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  • v.37(3); Jul-Sep 2012

Disaster Management in Flash Floods in Leh (Ladakh): A Case Study

Preeti gupta.

Regimental Medical Officer, Leh, Ladakh, India

Anurag Khanna

1 Commanding Officer, Army Hospital, Leh, India

2 Registrar, Army Hospital, Leh, India

Background:

On August 6, 2010, in the dark of the midnight, there were flash floods due to cloud burst in Leh in Ladakh region of North India. It rained 14 inches in 2 hours, causing loss of human life and destruction. The civil hospital of Leh was badly damaged and rendered dysfunctional. Search and rescue operations were launched by the Indian Army immediately after the disaster. The injured and the dead were shifted to Army Hospital, Leh, and mass casualty management was started by the army doctors while relief work was mounted by the army and civil administration.

The present study was done to document disaster management strategies and approaches and to assesses the impact of flash floods on human lives, health hazards, and future implications of a natural disaster.

Materials and Methods:

The approach used was both quantitative as well as qualitative. It included data collection from the primary sources of the district collectorate, interviews with the district civil administration, health officials, and army officials who organized rescue operations, restoration of communication and transport, mass casualty management, and informal discussions with local residents.

234 persons died and over 800 were reported missing. Almost half of the people who died were local residents (49.6%) and foreigners (10.2%). Age-wise analysis of the deaths shows that the majority of deaths were reported in the age group of 25–50 years, accounting for 44.4% of deaths, followed by the 11–25-year age group with 22.2% deaths. The gender analysis showed that 61.5% were males and 38.5% were females. A further analysis showed that more females died in the age groups <10 years and ≥50 years.

Conclusions:

Disaster preparedness is critical, particularly in natural disasters. The Army's immediate search, rescue, and relief operations and mass casualty management effectively and efficiently mitigated the impact of flash floods, and restored normal life.

Introduction

In the midnight of August 6, 2010, Leh in Ladakh region of North India received a heavy downpour. The cloud burst occurred all of a sudden that caught everyone unawares. Within a short span of about 2 h, it recorded a rainfall of 14 inches. There were flash floods, and the Indus River and its tributaries and waterways were overflowing. As many as 234 people were killed, 800 were injured, and many went missing, perhaps washed away with the gorging rivers and waterways. There was vast destruction all around. Over 1000 houses collapsed. Men, women, and children were buried under the debris. The local communication networks and transport services were severely affected. The main telephone exchange and mobile network system (BSNL), which was the lifeline in the far-flung parts of the region, was completely destroyed. Leh airport was flooded and the runway was covered with debris, making it non-functional. Road transport was badly disrupted as roads were washed away and blocked with debris at many places. The civil medical and health facilities were also severely affected, as the lone district civil hospital was flooded and filled with debris.

Materials and Methods

The present case study is based on the authors’ own experience of managing a natural disaster caused by the flash floods. The paper presents a firsthand description of a disaster and its prompt management. The data was collected from the records of the district civil administration, the civil hospital, and the Army Hospital, Leh. The approach used was both quantitative as well as qualitative. It included data collection from the primary sources of the district collectorate, interviews with the district civil administration and army officials who organized rescue operations, restoration of communication, and transport, mass casualty management, and informal discussions with local residents.

Disaster management strategies

Three core disaster management strategies were adopted to manage the crisis. These strategies included: i) Response, rescue, and relief operations, ii) Mass casualty management, and iii) Rehabilitation.

Response, rescue, and relief operations

The initial response was carried out immediately by the Government of India. The rescue and relief work was led by the Indian Army, along with the State Government of Jammu and Kashmir, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). The Indian Army activated the disaster management system immediately, which is always kept in full preparedness as per the standard army protocols and procedures.

There were just two hospitals in the area: the government civil hospital (SNM Hospital) and Army Hospital. During the flash floods, the government civil hospital was flooded and rendered dysfunctional. Although the National Disaster Management Act( 1 ) was in place, with the government civil hospital being under strain, the applicability of the act was hampered. The Army Hospital quickly responded through rescue and relief operations and mass casualty management. By dawn, massive search operations were started with the help of civil authorities and local people. The patients admitted in the civil hospital were evacuated to the Army Hospital, Leh in army helicopters.

