Search

Disasters and crisis are becoming more complex with deadly cascading effects. The current coronavirus pandemic is viewed as the newest form of health and socio-economic crisis that has disrupted the flow of normal life for millions. Viewing the pandemic as a unique or unpredictable occurrence shifts responsibility and accountability from a host of institutional actors to those who were unable to protect themselves from the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic and incurred heavy losses. Situating the pandemic within the well-established policy debates around disasters enables us to understand how the novel coronavirus rapidly transformed into a humanitarian crisis in India. Successful disaster risk reduction involves the creation of a "culture of resilience" but resilience thinking has been criticized as lacking in "moral compass", showing a poor understanding of power relations and as governance that emphasizes individual responsibility. Chronically poor people can be "resilient" at the expense of their long-term wellbeing. Drawing on the moral, political and philosophical debates about the shift toward "resilience" in global disaster policy, this article examines the rhetoric of "self-reliance" to address COVID-19 dislocation. We find that disaster policies that rely mainly on resilience and compliance increase state power while absolving them of responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Policy is concerned with minimising poverty and inequality through redistribution of goods and services. In the twentieth century, after the Second World War, European parliamentary democracies enlarged its ambit by making social policy an important instrument to create equality setting the benchmark for other countries. For the new independent countries in the global South, such as India, social policy followed different trajectories. In the aftermath of independence, India relied on preventive instruments to address the effects of famine, de-industrialisation and high levels of deprivation. Despite achieving high economic growth and rapid poverty reduction in the following decades, its dependence on targeted poverty reduction programme has remained. Recently, there has been some attempt to replace these strategies by rights-based programmes supported by legal framework advocated by civil society groups. Through a case study of The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (referred to as FRA 2006), this article analyses the successes and failures in realising the goal of linking welfare provisions with the ideas of social citizenship and democratic rights. The article finds widening gulf in the interests of state actors and local community arising from the compromised interpretation of the social justice vision enshrined in FRA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the author’s engagement with humanitarian response after massive floods in the Kosi region in Bihar, this article highlights that the disaster caused by floods is not an accidental interruption but is linked to the socio-political structure of the state. Through an examination of the processes of social exclusion in times of disaster, the article situates the role of state and society in the context of recent floods. This article deals with the discrimination and exclusion of weaker sections of the society during rescue, relief and rehabilitation process. Individual and communities’ powerlessness, as was encountered immediately after floods, were put in the perspective of the structural situation in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]