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Beyond Evacuation: Can Odisha Build a Disaster-Resilient Economy?

In the last two decades, Odisha has earned national and international recognition for managing disasters, particularly cyclones. Its ability to forecast, evacuate and minimise loss of life has become a model for disaster preparedness. But Odisha now faces a tougher challenge: Can it protect economic gains with the same determination with which it protects lives?

Saving lives is the first duty of disaster management. But a cyclone does not end when people return home. The economic damage can continue for months or even years through destroyed homes, damaged roads and power networks, crop losses, disrupted businesses, lost wages, supply-chain breakdowns and pressure on public finances.

At the recent roundtable on Odisha 2036: The Economy in Transformation—Building a Research Agenda, experts from various fields argued that Odisha's disaster strategy must therefore move from disaster management to disaster economics.

The next frontier: from response to resilience

Highlighting the inefficiencies in the disaster management policy of Odisha, Saudamini Das, Professor, Indian Society for Ecological Economics, Tripura, was of the view that while the state’s disaster management was widely recognised, “it needs to become more progressive rather than remain conventional”. The state has become exceptionally effective at evacuation and emergency response. “The next step is to ask whether the same efficiency exists in preventing economic losses,” she opined.

Arguing that absence of deaths cannot become the only measure of success, Professor Dash asserted that the “state should measure not merely how many lives are saved, but how much income, infrastructure, production and productive capacity are protected.” A cyclone that kills few people but destroys thousands of houses, damages roads, disrupts electricity and wipes out crops is still an economic disaster, she added.

Every cyclone has an economic bill

Similarly, addressing the rise of climate change as a major obstacle for the state’s economic growth, Narendra Nath Dalei, professor, Central University of Punjab, argued that cyclones, floods, droughts and heatwaves increasingly affect agriculture, infrastructure, industrial production, health and supply chains.

He specifically highlighted Odisha's exposure as particularly significant “because its economic geography combines a long coastline with mineral-rich and industrial districts, large agricultural communities and climate-sensitive livelihoods.”

“The question, therefore, is no longer how quickly can we respond to a cyclone but how much economic disruption can we prevent when the cyclone arrives”, he stated.

To compensate the lost working days, damaged infrastructure, agricultural losses, business interruption, school closures, health costs and the fiscal cost of reconstruction, Dr Dalei called for a “systematic calculation of the economic cost of disasters”.

Disaster resilience is economic infrastructure

This according to Bhagirath Behera, Professor, IIT, Kharagpur can be made possible through a conceptual shift. “Disaster resilience should be treated as an economic infrastructure,” he stressed, for “this changes the way governments think about expenditure”, he added.

“A cyclone shelter is not merely a disaster-management asset, or an embankment is not merely a flood-control structure. A resilient power network is not merely an infrastructure investment. Each is an economic asset that protects future production and income,” the IIT Kharagpur remarked.

Highlighting the need of a “resilience audit of its critical infrastructure”, Dr Behera stated that the audit should work towards overseeing roads that repeatedly fail during floods, vulnerable power networks, industrial clusters facing recurring disruption, ports, warehouses, markets and transport corridors that are exposed, districts that lose the greatest number of working days after a disaster, among other things. This, in turn will determine investment priorities, he argued.

The geography of vulnerability matters

Besides, as disasters do not affect all districts equally, Dr Behera stressed the need to “recognise differences in vulnerability and develop a district-level resilience index.”

The same cyclone warning may require very different responses in Ganjam, Jagatsinghpur, Puri, Balasore or an interior district, added Dr Das. Questioning whether blanket approaches to evacuation and disaster response are always economically efficient, Das who has conducted various surveys on post disaster management was of the view that “if vulnerability varies, preparedness and resource allocation must vary too.”

The objective should not be maximum evacuation at any cost. It should be the right evacuation, in the right places, backed by the right infrastructure and information, she stressed.

Flood management and economics of resilience

More importantly, the state should also work towards managing floods that have become a recurring phenomenon. A flood that kills few people but submerges crops, damages roads, cuts power and paralyses local markets is still an economic disaster. Low mortality does not mean low damage.

While Odisha has become adept at evacuation and relief, repeated flooding raises a harder question: are we managing floods, or merely managing their aftermath?

It’s important to demarcate the two, experts argued. While Dalei placed climate risk at the heart of Odisha’s growth challenge, warning that floods, cyclones, droughts and heatwaves increasingly threaten agriculture, infrastructure, industry, health and supply chains. Das urged for more progressive disaster-management. “Flood management must move beyond rescue and relief to prevention, resilience and rapid economic recovery,” she stressed, adding that the new measure of success should not be only how many lives a flood spares, but how much livelihood, infrastructure and economic activity it leaves intact.

Odisha must learn to count avoided losses

One of the biggest gaps in disaster economics is that governments are generally better at counting expenditure than calculating losses avoided.

If ₹100 crore spent on an embankment prevents ₹500 crore of future damage, that is not merely expenditure, it is an economic return.

The same principle should apply to cyclone shelters, resilient housing, drainage, mangrove restoration, early-warning systems, climate-proof roads and stronger electricity networks.

Odisha needs a system that measures:

• economic losses before and after disasters
• losses avoided through resilience investments
• recovery time for different sectors
• income losses among vulnerable households
• business and supply-chain disruptions
• infrastructure downtime and
• the fiscal cost of repeated reconstruction.

This would turn disaster management into an evidence-based economic policy.

Natural buffers are economic assets

Disaster economics must also recognise the value of nature.

Mangroves, wetlands, forests, rivers and coastal ecosystems are often treated as environmental concerns rather than economic infrastructure. Yet they can reduce flooding, storm surges, erosion and livelihood losses.

The question should therefore be: What is the economic value of protecting Odisha's natural buffers? Such accounting would help shift the debate from conservation as a cost to conservation as an investment in resilience.

Odisha has mastered the art of saving lives from disasters. The harder task now is to ensure that every flood, cyclone or heatwave does not become a setback to livelihoods and growth.

Disaster management must evolve into disaster economies: from counting the damage to calculating the losses avoided; from rebuilding what was destroyed to investing in what can withstand the next shock.

The ultimate test of resilience is not whether Odisha can survive a disaster. It is whether its people and economy can emerge from it without being pushed backwards.