The runway of Leh airport was cleared up within a few hours after the disaster so that speedy inflow of supplies could be carried out along with the evacuation of the casualties requiring tertiary level healthcare to the Army Command Hospital in Chandigarh. The work to make the roads operational was started soon after the disaster. The army engineers had started rebuilding the collapsed bridges by the second day. Though the main mobile network was dysfunctional, the other mobile network (Airtel) still worked with limited connectivity in the far-flung areas of the mountains. The army communication system was the main and the only channel of communication for managing and coordinating the rescue and relief operations.

Mass casualty management

All casualties were taken to the Army Hospital, Leh. Severely injured people were evacuated from distant locations by helicopters, directly landing on the helipad of the Army Hospital. In order to reinforce the medical staff, nurses were flown in from the Super Specialty Army Hospital (Research and Referral), New Delhi, to handle the flow of casualties by the third day following the disaster. National Disaster Cell kept medical teams ready in Chandigarh in case they were required. The mortuary of the government civil hospital was still functional where all the dead bodies were taken, while the injured were handled by Army Hospital, Leh.

Army Hospital, Leh converted its auditorium into a crisis expansion ward. The injured started coming in around 0200 hrs on August 6, 2010. They were given first aid and were provided with dry clothes. A majority of the patients had multiple injuries. Those who sustained fractures were evacuated to Army Command Hospital, Chandigarh, by the Army's helicopters, after first aid. Healthcare staff from the government civil hospital joined the Army Hospital, Leh to assist them. In the meanwhile, medical equipment and drugs were transferred from the flooded and damaged government civil hospital to one of the nearby buildings where they could receive the casualties. By the third day following the disaster, the operation theatre of the government civil hospital was made functional. Table 1 gives the details of the patients admitted at the Army Hospital.

Admissions in the Army Hospital, Leh

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The analysis of the data showed that majority of the people who lost their lives were mainly local residents (49.6%). Among the dead, there were 10.3% foreign nationals as well [ Table 2 ]. The age-wise analysis of the deaths showed that the majority of deaths were reported in the age group 26–50 years, accounting for 44.4% of deaths, followed by 11–25 year group with 22.2% deaths.

Number of deaths according to status of residence

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The gender analysis showed that 61.5% were males among the dead, and 38.5% were females. A further analysis showed that more females died in <10 years and ≥50 years age group, being 62.5% and 57.1%, respectively [ Table 3 ].

Age and sex distribution of deaths

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Object name is IJCM-37-185-g003.jpg

Victims who survived the disaster were admitted to the Army Hospital, Leh. Over 90% of them suffered traumatic injuries, with nearly half of them being major traumatic injuries. About 3% suffered from cold injuries and 6.7% as medical emergencies [ Table 4 ].

Distribution according to nature of casualty among the hospitalized victims

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Rehabilitation

Shelter and relief.

Due to flash floods, several houses were destroyed. The families were transferred to tents provided by the Indian Army and government and non-government agencies. The need for permanent shelter for these people emerged as a major task. The Prime Minister of India announced Rs. 100,000 as an ex-gratia to the next of kin of each of those killed, and relief to the injured. Another Rs. 100,000 each would be paid to the next of kin of the deceased from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund of the State Government.

Supply of essential items

The Army maintains an inventory of essential medicines and supplies in readiness as a part of routing emergency preparedness. The essential non-food items were airlifted to the affected areas. These included blankets, tents, gum boots, and clothes. Gloves and masks were provided for the persons who were working to clear the debris from the roads and near the affected buildings.

Water, sanitation, and hygiene

Public Health is seriously threatened in disasters, especially due to lack of water supply and sanitation. People having lost their homes and living in temporary shelters (tents) puts a great strain on water and sanitation facilities. The pumping station was washed away, thus disrupting water supply in the Leh Township. A large number of toilets became non-functional as they were filled with silt, as houses were built at the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. Temporary arrangements of deep trench latrines were made while the army engineers made field flush latrines for use by the troops.

