Why India needs a professional approach to disaster management

Public knowledge of the entire phenomenon of disasters is abysmal in most of the world, and more so in India, where less informed citizens tend to take this as something inevitable

Disasters have always been a part of life progression and were, in earlier years, taken in stride as something inevitable; in many cases, they were simply divine intervention. Two phenomena have boosted the potential of disaster-related events in recent years. First is climate change, which has set off unpredictable weather patterns, a surfeit of rainfall that does not have avenues to run off, resulting in floods, or extreme temperatures that result in intense heat or heavy snow.

Glacial lakes are forming more frequently, posing a threat to the ecosystems in the lower areas. The phenomenon of disasters emerging from climate change is almost endless and touches numerous domains, including food security, water scarcity, sowing and cropping patterns, and the major impact on infrastructure in all domains of national development efforts.

The second phenomenon adversely affecting human security is unguided and unplanned development, which touches the domains of transportation, energy production, urban progression, tourism, and the like; all these are things that are supposed to bring comfort to society, contribute to higher earnings, and overall improve the quality of life.

China managed to lift 700 million of its people out of poverty due to progressive economic development. However, the chances of disasters also increased alongside this development. Train and air crashes, landslides, industrial fires, chemical leakages in manufacturing hubs, bridge and tunnel collapses—all these form just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Public knowledge of the entire phenomenon of disasters is abysmal in most of the world, and more so in India, where less informed citizens tend to take this as something inevitable. However, many governments in developed societies conduct research and apply technologies to first prevent and then mitigate disasters if they occur.

On occurrence, the response to them has an organised approach with earmarked, well-trained human resources and material that can ensure timely relief, rehabilitation, compensation, and building back better what is lost. In a nutshell, the entire concept of Disaster Management (DM) has a defined process called the DM cycle, which commences with measures of prevention and mitigation against potential identified disasters.

The cycle also includes capacity building as part of preparedness. Thereafter comes response, or the means to extend relief and rescue, save lives and livelihoods through trained human resources, modern machinery, and technology; search and rescue forms an important aspect of this. Following this comes the stage of recovery from the disaster after a proper assessment of the damage and destruction, which will also indicate the need for additional resources to build back better and create a more disaster-resilient environment in the affected area.

In India, we were late in waking up to the need for a more professional approach to DM. That is because development was slow, urbanisation was comparatively low, and academic information on the subject was nonexistent. As is the usual experience of nations embarking on an ambitious mission of development after 1991, DM was the last thing on the mind of the then government, and academia was insufficiently influential to urge its adoption. It was therefore left to three events and a few personalities to trigger the need for the professionalisation of DM in India.

These events were the Odisha super cyclone of 1999, the Bhuj earthquake, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 (over 10,000 fatalities each). While the National Disaster Management Act was passed by Parliament in December 2005, the Gujarat government had taken proactive steps to pass a similar act at the state level, raise a State Disaster Management Force (SDRF), the Gujarat Institute of Disaster Management (GIDM), and set up a State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA).

All this happened under the then-CM of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. The replication of the creation of institutions at the national level saw the setting up of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), and the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM). In effect, these three institutions formed and continue to progress the three essential aspects of the DM domain in India; policy, response, and ‘knowledge and research’ proliferation. As part of the recognition of its rise as an area of increasing challenge, DM, which earlier existed under the Ministry of Agriculture, was placed under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), and a DM Division was created under an Additional Secretary.

The wisdom of creating a policy making body such as the NDMA, with an expanded responsibility for multiple vistas of DM, has continued to pay dividends, especially since disasters have increased in quantity and intensity. In 2009, NDMA came out with the National DM Policy and subsequently helped with the adoption of the National Platform for Disaster Risk Resilience, or NPDRR, a platform for learning and knowledge exchange, review of progress made in the field of disaster management, appraisal of the degree to which the DM progression has been implemented by states and UTs, and giving direction and advice on the matter. Thus far, three sessions of NPDRR have been held and are well documented in content, analysis, and advice. It’s a platform valid until 2030 and can be reformatted for optimum delivery on knowledge exchange and management, which are among the premier issues at stake in DM.

In 2019, the National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP) was released, which, along with the various hazard specific guidelines, forms the bedrock of the response. The same is now under review. Each ministry of the Government of India and various institutions are required to have their DMPs vetted by the NDMA. Each state, UT, and district is required to evolve and notify its disaster management programme.

It is relatively unknown that the Chairman of the NDMA is none other than the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India. In 2016, at the Asia Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Resilience (DRR), the PM gave a unique code for ensuring better and more optimum disaster risk resilience DRR. Commonly called the PM’s Ten Point Agenda for DRR, it has virtually become an international mantra and can always be accessed at the NDMA website at the link . Among the points that are covered in this seminal advice are gender sensitivity, coverage of risk for all, risk mapping, leveraging technology, creating a network of universities, exploiting social media and mobile technology, and ensuring international cooperation in DRR.

From a knowledge angle, what the public must know are three things. First, the Indian Government recently gave the highest priority to DRR, and in that, to Early Warning (EW) technologies related to disasters, and to disaster risk financing. This was while India was leading the G20 group in 2023. It formed the 13th vertical among the domains to be addressed by the G20. Three meetings of the DRR Working Group were held in Gandhinagar, Mumbai, and Chennai, and its findings were included in the declaration of the G20 Summit in September 2023. Due to India’s leadership in the field of DRR, the successor nation, Brazil, is now following up keenly to make DRR a key component of the G20 group.

Another point is that one of the most potent EW systems for disasters, where technological warnings can be assessed, has been adopted in India. Mass public warnings and advisories to individuals through their mobile sets are being generated for cyclones, lightning, heat waves, and floods. During Cyclone Biparjoy, 32 million messages on mobile sets were generated, resulting in a well-prepared community and administrative response. The system is constantly under improvement and goes by the name Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). CAP alert origination tools are software programmes designed to allow authorities to create alert and warning messages in a consistent format for routing to multiple alerting systems. More on this will be heard in the near future as the technologies are refined.

Lastly, the Ten Point Agenda mentions international cooperation as one of the areas for emphasis. There is no better example of this than the number of times the NDRF (16 units of 1100 men each) has had its teams fly abroad to provide relief to suffering communities. The Nepal earthquake of 2015, Japan’s triple disaster of 2011, and the Turkey earthquake of 2023 come to mind. The Indian Armed Forces are known for their proficiency in the conduct of international HADR operations. In 2023, 60 Parachute Field Hospital of the Indian Army did a yeoman medical mission in Turkiye, setting up self-contained surgical facilities and ensuring full gender sensitivity by taking six lady medical officers in the contingent.

Disaster management in India has come to stay as a domain of serious professional involvement. The NDMA, NDRF, and NIDM, along with some outstanding involvement of the SDMAs, SDRFs, and different other entities at the district levels too, are focused on ensuring the maximisation of knowledge about this all-important field through a series of write-ups in print and digital media. The idea remains the same: save more lives and more livelihoods through a professional approach to disaster management.