598

The state government is engaged in rescue and relief operations and claims to have adequate food. However, the lack of adequate drinking water and the unhygienic conditions in the camps are posing a high health risk. The National Disaster Management Authority has therefore, expressed the urgent need of Water purification/treatment plants in large numbers to take care of the flood affected people both in India and Nepal.

Effective communication among the stakeholders is one of the vital pillars for the success of any type of programme and it is worth appreciating that Tata-Dhan Academy has attempted to use folk media for enhancing community’s understanding and knowledge on vulnerability & disaster risk reduction (DRR).

Basic objective behind using folk media among the community is because of its clear-cut advantages over other forms of media (print and electronic). The languages and dialects are their very own, because of which, intelligibility is very high. Apart from familiarity of language, gestures, music and rhythm is what makes this media acceptable among the rural folks (who mostly have low education, limited outlook and face difficulty in understanding different concepts). This media creates a forum, where there is direct personal contact between the sender of the message and the receiver. Thus the personal contact and the various factors of familiarity, makes the messages more credible and acceptable than if it were transmitted through the electronic media.

Community has been exposed to these art forms for centuries and it has become a part of their ethos. So, the effective method of communicating with the backward population in rural areas is to talk to them in terms of myths and legends which are a part of their religion. The farmers and the fishing folk residing in Tamil Nadu’s countryside (coastal districts) must be having their own god and goddesses and myths (mythology and folklore), and if such myths are combined with DRR concepts, and communicated in their own local dialects, then it would go a long way rather than a performance by an urban group. In most of the folk art forms, audience participation is an integral part, and it is this all important aspect of everybody being able to participate that encourages greater attentiveness and therefore greater and better understanding of a message.