Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 4 (IANS) Even as political parties trade charges over the handling of the latest floods, a larger and more fundamental question has resurfaced in Kerala. Has the state really become better prepared to deal with natural disasters despite spending years building institutions and investing heavily in disaster resilience after the devastating 2018 floods?
The immediate political battle is predictable. The CPI(M)-led Opposition has accused the three-month-old V.D. Satheesan government of failing to ensure effective coordination during the present crisis.
The government has responded by alleging that the previous LDF administration spent a decade focusing more on publicity than on strengthening institutions that are expected to respond when disasters strike.
But beyond the political rhetoric lies a more important issue.
Kerala today has the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA), supported by 14 District Disaster Management Authorities, the State Emergency Operations Centre, the State Disaster Response Force, the Institute of Land and Disaster Management, the Department of Environment and Climate Change, besides several statutory agencies dealing with climate change, biodiversity, wetlands, pollution and coastal management.
After the 2018 floods, every local self-government has to prepare a local disaster management plan, which is mandatorily needed to be updated annually and submitted to the District Planning Committee.
Despite this extensive institutional network, every major spell of heavy rain continues to trigger the same questions about preparedness, coordination, communication and accountability.
The latest floods, which have claimed 21 lives, left seven people missing and forced thousands into relief camps, have once again brought these institutions under public scrutiny.
Ironically, Chief Minister Satheesan himself has been among the strongest critics of the KSDMA in the aftermath of the 2018 floods.
As a senior opposition legislator then, he questioned the authority’s effectiveness and had argued that it had failed to live up to its mandate.
Today, as Chief Minister, he depends on the very same institutional machinery to guide the state’s disaster response, highlighting how governments change but institutions remain.
The 2018 floods also led to one of Kerala’s biggest post-disaster programmes, the Rebuild Kerala Initiative (RKI).
Conceived as a long-term plan to build back better, the initiative was backed by substantial financial assistance, including a major loan from the World Bank, to strengthen infrastructure, improve disaster resilience and make the state better equipped to withstand future climate-related events.
Nearly eight years later, questions are being raised over what measurable changes the initiative has actually delivered.
While several infrastructure projects were launched and new positions created under different programmes, critics argue that there has been little public assessment of whether these investments have translated into faster response systems, stronger local preparedness or better inter-agency coordination during emergencies.
Experts argue that Kerala now needs more than another round of political accusations.
They say the time has come for an independent social and performance audit of the state’s entire disaster management ecosystem, from the KSDMA and district authorities to the Rebuild Kerala Initiative and allied environmental institutions.
Such an exercise, they argue, should examine whether these bodies have met their statutory objectives, how effectively public funds have been utilised, whether early warning systems have improved, and whether lessons from the 2018 floods have truly been institutionalised.
As extreme weather events become more frequent and climate risks intensify, the debate can no longer be confined to which political party is in power when disaster strikes.
The more enduring question is whether Kerala’s institutional architecture, strengthened with years of policy reforms and substantial public investment, is actually delivering on its promise of making the state safer and more resilient.
The biggest lacunae today is that all these bodies have no coordination at all; data sharing doesn’t take place, and most importantly, it has been turned into a job-generating agency for those who matter.
–IANS
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