Information regarding landslide prevention which we seek...

The world over, the mantra being chanted in Disaster Management circles is "prevention, mitigation and preparedness" with the old, post-disaster "relief-centric" approach being rightfully relegated to the dust bin.

Not so in West Bengal(W.B) state, India.

So two junior "Relief Officers" from the W.B State Govt's Disaster Management department attended the National level conference on landslides in Kolkata on the 16Jul2008 (refer post of 19Jul2008) and the Govt of W.B website on Disaster Management says it all (refer post of 28Jul2008) as regards landslide prevention and mitigation.

This attitude must change and fortunately the Right to Information (RTI) Act 2005 - which mandates timely response to citizen requests for government information - gives us just this weapon to bring about a change in thinking.

Yesterday, I put up an RTI application for information regarding prevention and mitigation of landslide hazards in our area to the District Magistrate who heads the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) for Darjeeling district.

The same is reproduced below.



This is the first one....

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comment by praful rao

My thanks to friends in the STH mailing list who helped me in putting up this RTI application