Rajib Shaw | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
As a result of the devastating landslide, which ravaged Wayanad last year, an expert in the management of Rajib Shaw from Keio University, Japan, called for a fundamental shift in the Indian readiness strategy for disasters – urging the early warning systems to be embedded directly into communities.
Prof. Shaw led a team of experts from the Indian Institute of Bombay, the Indian Institute of Management-Kozhikode, the National Institute of Technologically-Calicut and Keio University in Japan, a study based on extensive investigation of Wayanad landslide. A comprehensive message called “Wayanad Lonslides 2024: System of early warning – Change of the Last Mile to the First Mile” was released in Kozhikode on Wednesday (August 6, 2025).
The study suggests that teachers serve as ambassadors to awareness of disasters, while students act as spreading information in their families and communities. “People in Wayanad got a warning, but they did not eat on them. This gap between warning and reaction made us explore it deeper,” said prof. Rajib Shaw on Thursday (August 7, 2025) in interaction with Hindu.
He pointed out that he failed from the combination of behavioral, cultural and institutional factors that collectively prevent early evacuation and readiness.
According to a report, landing threatened on July 30, 2024 – one of the deadliest in the history of Kerala – almost 400 lives were claimed, more than 200 people injured and displaced around 7,000. More than 1,500 houses were destroyed, with economic losses estimated to be more than 281 crore.
The report identifies the deadly mixture of factors behind tragedy, including extreme precipitation 409 mm per 24 hours and vulnerability induced by man, such as uncontrolled deforestation, changes in soil use, poor fragile terrain construction and increasing population and pressure in tourism on ecologically sensitive western ghats. It directly directly connects the climate change with an intensified monsoon that triggered the disaster.
The failure in response to the disaster was not due to the lack of warning, but by disintegration in communication and institutional coordination, so that the communities left as the “last mile” in the defective system instead of the “first mile” of resistance. Local Panchayats lacked the literacy and disaster training, while the official communication was stopped at bureaucratic delays, the report is said.
Shaw, former Faculty of Kyoto University and Chairman of the Global Science Technology Group UN, said that schools serve as default evacuation centers in Japan and hold annual exercises adapted to regional risks – be it tsunami, earthquakes or landslide. “Teachers, students and families know their roles during the disaster. This is the kind of cultural shift we need here,” he added.
Prof. Shaw, the distraction of the notion that the technology was caused by Wayanad, pointed out that the real collapse consisted of how the public reacted. “Without knowledge, exercise, training for disasters or culture of readiness, warning has only become noise. People did not know what to do,” he said, adding that the overcome of the abyss between institutions and communities must now be Kerala’s highest priority.
Shaw stressed that every effective system of early warning is based on three key pillars – timely and accurate information, behavior and perception of the community and clear mechanisms of evacuation. “Wayanad worked technology and a warning was released. But the second and third pillars collapsed,” he said.
Published – August 7, 2025 20:29
