10 August, 2019, Annapurna Express A friend of mine who used to work for ICIMOD said to me: “You should write an op-ed about how we always respond to disasters when they occur, but we never plan for them proactively. An earthquake cannot be predicted, but floods happen yearly. Why don’t we have policies and implementation to stop this from happening? It’s a policy of responding to disaster only after it occurs. The government is ready with relief materials and helicopter rescues. But they have no policies or implementation to prevent disasters.” Why, indeed? Is it that the political elites know that disasters are profitable moments to bring in generous amounts of state funding and international aid? Commentators have talked about the “Bihar Flood Mafia,” who thrive on this mismanagement of the rivers and who look forward to the yearly flood of funds that follows the inundation and breakage of barricades. Writer P. Sainath explored this disaster capitalism more in his book “Every
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