Nurture local leadership for a resilient society

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Nurture local leadership for a resilient society

Wednesday, 13 January 2021 | Manu Gupta

Nurture local leadership for a resilient society

Govt must work towards building an enabling environment for nurturing local leaders and integrate them into the process, thereby ensuring no one gets left behind

The migrant workers who once appeared on the front pages of newspapers and dominated television news were no longer visible in the months following the nationwide lockdown, which was necessitated by the Coronavirus pandemic. Once they reached their respective villages and hometowns, all thoughts of them were erased from public memory. It was as though the crises of hunger and homelessness had been effectively resolved. But nothing could be farther from the truth and the misery of the silent workforce continued in the hinterland as it was plagued by “lockdown hunger.”

After the Government announced the lockdown on March 24, 2020, States and the country at large were reminded of the fact that its cities were incapable of providing a dignified life to a significant section of its residents. They remained confined to the margins despite making significant contributions to the local economy. To make matters worse, relief schemes announced by the Centre and State Governments in response to such calamities seldom reach the most vulnerable, creating gaps in local governance and management.

The pandemic and similar disasters in the past, have underscored the role of the local leadership in filling the critical governance gap. In their communities, these leaders take charge, understanding very well, the socio-cultural nuances and the language of the  people they seek to help. What sets them apart are their courageous actions, often going beyond the call of duty and acting with a sense of urgency to serve those facing a calamity. 

In June 2020, when cyclone Nisarga made landfall in Maharashtra, it caused widespread damage in the Raigad area, tearing down homes, devastating farms and felling power poles and trees. The cyclone had hit the coastal districts of Maharashtra from the Arabian Sea with wind speeds that reached up to 120 kilometres per hour. At this time, Pascal Sinor, a priest at the Mary of Nazareth church in Alibaug, Raigad district, distributed rations to 250 families in his parish and, about a 1,000 families in 13 neighbouring tribal villages. With the help of a local civil society agency, Sinor could also arrange for clothes and roofing material for 40 households.

The priest showed the importance of local leadership. He showed that in a crisis, the leadership challenge is an unusual one: The leader needs to act with spontaneity, take inconvenient decisions and confront a system that is paralysed, albeit temporarily, by the calamity.

In the cyclone-prone State of Odisha, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik boldly declared just before a major twister hit the State in 2013 that he would “like to see zero casualties.” This, in a State that had borne the brunt of a devastating cyclone in 1999 that claimed more than 10,000 lives! To set such a goal for his Government, in a region that suffers from endemic poverty and has poor infrastructure, was a huge political risk. He, nevertheless, announced his goal.

Not only did the State succeed in saving thousands of lives, but it also set an international best practice and now is a model for other States in the country. In May 2019, too, when Cyclone Fani made landfall in Odisha, loss of life was minimal despite the severity of the storm.

Actions by leaders like Patnaik, in serving people threatened by disasters, have been recognised in a recent report on local leadership for disaster resilience, published by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). The report, which documents the journey of several local leaders across Asia through the course of different crises, aims to inspire many more local leaders to contribute to the achievement of the Sendai Framework’s goal of disaster and risk reduction in communities.

Perhaps a silver lining in managing the COVID-19 pandemic is also the emergence of many local leaders — ordinary people who have risen to meet the needs of others. For instance, Sourav Bhattacharjee, a theatre student of Rabindra Bharati University in West Bengal, got the idea to open a community kitchen called “Mohamarir Heshel (pandemic kitchen)” during the lockdown in March. He went back to Khowai district of Tripura, his hometown, and started this initiative by recognising the fact that many people had lost their livelihood and could not bank on their savings throughout the pandemic.

Bhattacharjee is just one of the many local leaders that the pandemic gave birth to. Whether these remain one-off initiatives, limited to a story in the media or we enable a system that nurtures and recognises such leadership, is a call for all of us to take.

Despite their crucial role, local leaders face considerable challenges in their work, persevering even in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties, ranging from a lack of funds to indifference in their communities. At the same time, they might also lack access to technical know-how and nuances of humanitarian action. Local leadership and action deserve acknowledgement and enhanced support from national governments, international organisations, civil society, businesses, and academia. The role of such people is indispensable in the hour of crisis. Involving them in planning allows for better resilience of local communities.

Governments and civil society must work towards building an enabling environment for nurturing local leaders and integrate them into the process, thereby ensuring no one gets left behind.

(The writer is co-founder of a disaster readiness, response and rehabilitation NGO, SEEDS. The views expressed are personal.)

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