India: Northeast must brace themselves and develop a disaster preparedness plan - Opinion

'Will the earthquake (6.7 on the Richter scale) that gave the Northeast and eastern India a strong jolt in the wee hours of Monday wake up the Centre and states and push them to focus more on following a sustainable and resilient pattern of development in the region?' The author of an opinion piece in the Hindustan Times thinks this is 'unlikely'.

According to the piece, the experts of the National Institute of Disaster Management, who received warning of a bigger catastrophe in the unstable Himalayan region, correctly says that the DNA of disaster management has to change, the states need to develop a sound building code and policymakers need to understand the threat of a “natural time bomb” and dovetail it into every plan because earthquakes can have huge effects on the local or regional economy.