ABSTRACT
India has a rich and prosperous history of literature. Several ancient writers such as, Aryabhatta, Warah Mihir, Chanakya, Shushrut, Yadnyawalkya, etc and creations such as, Veda, Upanishada, ManuSmriti, Arthashastra, etc. are guide in present era also. These manuscripts proves ancient Indigenous capacity in the field of Literature, Medicine, Mathematics, Statistics, Politics etc. This paper is a focus on Kautilya’s thoughts on disaster management and their contemporary relevance.
Kautilya is a great Indian political scholar and classic thinker in Mauryan period. “Arthashastra” is his marvelous manuscript written in the 3rd century. It contains into 15 books, 150 chapters, 380 shloks, 4968 sutras which deals various 180 topics. This book covers broader area of economic policy, politics, administration, military strategy, international relations, laws, ethics and etc. Apart from this, the manuscript also deals with corruption and its preventive measures, effective management of disasters.
Kautilya have given various preventive measures and instructions for the king to deal with all types of natural and manmade disasters occurred at that time and also relevant to the age. There is no far consciousness about Kautilya’s efforts of Disaster Management
In the fourth book of Arthashastra, Kautilya has written about natural disaster and in the ninth on man-made disaster. He used the word ‘vyasana’ for disaster. He classified it into two categories namely Daivam vyasna in present context known as Natural Disasters and Manusam vyasana known as Manmade Disasters in the present context.
Daivam means divine, an act of God occurs due to astrological forces or bad position of stars causes natural disaster. There are eight types of daivam or natural disasters namely Agni (Fire), Udaka (Flood), Vyadhi (Epidemics/Diseases), Durbhiksha (Famine), Musaka (Rats), Vyala (Beasts/Wild animals), Sarpa (Snakes) and Raksamsi (demons/evil spirits).
Manusam Vyasna means when misfortune occurs due to human involvement or wrong policies. For manusam vyasna or manmade disasters, human beings are responsible for all causalities. There are three types of Manusam Disasters namely Suddhapatti (threat from treasonable and enemy), Amisra (threat by allies of treasonable and non-treasonable), Paramisra (threat when allies and enemies come together).
Kautilya also gave some views regarding the management of the two types of disasters. Kautilya always believes that prevention is better than cure. Hence he gave various preventive methods and rules to deal with these types of Disasters.
This paper claims that today the types of disasters as presented by Kautilya are existed in different forms. It will deal the preventive measures suggested by Kautilya. Kautilya has written about how to manage pre-disastrous situation as well as disastrous situation, what are the King’s duties, how the officer’s would behave as well as how the citizen’s active participation is required. At last, this paper will check its relevance to the age. Can we take any lesson from Arthashastra? Will it guide in disaster resilience will be assessed in this paper.
