By H. Unnathi S. Samaraweera –

Dr. H. Unnathi S. Samaraweera

Sri Lanka is enduring one of its worst disasters in recent history. Triggered by Cyclone ‘Ditwah,’ catastrophic landslides and floods have impacted all 25 districts. According to a Disaster Management Centre (DMC 2025) report from 2 December 2025, the calamity has affected 407,594 families, encompassing 1,466,615 individuals nationwide. The official toll reports 410 deaths and 336 persons missing. The districts of Puttalam, Colombo, and Gampaha contain the highest numbers of affected people, while Badulla, Kegalle, and Vavuniya report the most severe damage to the built environment, with thousands of houses fully or partially destroyed. The list of severely impacted districts – including Mannar, Trincomalee, Rathnapura, Kurunegala, and Jaffna – continues to grow. The national infrastructure has been crippled. Authorities have established 1,441 safety shelters. Over 200 roads remain impassable, at least 10 bridges are damaged, and sections of the rail network and national power grid have been compromised. In northern and central districts such as Jaffna, Trincomalee, Badulla, and Kandy, severe disruptions to electricity, communications, and transport have isolated entire villages. Access to clean water is a critical and widespread concern.

Amidst this devastation, a fundamental question demands our attention: are our disaster management efforts truly centered on the affected people? This reflection explores how the phases of preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation can be better handled. Given that the window for preparedness and mitigation for ‘Ditwah’ has passed, this discussion will first focus on response and recovery, before returning to the essential lessons for future mitigation and preparedness. It is crucial to recognise that these four phases are deeply interconnected in the long-term planning of government, donors, and the public.

The government’s initial response included issuing flood and landslide warnings to at-risk communities. Some institutions, like the DMC, demonstrated lessons learned from the past by communicating all messages in Sinhala, Tamil, and English from the outset. However, a revealing inconsistency emerged. Despite the Northeast Maha Monsoon (October to January) primarily affecting the Tamil-speaking northeast and eastern coastal regions, certain agencies, such as the Irrigation Department, initially issued crucial warnings on 27 November only in Sinhala and English (Irrigation Department 2025a). It was only later that Tamil-language warnings were released (Irrigation Department 2025b). This corrective action, ensuring minority communities were not left without vital information, must be acknowledged. Such practical adjustments towards inclusivity are vital, not merely as a procedural checkbox, but as a necessary redress to historical patterns of discrimination and neglect. This commitment to inclusive communication must become an unwavering standard across all government and service sectors, extending far beyond moments of acute crisis.

A committee without communities: questioning the architecture of recovery

On 1 December 2025, the Government Official News Portal announced the formation of a Management Committee for the ‘Rebuilding Sri Lanka’ Fund, comprising representatives from the public and private sectors. The stated logic behind this initiative was to ensure transparency and accountability. The news item detailed that the committee would be “empowered to ensure the effective administration of the Fund, including assessing requirements, setting priorities, allocating resources and disbursing funds for approved recovery activities,” while ensuring “full transparency in all financial operations.” The announcement concluded with bank details for donations from any donor, local or overseas.

This move, however, raises a profound and urgent concern: are we ignoring the pervasive logic of disaster capitalism? The term, popularised by Naomi Klein, describes the “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities.” (Klein 2007, p.6). As a citizen, I am deeply troubled by the inclusion of large private corporations in a committee that will decide how a fund – comprised of contributions from foreign governments, donors, and the compassionate public – is spent. Granting them the power to define needs, set priorities, and manage resources risks transforming a national tragedy into a vehicle for profit. The inherent mandate of large corporates is shareholder return; wielding influence over public disaster funds could easily exacerbate the socio-economic disparities that already plague Sri Lanka. It is necessary to point out that the populations most devastated by ‘Ditwah’ are the poor and working class, vast numbers of whom subsist in the precarious informal sector.

If transparency and accountability were the genuine objectives, the committee would include officials from the Auditor General’s Department for real-time expenditure tracking and from the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka to safeguard rights and prevent discrimination. Moving away from a model dominated by large corporations is crucial for equitable, sustainable, and community-led recovery. A “Rebuilding Sri Lanka Fund” should be a vehicle for democratic and accountable reconstruction, guided by principles of public audit, subsidiarity (where resources flow to the most local, effective level), equity for the most vulnerable, and a commitment to build back better with climate-resilient practices.

Ironically, the most critical voices – those of civil society and the disaster-affected communities themselves – are absent from this rebuilding committee. This omission perpetuates a persistent myth held by successive governments: that agencies should tell affected people what to do, rather than listen. The real voices of those who have lost everything remain unheard and neglected. This absence forces us to ask a larger, more fundamental question: whose disaster resilience is being decided, and by whom? At this stage, highlighting the absence of women on the committee seems almost redundant. The representation of diverse and heterogeneous voices has never been a genuine concern for power-holding authorities in such structures.

