Balasore, Bhadrak Notes

The coastal districts of Odisha are often the Ground Zero of the ferocious cyclones that originate in the Bay of Bengal. But what was once a destructive phenomenon has now been tamed by the state thanks to a comprehensive, community-centric cyclone preparedness initiative that began twenty-five years ago. Last week, I spent a few days touring the coastal districts of Balasore and Bhadrak and got to see some of the cyclone mitigation efforts firsthand.

Mangroves are now increasingly recognized as a bio-shield that can mitigate the impacts of cyclones and storm surges. Just as any other development intervention, planting them involves solving complex questions around salinity tolerance, species selection, species diversification, community participation, incentive-alignment and of course strong institutional mechanisms at the grassroots. Saving them from grazing cattle itself calls for complex negotiations with farmers and the Panchayat.

Today, close to one thousand cyclone shelters dot the coast of Odisha. During landfall, predicted with increasing accuracy by meteorological agencies, compete villages are evacuated and sheltered in these structures till the storms pass. How the state ensures compliance is itself a question worth pondering. Is it the relatively low levels of human capital that ease the decision to evacuate and leave their houses unattended or the awareness of the devastation that cyclones can cause? In fifty years, with higher per-capita income levels, will the state still be able to pull out mass evacuations?

The evacuation drills involved a siren activated by the State Emergency Operations Center, followed by trained community volunteers at the village fanning out as per pre-defined evacuation plans. Pregnant and lactating women, children, the elderly, the disabled and the injured are all managed with defined SOPs.

With the frequency of cyclones set to increase, these efforts would need a constant recalibration, a regular review of standards, integration of technological advances and of course frequent simulation exercises and upgraded structural measures.

Balasore also houses the Integrated Test Range of the GoI in Chandipur. The Chandipur beach is also unique as its waters recede upto 5 kms during the low tides. Until then, I’d never been to a beach where the sea was invisible, appearing only as a faint blue ribbon in the horizon.

In 2019, after Cyclone Fani, the NYT had published a piece on Odisha’s cyclone preparedness. While the zero casuality model is worth emulating, the regular erosion of economic capital of the poor and the economic distress it causes should be the next domain of focus. The unseen, invisible impacts are always the hardest and most complex problems to solve.