Living with floods
There was a time when the people of north Bihar, India's most flood-prone state, celebrated the monsoons and lived with floods. How and when did they become victims of floods, struggling to control the waters? Now, a silent movement to empower citizen's groups to re-establish their cultural ownership over rivers is taking shape
Survivors of Latur
A decade after the Latur quake killed 8,000 and injured 16,000, there is plenty of evidence of poorly planned and executed disaster management interventions: villages relocated several kilometres from the fields where women work; new toilets constructed but unused because there is no water; newly-built settlements so flimsy that people are afraid to sleep in them
Gruel centres across Andhra Pradesh feed the starving
In drought-hit Andhra Pradesh, even tea and tubers are no longer available. The thin gruel doled out at various centres keeps hundreds of starving people going
Women 'major' in disaster management
The terrible aftermath of the Orissa supercyclone in 1999 prompted UNDP to launch the Community-Based Disaster Programme (CBDP) which trains small armies of volunteers to handle evacuation, first aid, reconstruction, carcass disposal and counselling in disaster situations
Living through the great drought
Yana Bey travels through the poverty-stricken Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region of Orissa, meeting villagers with long memories of hard times and starvation
Roughshod democracy
Rakesh Sharma's film tells of how the GMDC has capitalised on the Gujarat quake to displace the gullible population of two tiny villages. Using a natural calamity to speed up land acquisition speakes of the inhumanity of corporate and State processes