In essence, a legitimate rebuilding committee must intentionally shift power from centralised state and corporate entities to a tripartite coalition of accountable local government, responsible local private sector (such as SMEs and social enterprises), and ‘empowered’ civil society, with disaster-affected people at its heart. The government must understand that the goal is not merely to rebuild infrastructure, but to rebuild trust, equity, and resilience from the ground up. The question, therefore, remains: will a committee shaped by ‘big corporates’ answer the critique so often levelled at post-disaster recovery – that it is top-down and overlooks the most vulnerable? The current architecture suggests it will not.

Beyond charity and donations: the need for a coordinated mechanism

In the suburbs of Colombo and other urban centres across Sri Lanka, a monumental wave of solidarity has taken material form. Mountains of dry rations, clothing, sanitary products, and medicine have been collected, largely through informal, community-driven channels. Community kitchens have sprung up to provide cooked food and drinking water to those displaced. This extraordinary philanthropic outpouring – an overwhelming national characteristic witnessed during the 2004 Tsunami and subsequent major floods in 2016 and 2017 – is both commendable and vital. The immediate, voluntary mobilization of the non-affected public has provided a crucial lifeline that continues to sustain shelters. However, this very generosity reveals a critical systemic gap. Reports indicate that collection points, like the Youth Centre in Maharagama, are overflowing with items awaiting distribution. While not undermining these vital community efforts, the chaotic nature of this process risks repeating historical failures. Donation distribution must be managed to guarantee equitable access for all affected people, irrespective of ethnicity, religion, language, gender, or geography. The lessons from the 2004 Tsunami recovery are stark, where the northern and eastern coasts did not have equal access to compensation and aid (De Mel, Ruwanpura, & Samarasinghe, 2009). We must ensure that this pattern of uneven support is not replicated.

A poignant photograph circulated on social media and in news reports on 1 December 2025 encapsulates this dilemma: a vast bundle of abandoned, excess food packets in a flooded Colombo suburb. This image lays bare a painful contradiction: one part of the country languishes, waiting for basic necessities, while another is overwhelmed by surplus. It is a stark illustration of existing social inequalities and underscores the urgent need for a proper structure to coordinate aid and ensure equitable access. The mechanism for this already exists in principle. Divisional Secretariat (DS) offices and their officials are playing a pivotal role on the ground in most affected areas. The crucial step is to formally connect these offices – which possess local knowledge of needs – with the voluntary groups managing donations. As President Anura Kumara Dissanayake correctly identified in his speech on 30 November 2025, the fundamental challenge is the lack of proper and accurate data on affected communities. Now is the time to establish a mechanism to collect this vital information. Grama Niladhari officials and DS divisions must be provided with sufficient resources to efficiently input data from their respective areas into a user-friendly, unified digital platform. This data would be transformative, serving not only to streamline the equitable distribution of donations but also to inform all subsequent disaster recovery and reconstruction efforts. True resilience is built not just on charity, but on justice and order. It requires channeling our collective compassion through a system designed for equity, ensuring that no community is left waiting while another is buried under uncoordinated plenty. However,  cleaning roads, providing affected people with the resources required for clean-up, removing garbage, and collecting it, as well as addressing urgent health concerns, should be immediate priorities in this early phase of recovery. So far, such critical action seems to have been missing.

Response strategy: are we drifting towards disaster nationalism?

The official government narrative has focused on the dissemination of early warnings and the pre-establishment of evacuation centres, a marked procedural improvement from the 2016 and 2017 floods. However, this narrative obscures three critical, interconnected questions. First, do these evacuation centres provide sufficient basic necessities -reliable food, clean water, sanitation, and safety -for those compelled to use them? Second, given that the majority of the affected are from lower socio-economic backgrounds, do they possess the economic means and social capital to evacuate immediately upon receiving a warning? Third, and fundamentally, do people trust the warnings issued by authorities? As learned from the floods of 2016 and 2017, the crisis for many is not merely a lack of designated shelters, but a profound lack of places to go. Simply naming buildings as evacuation centres does not constitute a proactive or adequate mitigation strategy for this vulnerability. What is required are practical, community-driven initiatives that actively address these logistical and trust deficits, if the state is genuinely committed to protecting its most ‘vulnerable’ citizens during the disaster.

This leads to a more troubling dimension of the response, visible in the ongoing crisis: the militarisation of the entire disaster management process. The process has increasingly become the responsibility of the armed forces -the army, air force, and navy. This image has been amplified by the arrival of Indian and Pakistani military contingents to support rescue operations. A potent “saviour complex” thus takes hold, seamlessly transforming “war heroes” into “disaster heroes” in the public imagination. This glorification is not incidental but systemic, rooted in an institutional framework that is profoundly problematic.

The core challenge is structural where key civilian disaster management institutions – including The Disaster Management Centre (DMC), National Disaster Management Council (NDMC), National Building Research Organisation (NBRO), National Disaster Releif Services Centre and The Department of Meteorology – all fall under the purview of the Ministry of Defence, headed by the President. Placing disaster response under a military hierarchy inevitably frames a humanitarian crisis through a lens of security, command, and control. It prioritises a top-down, logistical “rescue” mission – epitomised by dramatic images of soldiers lifting citizens from floodwaters – over the more complex, long-term, and participatory work of community-based preparedness, equitable resource distribution, and resilient recovery.

