![]() ![]() “This really improved bottom-up communications, while allowing the officers at the collectorate and the state departments to take faster decisions,” said Vishnu. Apart from this, 15 micro teams with five to six people in each team, from all relevant departments – water to power – were deployed. “For the worst-affected areas, the district administration in Nagapattinam created six teams, each comprising a minister from the state cabinet and an IAS officer,” said V Vishnu, Special Officer for Cyclone Rehabilitation and the executive director of the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation. Daily “things-to-do” lists featured details ranging from quantities of relief material required to the areas to be covered. ![]() Officers in the field said daily agendas set by the authorities at the state and district level were shared on WhatsApp groups created for disaster management. It also strengthened the organisations at the grassroots level, which remain the bedrock of efficient disaster management. It gave those even at the lowest level a direct line to the collector’s office. It allowed officials to run decentralised, 24x7 virtual command centres for disaster relief and rehabilitation. ![]() WhatsApp, then, was the antipode to the old way of functioning. Requests from the panchayat would crawl through the bureaucratic chain to reach the top. As recently as three to four years ago, if there was a disaster, Kishore and his colleagues would have to attend multiple meetings to facilitate two-way communications and relief operations. It was clear to them that this was the fastest way to act. Once the mobile networks were restored in the affection regions, officials took to the messaging app for quick information flow and inter-operations. The gravity of the situation found a reflection in the WhatsApp conversations between government officials. Around 5,000 boats and over one crore coconut trees were smashed. Several thousand people had lost their livelihoods. Even a fortnight after the cyclone hit, shelters and schools remained full with the displaced. Electricians and trucks carrying poles and wires were a common sight for weeks. There was no power for hundreds of kilometres: 30 substations were damaged, 16,000 bent by the wind and 30,000 devastated. Nearly 1.7 lakh houses were flattened or damaged. ![]() Uprooted trees lay on the roads, blocking access to villages. Within 15 minutes, Kishore made the necessary arrangements, and directed the tehsildar to contact the local police station.Īt ground zero after Cyclone Gaja, which hit Nagapattinam and five other districts in Tamil Nadu with wind speeds of over 120 kilometre per hour on November 16, the mood among residents was grim. There had been reports of protests in a few districts over the administration’s alleged failure to provide relief and compensation. With a deference that did little to mask the urgency, the tehsildar requested for police protection during the distribution of relief hampers in some affected areas. It was a message from a tehsildar on a WhatsApp group for government officials dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Gaja. It was 9.19 am on a late November morning in Nagapattinam when sub-collector Kamal Kishore AK’s phone buzzed. ![]()
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