Disaster Management & Neo-Colonial Social Structure of Pakistan

Written by: Adil Badshah (Mansehra)

In terms of disasters and hazards, Pakistan is among the most disaster-prone countries in South Asia, having suffered an estimated US$ 18 billion in damages and losses during the past decade (World Bank, 2017). Pakistan is also situated between Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates and tectonic processes at the colliding boundaries of the Indian and the Eurasian tectonic plates, driving the Himalayan orogeny, are causing significant seismic instabilities in the region. Regular flooding also takes place at the Indus river basin where major floods occur during the July-September monsoon season as a result of the seasonal low depressions developing over the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal (NDMI, NDMA, UNDP, 2007). Heat waves in the early summer may also cause flooding at various sites due to many rivers being snow-fed. Other hazards include droughts, landslides, storms and cyclones; glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), avalanches and technological accidents (NDMI, NDMA, UNDP, 2007). Pakistan has also been ranked highly in the Climate Vulnerability Index of 2019 - ranking 8th among the 10 most affected countries by extreme weather events between 1997 and 2016 (German Watch, 2019).

According to intellectuals and religious leaders of Pakistan, natural calamities have been occurring just because of the sins of poor people, crimes, and malpractices of local communities.  They are unable to comprehend the geography of natural hazards and their vulnerabilities. In the same way, they blame unemployment, poverty, high prices of edibles, and hunger as the fate of poor communities and thereby hiding all complicated facts related to systematic exploitation in the society. Why are all disasters and calamities in the fortune of poor people only?  Is it so that all elites living in the Bahria Enclave or DHAs are pious and religious? Rich people, who are accommodating in metropolitan cities are virtuous and worthy?  What is the real fact behind it? 

Let’s try to diagnose the reality! In the present era, Disaster Management is an emerging subject that deals with mitigation, prevention, and preparedness against anthropogenic and natural disasters. For understanding this phenomenon, we must have to come across with the terminology “vulnerability”. Vulnerability is the presence of fragile social and physical conditions that trigger disaster and fourfold its impact. This social condition is the same as the frail immune system in the human body that triggers diseases to damage the body system.  Social structure (economic, political, educational, judicial system) is supposed to facilitate human society with equity, having transparent process and procedures in order to serve humanity with equal distribution of resources, justice, and education for all, In such a case, the immune system of society becomes resilient just like immunity in the human body that increases the body resilience against diseases. The vulnerability has various dimensions at both macro and micro levels such as  (Poor and fragile social structure along with dysfunctional political, economic, educational, and judicial systems) which leads to micro-level vulnerabilities like human fatalistic attitudes, feeble social institutions, pathetic infrastructure of communities, weak risk governance, lack of disaster management planning, poverty, ignorance,  weedy implementation of policies, accommodation of people at risky areas, unemployment, lack of emergency funding, lack awareness at community and government level on disaster risk reduction, etc. The above mentioned dimensions of vulnerability multiply the damages and impact of the disaster.

Disaster Pressure and Release Model /Crunch Model

The Disaster Pressure and Release Model of Disaster management addresses the ideology (Road Map of Society) on which society is based. Economic, Political, and Educational System are the primary root cause of the destruction in society. Shah Waliullah Dehalvi, who was a great scholar of the subcontinent, explained that if ideology i.e. Road Map of Society on which Political, Economic, and Educational systems is based on justice, then social vulnerabilities like poverty, sectarianism, injustice, social stratification, violation of human rights and social exploitation tend to be decreased. The ultimate outcome would be to build the social and infrastructural resilience in society. If ideology (Road map of society) of political, economic, and educational institutions/systems is based on injustice then chaos, poverty, and miseries will be the fate of society and any natural disaster would have a fourfold impact on society. Shah Waliullah R.A explained that there is no scarcity of resources in the world but its unjust distribution is the real problem in human societies.  Similarly, the concentration of wealth into a minor group of society is an economic vulnerability because of wrong and inhumane ideology. In Pakistan, 1% of elites hold 85% country’s resources which leads to large scale of social vulnerabilities like poverty, unemployment, violation of human rights, fear of the unknown and  common misery.      

Different determinants that have an important role to build the resilience of communities at both micro and macro levels are discussed hereunder; -

1- Intra-personal determinant

Intra-personal determinant addresses cognitive, intellectual, and physical vulnerabilities such as levels of life skills, education, psychological coping and social skills, etc. The education system of the country plays a significant role to create awareness about disaster management, personal safety, mitigation, and defensive skills in dealing with an emergency situation. Similarly, psychological support to affected communities helps to build their psychological resilience. Shah Waliullah Dehalvi explained that human personality needs to be integrated with four universal morals, including cleanliness that includes personal hygiene, cleanliness of the house and neighborhood and drinking of clean water can save the endemic or epidemic during emergencies. The second universal moral is to accept the supremacy of Allah or any other power larger than the human being itself. If someone accepts the supremacy of Allah and then believes in Allah to be strong, all psychological complexities, superiority or inferiority, stress, and anger may be controlled to a great extent. The third universal moral is being courteous and humble. The humbleness in personality increases the spirit to serve humanity without creed, class, and religion. The fourth universal moral is Justice; having justice in your daily activities creates a prosperous society. Similarly, at the time of disaster or emergency food, non-food items may reach to marginalized communities properly and corruption is minimized to a great extent.  Psychological support from expert institutions helps to recover the disaster-affected population from post-traumatic disorders in emergencies. 