This consolidation fosters a specific kind of disaster nationalism. The narrative becomes one of a unified nation being valiantly saved by its (and its allies’) disciplined forces, deflecting scrutiny from the state’s failure in civilian planning, infrastructure maintenance, and social welfare that exacerbates vulnerability. It channels public gratitude and political capital toward the military and the executive, rather than toward strengthening democratic, civilian institutions accountable to the people they serve. In this model, the disaster is not a catalyst for systemic critique and equitable rebuilding, but for the consolidation of executive power and the perpetuation of a state-centric, militarised patriotism that leaves the root causes of vulnerability unaddressed.

Beyond heroes and handouts: Reclaiming civic responsibility in disaster

As we experience the aftermath of the devastation, a critical question emerges: what is the true civic responsibility of a citizen in a disaster? This obligation extends beyond the immediate, reactive generosity of donations and transcends the passive role of being a “victim” to be saved. It is an ethical and moral duty towards community and fellow citizens that applies equally to the affected and the unaffected, demanding a shift from a culture of charity to one of sustained solidarity and shared agency.

The current crisis has revealed a disturbing undercurrent that the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation, now amplified by accessible artificial intelligence. From manipulated images of aid distribution to false claims about relief efforts, this digital fog sows confusion, erodes trust in institutions, and hampers effective response. Combating this is a primary civic duty. It requires vigilance – verifying information before sharing, relying on official and credible community sources, and actively calling out falsehoods. In an age of AI-generated content, our collective discernment becomes a first line of defence for social cohesion.

This leads to the heart of the matter as our collective complicity in the narrative of disaster nationalism. When we uncritically glorify the armed forces as the sole heroes of evacuation, we inadvertently endorse a model that disempowers communities and centralises responsibility. It creates a convenient spectacle where the state appears as a saviour, deflecting attention from its failures in proactive mitigation, equitable planning, and strengthening civilian institutions. Celebrating military rescue, while understandable in moments of desperation, should not absolve us of the harder, long-term work of building resilience from the ground up. True civic responsibility lies in questioning why the military must perpetually be the first and last resort, rather than a support to a civilian-led system.

Therefore, our civic imperative is to advocate for and participate in building community-driven, long-term disaster preparedness and mitigation. This means moving beyond the episodic crisis response to embedding resilience in our daily lives. The blueprint is clear that we must empower local institutions – the Grama Niladhari offices, Divisional Secretariats, and community-based organisations – with resources, training, and decision-making authority. As citizens, we can demand the decentralization of disaster management from the Ministry of Defence and support the development of local disaster management committees that include the voices of women, farmers, fisherfolk, and the marginalised. It is important to note that the continuation of such initiatives in sustainable manner is crucial too. Practically, this translates to community risk mapping, establishing local early-warning communication trees, identifying and strengthening neighbourhood safe spaces, and conducting regular preparedness drills. It means advocating for land-use policies that prevent construction in floodplains and supporting sustainable agricultural practices that reduce landslide risks. For the non-affected, civic duty extends to sustained political advocacy for these policies and supporting hyper-local civil society groups year-round, not just during a calamity.

The path forward is not through relying on heroic interventions after the fact, but through the unglamorous, persistent work of building collective capacity before disaster strikes. Our responsibility as citizens is to shift the paradigm – from one of grateful dependency to one of empowered participation; from a nationalism of rescue to a republic of resilience. The question is not whether the forces will come to save us, but what we have built, together, so that their role is no longer the most critical one in the story of our survival.

References

De Mel, N., Ruwanpura, K. N., & Samarasinghe, G. 2009. After the Waves: The Impact of the Tsunami on Women in Sri Lanka. Colombo, Social Scientist’s Association.

Disaster Management Centre (DMC), 2025, Situation report 2/12/2025 10.00 hours. https://www.dmc.gov.lk/images/dmcreports/Situation_Report_at_1000hrs_on_2025__1764654146.pdf

Irrigation Department, 2025 a, Deduru Oya Basin: Waring 27/11/2025 https://www.irrigation.gov.lk/web/images/Flood-Warning-Message/Deduru_Oya_Flood_Warning_-_NO_04_20251127_-_RED.pdf

Irrigation Department, 2025 b,  Critical Flood Warning – Lower Catchment of Mahaweli River Basin 29/11/2025 https://www.irrigation.gov.lk/web/images/Flood-Warning-Message/Critical_Flood_Warning_for_Mahaweli_River_-_No_08_-_20251129_Special_RED.pdf

Klein, N. 2007, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books.

The Government Official News Portal, 2025. ‘Management Committee of the ‘Rebuilding Sri Lanka’ Fund Appointed with Representatives from the Public and Private Sectors’. https://www.news.lk/news/management-committee-of-the-rebuilding-sri-lanka-fund-appointed-with-representatives-from-the-public-and-private-sectors

*Dr. H. Unnathi S. Samaraweera, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka