Be Mains Ready

Approach

• Introduce by mentioning about India’s geographic conditions which make India prone to disasters.
• Explain the different types of disasters India is exposed to.
• Mention the primary reasons making India vulnerable to such conditions.
• Mention the steps taken to improve the situation and suggest some reforms.

Introduction

India, being a geographically diverse country, faces severe risks of natural disasters. Lack of proper mitigation efforts further deteriorates the condition. Every year disasters like floods, landslides, fire incidents, etc cause severe loss of lives and damage to property.

Body

Some of the major types of disasters India is exposed to are:

Primary reasons for increased vulnerability to such disasters are as follows:

• Geographic vulnerability :
  
  • Around 59% of Indian landmass is prone to earthquakes of moderate to very high intensity.
  • Hilly areas of Northern and North-Eastern Himalayas are at risk from landslides and avalanches.
  • Close to 5,700 kms, out of the 7,516 kms long coastline is prone to cyclones and tsunamis.
• Inadequate preparedness: Government fails to take adequate measures beforehand which further aggravate the situation.
  
  • As per IIT Gandhinagar, nearly 50% of India faced drought in 2019 despite IMD’s early forecast of an El-Nino year. Factors like flawed implementation of schemes which fail to check faulty water conservation structures, growing water intensive crops, overuse of groundwater, etc shows inadequate preparedness of the government.
• Political reasons :
  
  • Centre approved just 19% drought relief funds for States from 2015-16 to 2017-18 as part of financial assistance under the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF).
  • Lack of coordination among states prevents them from cooperating and taking preemptive measures. For ex: disputes related to river water sharing and inadequate dam safety management, leading to floods like Kerala floods of 2018.
• Policy and governance failures:
  
  • Fire accidents in public places like hospitals due to negligence and non implementation of existing mandatory fire safety norms.
  • Collapse of under-construction infrastructure projects like flyovers, metro tracks and residential buildings due to poor quality of construction, illegal addition of floors, etc.
  • Lack of adequate infrastructure to monitor and manage large crowd gathering resulting into stampede.

Disaster risks in India are further compounded by increasing vulnerabilities related to changing demographics and socio-economic conditions, unplanned urbanization, development within high-risk zones, environmental degradation, climate change, geological hazards, epidemics and pandemics.

Some of the Government initiatives to improve the condition of disaster risk reduction and response:

• NDMA has taken an initiative on Earthquake Disaster Risk Indexing (EDRI) for 50 important cities and 1 District in Seismic Zone IV & V areas.
  
  • This will be helpful in comparing the overall risk across large number of cities or region and also in prioritization of cities to implement appropriate disaster mitigation measures.
• NDMA through Building Materials & Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC) has prepared Upgraded Earthquake Hazard Maps and Atlases for the country for better planning and policies.
• The Aapdamitra scheme of NDMA has provision for training 6000 community volunteers in disaster response in 30 most flood prone districts (200 volunteers per district) in 25 States
• Project on deployment of Mobile Radiation Detection Systems (MRDS) to handle Radiological Hazards in Metros/Capital Cities/Big Cities in India to detect unclaimed radioactive materials/substances and save public from its hazardous effects.
• Leveraging the technology of Geographic Information System (GIS), NDMA have taken up a project for disaster risk management by establishing GIS Server and creation of database to integrate data obtained from various stakeholders to increase disaster preparedness, mitigation, damage assessment, response and relief management efforts.

Conclusion

India being a signatory to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is committed to achieve the priorities and objectives through systematic and institutional efforts. India needs to continue its diligent efforts for disaster risk reduction as it has a pivotal role in supporting adaptation to climate change as well as sustainable development.