Shefali J Lakhina's Page

In past weeks, I have been dedicating some think-time to the largely untapped role of civil society and volunteerism in disaster prevention. If so many of us volunteer in the aftermath of a disaster, why don’t we do so before a disaster? Why do few volunteer groups and networks flourish in ‘ordinary’ times? Are there particular kinds of societies that support more active civil society participation? How do institutions working with the public mind factor this into their disaster policies and…

Previously a bastion of disaster preparedness, in the post-March 2011 world, Japan will stand for something more. Its tragedy will define how the notion of ‘acceptable risk’ comes to be debated in the public domain. 



This debate will be significant for two reasons:



One, we are inching towards a global moral consensus that will consider death and damage from disasters in the 21st century as unacceptable. Disasters have long been treated as a disruption to business…