2- Interpersonal and community-level determinants

Resilient development of communities at the village, union council, and district levels is indispensable for preventing and mitigating disaster impacts. Resilient development means to develop the social and physical infrastructure according to the identified potential hazards of the communities. Flash food, land sliding, earthquake, hurricane and heavy snow are some of the main hazards any human community may face. Vulnerable communities need to apply micro-level mitigation measures such as family-level emergency plans, emergency tools kits, capacity building on emergency first aid, light search & rescue, personal safety equipment, etc. Moreover, at the community level disaster management committees are already culturally and indigenously designed in most human societies such as Jirga in KP, Punchait in Punjab or Otaak systems in Sindh. Indigenous disaster management and social organizations at the community level to build their resilience with disaster mitigation knowledge, climate change adaptation, land mitigation skills, emergency first aid, light search and rescue collectively equip disaster management potential of a society.

Shah Waliullah Dehalvi also elaborated important distinctions of human beings that separate them from other animals. These distinct features include, firstly to work for the welfare of humanity, secondly love beauty in its every form and struggle for it and wanting to make his environment beautiful and the third one is learn from others and invent as human beings want to discover or invent new things for the development of society after learning already available knowledge and skills. Disaster preparedness (to cope with emergencies), and the development of resilient culture and civilization is included in human nature.  If human beings find themselves in a conducive social environment, where they can groom all three components of human distinction, then society will surely grow with coping with disasters. 

 3- Institutional level determinant

Three main social institutions are responsible to ensure human rights agreement in society. Firstly, Parliament, whose role is to make policies and rules according to societal needs and evolving trends. Secondly, bureaucracy implements these rules and policies in society. Thirdly, judiciary examines any lapses or violation of these rules. These three macro institutions are the pillars of the system of every state. As we know that our outdated institutional neo-colonial state procedures are the main cause of our national vulnerability towards disasters. If we examine the parliament; only 1% of feudal lords have access there that creates democratic vulnerability. Similarly, in the judiciary and bureaucracy, top positions are held by the descendants of our political elite that dates back to colonial era. This means to capture all macro institutions of the country by our elite at macro-level institutional vulnerability because 99% of country’s representatives are not in parliament, judiciary and administration so all policies, process and procedures results in the facilitation and boosting of the business of elite class only.

British designed government machinery and bureaucracy for controlling the people of the subcontinent; it was not designed for solving social problems and fulfillment of the human rights of common people. After independence, we continued colonial institutional legacy and the results are in front of us, poverty, unemployment, corruption, injustice, discrimination, sectarianism, feudalism, illiteracy, and crime in society which are core social vulnerabilities generated by the system.

Educational institutions create social stratification by providing different syllabus which results into educational vulnerability.   Disperse thinking, judiciary selling the justice and health institution not able to cure the poor segment of society. If government institutions are not performing in normal situation, how they could deal with the emergency situation.       

4-Macro level determinant

Disaster preparedness, resilient development, mitigation, national level policies, plans, strategies, and institutionalization is lacking in our country because the county’s budget depends on International Monitory funds (IMF) so half budget of the country is spent to pay the interest which ultimately creates economic vulnerability at the national level.  We have legislation at the national level like the National calamity Act 1958, the Emergency Relief Cell 1971, the Federal relief commission 2005, the National disaster management ordinance 2006, the National disaster management Authority (NDMA), National disaster management commission (NDMC), National Disaster Management Act 2010. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough budget or capacity to implement above-mentioned acts with proper institutionalization. Furthermore, our leadership’s priority area is not disaster management; legislation and institutionalization are being done  only to pursue international funding and not for preparedness to disasters, that ultimately create macro level vulnerabilities. 

5-Ideological determinant

 If we want to design a project for a specific theme, then first we have to develop the idea, and then need to develop its goal, objectives, outcomes, and activities.   In the same way, implementation of an ideology is a project for the whole society, it nourishes an idea and then create a program around them.  There are three ideologies on which projects were designed for the whole society namely:

1-      Capitalism: This project's main idea is capital, so it’s all objectives, goals, inputs, and outputs circulate around creation and accumulation of capital.  About 70% of the countries in the world have deployed their systems on the philosophy of capitalism.  

2-      Socialism: The project of socialism's main idea is labor, so it’s all objectives, goals, outcomes, outputs, and inputs circulate around protection and benefit of labor. About 30% of countries in the world have deployed their systems on the philosophy of socialism.

3-      Islam: The project of Islam’s main idea is humanity, so it’s all objectives, goals, outcomes, outputs, and inputs circulate around humanity, there is no country or society at present in the world that is designed on the project of Islam.  

Pakistani society was designed on the project of colonialism implemented by the British in the subcontinent which is an outdated version of imperialism/capitalism. In the project of colonialism, British created feudal lords with the Permanent land settlement act of 1793. Before, colonialism land was the property of the government and allocated to farmers who cultivated it; but the British changed the regime, and the land was distributed among those traitors who helped to fight against freedom fighters. 

In this way, 1% of feudal lords become the owner of 95% lands of the subcontinent. According to the disaster pressure and release model; political, economic, and educational systems are the root causes of creating social, physical, and infrastructural vulnerabilities. If a minority of society would be the owner of all resources of the country, then the majority of the population is compelled to live in hazardous areas. Colonialism and capitalism create slums where crime, diseases, and miseries become the fate of most of the population.  Similarly, in mountainous and plan areas people don’t have enough capacity/resources to live in safer locations.

If we want to save our country from natural and anthropogenic disasters, then it needs to build a social structure on an ideology that is based on justice and equity. Only then will our political, economic, and other important social institutions perform effectively and efficiently. Neo-colonial social structure is itself a disaster and the root cause of social and physical vulnerabilities.