India committed to strengthen community resilience, says Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju

BANGKOK: India today emphasised its strong commitment to build and strengthen community resilience at all levels, seeing it as an important tool to deal with disasters like tsunami, cyclones, floods and other calamities.

"We have developed large scale community based programmes for all sectors like education, health, livelihood, housing, employment, food security, agriculture and drinking water to increase the coping capacity of the community in dealing with disasters," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told the 6th Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction here.

He stressed that disaster management capabilities could not be acquired overnight.

"It calls for long years of patient, determined and concerted efforts by multiple organisations."

The main theme of the conference is "promoting investment for resilient nations and communities."

It will be discussed under three sub-themes - enhancing resilience at local levels, increase public investments for disaster and climate risk management to protect development gains and private sector role.

Rijuju said the efforts included channelising of technological developments into community based preparedness and creation of infrastructure like multi-purpose cyclone shelters.

He said it was also important that those assets were utilized by the communities during the 'non-disaster' phase.

"We have made sure that the socially disadvantaged groups, senior citizens, the disabled, women and children receive adequate attention in all the preparedness efforts, mock drills and rehearsals."

India's handling of the 2013 disaster Cyclone Phailin striking Odisha has been hailed by international disaster experts as a copybook example of preparedness and strengthening of community resilience.

"We from India, would like to share our experiences with other countries and in turn, learn the various approaches and good practices elsewhere on Disaster Risk Reduction," Rijuju told delegates from 63 nations in the Asia Pacific region, ministers in charge of disaster management and the UN.

He expressed hope that the sharing of the experiences and learning would help in ensuring the resilience of communities and safety of the people's livelihoods and assets.