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USAID, India, March 2001 – December
2003
After the devastating earthquake in the region of Gujarat,
India in January 2001, TCGI and Environmental Planning Collaborative
with support from the FIRE-D project, and in collaboration
with other non-government organizations, assessed the impact
on the region. In the course of their research they developed
an information gathering system that would result in reconstruction
proposals from diverse stakeholders. This project has produced
a number of reports, including “A Case Study in Participatory
Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery in India” and a
manual for post-disaster planning.
Lessons learned from the research surrounding
this disaster resulted in valuable and succinct models that
transfer readily to many community-based projects. Among these
are
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Sharing information, and using GIS maps
to display it, strengthens reconstruction planning. |
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Supporting a common information cell conserves scarce
resources and facilitated coordinated action. |
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Residents’ participation in preparing reconstruction
plans is both feasible and desirable. |
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Participatory planning helps achieve the decentralization
objectives of the 74th Constitutional Amendment of 1992. |
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Involving community stakeholders helps ensure they will
support the plan and be more willing to contribute their
time and resources to help carry it out. |
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Community empowerment will result in communities that
are rebuilt in a way that contributes to sustainable development. |
Above the personal suffering that completely
leveled more than 250 towns and villages, the disaster inflicted
a major blow on the livelihoods of these communities. Approximately
one out of every three agricultural employees worked in the
impacted districts. While almost two out of every three non-agricultural
employees worked in the impacted districts. The worst hit
districts -- Kachch, Jamnigar, Surendranagar and Rajkot --
are home to approximately 250,000 enterprises that employed
almost three-quarters of a million people. In the Kachch District
alone, the district that sustained the most extensive damage,
there were 45,608 enterprises employing 118,384 employees.
Nine out of every ten Kachchi enterprises and employees worked
in the non-agricultural sector.
The conclusion to these findings pointed to
the importance of including the rapid restitution of income-generating
facilities in relief efforts. As it turned out, few development
agencies addressed this need, and family members languished
in the aftermath of the earthquake, without schools, optimism
or work. The overarching economic and morale-building need
is to get people back to work as soon as possible.
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