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Over the last two decades, disaster management theory and practice has seen a paradigm shift from "relief and response" to "prevention, mitigation and preparedness". There is an increasing emphasis on linking disasters to development and understanding social, economic and physical causes of people's vulnerability. At the same time, there are initiatives to set appropriate standards for relief management in post-disaster situations. But issues related to reconstruction following disasters seem to have been left behind. While phrases such as "vulnerability assessment" and "risk

management" have become buzzwords in disaster research, relatively few comparative studies exist on management of reconstruction programs. It proved an arduous task to compile an updated list of information resources on the subject for this issue of Asian Disaster Management News.

"Prevention is better than cure" is indeed true for disaster management, but even with an emphasis on prevention, major disasters do occur in both the developed and developing worlds. Catastrophic events expose the inadequacies of developmental processes, but also provide an opportunity to sow the seeds for reduction of future vulnerability and improvement of efficiency and equity. Unfortunately, at all levels, the lessons learned from the management of one reconstruction program are seldom used for the management of another. Although in most cases the issues emerging from any reconstruction program are quite predictable, the wheel seems to be reinvented each time.

In this article, I attempt to shed light on some of the issues that emerge again and again in the design and management of reconstruction programs particularly in housing. The issues are, quite expectedly, distinct but inter-related.

One of the first issues is of the assessment of damage itself. It is not very often that the damage in a disaster is assessed objectively. This assessment forms a basis for the design of reconstruction programs at different levels. From the community to the local, provincial and national governments, various interest groups project the nature and extent of damage in their own ways. While the extent of damage is almost always inflated, figures are seldom presented on what is left, which is often more than what is destroyed.

Damage assessment is closely linked with financial issues that are invariably at the core of any reconstruction program. The source of finance, whether government, national and international donor agencies, or communities, determines the nature of a reconstruction program. The nature of financial assistance, whether soft loans, cash assistance or building materials, also has an impact on the effectiveness of the reconstruction program.

The assessment of damage and the nature of financing determine the fundamental nature of the program. Often, the choice is between government-sponsored contractor-based projects with well-defined inputs, outputs and time frames, or community-based participatory projects that upgrade and utilize local building materials and skills. The community-based programs may compromise on the speed of reconstruction, but are invariably more sustainable and result in risk reduction in the long run.

Land use planning in any reconstruction program invariably emerges as an issue with far-reaching implications. The communities (and administrators) are faced with a choice between reconstructing on the same site or moving to a new site, each with their pros and cons. While better settlement layout and infrastructure planning may be possible in a new location, it is often expensive and may also disrupt established patterns of life. An assessment of how much remains undestroyed in the old site may also discourage relocation.

Reconstruction programs also offer an opportunity to set new standards of quality to mitigate the impact of future disasters. In the aftermath of a disaster, increased awareness creates conducive environment for promoting improved construction standards in the unaffected (but hazard prone) areas as well.

Issues such as damage assessment, finance, delivery mechanisms, land use planning and standards of quality emerge in almost all reconstruction programs. Yet governments and bilateral and multilateral donors do little to anticipate the course of a new reconstruction program and deal with these issues in a proactive manner. While training and education on other aspects of disaster management have increased over the last decade, there are few examples of capacity-building efforts for reconstruction management.

The perception of what is "community-based" or "successful" reconstruction differs among stakeholders in a reconstruction program. The contrast in the perceptions of community-based workers and government administrators is clearly visible in the two articles on Maharashtra reconstruction in this issue. In "Retrofitting after or before Disaster", in pointing out that "no more than 2% of over 200,000 houses opted for retrofitting", Rajendra Desai refrains from calling the program a success. But in the next article, Krishna Vatsa describes the same program as a "most demonstrable example of a successful post-disaster reconstruction". Describing the success of the program, he says that for the first time, "the social and community aspects of housing were subsumed into the role of engineering consultants [my emphasis]". Clearly, to him the primary role is of engineering consultants. While Krishna mentions community participation consultants who draw villagers into the planning process, Rajendra calls for a simultaneous and gradual three-step process of awareness generation, demonstration of cost-effective but safe techniques and creation of an effective delivery system. There are no rights or wrongs here. Different stakeholders in a reconstruction program are driven by their own individual and institutional interests. For example, while NGOs may prefer to look at long-term developmental aspects of reconstruction, governments are often driven by the (often political) need for speedy reconstruction.

Any reconstruction program has to meet a range of complex and often conflicting needs of affected people. But there is definitely a pattern to the issues that emerge during the management of reconstruction programs. It is high time for more comparative studies to be done to guide the management of reconstruction programs. These studies will help in identifying best practices and lay foundation for developing guidelines and training curricula for the managers of reconstruction programs. Such initiatives will go a long way in improving the quality of future reconstruction programs and in ensuring that reconstruction programs meet the longer term development objective of the affected areas.