Tag Archive for 'Anil Agarwal'


Call for Papers: Infrastructure Regulation: What works, Why, and How do we know?
Deadline: 05 December 2008.




The Permanent Disaster

Here is an interesting article recommended by Nalaka Gunawardene:

Four years ago, this magazine’s editor, environmentalist Anil Agarwal, wrote a scathing comment after the Bhuj earthquake: “Disasters come and go but our government has become a permanent disaster”. While we are vulnerable to natural disasters — cyclones, earthquakes, floods or droughts, and now the tsunami — these temporary and preventable disasters turn into massive calamities because of the “perpetual disaster that this country’s governance system has come to represent”.

Why? Because earthquakes do not kill, the buildings do. Anil put the question: why, then, do we not build, in areas identified as seismic, earthquake-resistant structures? After all, traditional architecture took into account a region’s vulnerability and so designed buildings that could withstand tremors. “Why then does the…