Water was stagnant and there was the risk of contamination by mud or dead bodies buried in the debris, thus making the quality of drinking water questionable. Therefore, water purification units were installed and established. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) airlifted a water storage system (Emergency Rescue Unit), which could provide 11,000 L of pure water. Further, super-chlorination was done at all the water points in the army establishments. To deal with fly menace in the entire area, anti-fly measures were taken up actively and intensely.

Food and nutrition

There was an impending high risk of food shortage and crisis of hunger and malnutrition. The majority of food supply came from the plains and low-lying areas in North India through the major transport routes Leh–Srinagar and Leh–Manali national highways. These routes are non-functional for most part of the winter. The local agricultural and vegetable cultivation has always been scanty due to extreme cold weather. The food supplies took a further setback due to the unpredicted heavy downpour. Food storage facilities were also flooded and washed away. Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and the Indian Army immediately established food supply and distribution system in the affected areas from their food stores and airlifting food supplies from other parts of the country.

There was a high risk of water-borne diseases following the disaster. Many human bodies were washed away and suspected to have contaminated water bodies. There was an increased fly menace. There was an urgent need to prevent disease transmission due to contaminated drinking water sources and flies. There was also a need to rehabilitate people who suffered from crush injuries sustained during the disaster. The public health facilities, especially, the primary health centers and sub-health centers, were not adequately equipped and were poorly connected by roads to the main city of Leh. Due to difficult accessibility, it took many hours to move casualties from the far-flung areas, worsening the crisis and rescue and relief operations. The population would have a higher risk of mental health problems like post-traumatic stress disorder, deprivation, and depression. Therefore, relief and rehabilitation would include increased awareness of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and its alleviation through education on developing coping mechanisms.

Economic impact

Although it would be too early to estimate the impact on economy, the economy of the region would be severely affected due to the disaster. The scanty local vegetable and grain cultivation was destroyed by the heavy rains. Many houses were destroyed where people had invested all their savings. Tourism was the main source of income for the local people in the region. The summer season is the peak tourist season in Ladakh and that is when the natural disaster took place. A large number of people came from within India and other countries for trekking in the region. Because of the disaster, tourism was adversely affected. The disaster would have a long-term economic impact as it would take a long time to rebuild the infrastructure and also to build the confidence of the tourists.

The floods put an immense pressure and an economic burden on the local people and would also influence their health-seeking behavior and health expenditure.

Political context

The disaster became a security threat. The area has a high strategic importance, being at the line of control with China and Pakistan. The Indian Army is present in the region to defend the country's borders. The civil administration is with the Leh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) under the state government of Jammu and Kashmir.

Conclusions

It is impossible to anticipate natural disasters such as flash floods. However, disaster preparedness plans and protocols in the civil administration and public health systems could be very helpful in rescue and relief and in reducing casualties and adverse impact on the human life and socio economic conditions.( 2 ) However, the health systems in India lack such disaster preparedness plans and training.( 3 ) In the present case, presence of the Indian Army that has standard disaster management plans and protocols for planning, training, and regular drills of the army personnel, logistics and supply, transport, and communication made it possible to immediately mount search, rescue, and relief operations and mass casualty management. Not only the disaster management plans were in readiness, but continuous and regular training and drills of the army personnel in rescue and relief operations, and logistics and communication, could effectively facilitate the disaster management operations.

Effective communication was crucial for effective coordination of rescue and relief operations. The Army's communication system served as an alternative communication channel as the public communication and mobile network was destroyed, and that enabled effective coordination of the disaster operations.

Emergency medical services and healthcare within few hours of the disaster was critical to minimize deaths and disabilities. Preparedness of the Army personnel, especially the medical corps, readiness of inventory of essential medicines and medical supplies, logistics and supply chain, and evacuation of patients as a part of disaster management protocols effectively launched the search, rescue, and relief operations and mass casualty reduction. Continuous and regular training and drills of army personnel, health professionals, and the community in emergency rescue and relief operations are important measures. Emergency drill is a usual practice in the army, which maintains the competence levels of the army personnel. Similar training and drill in civil administration and public health systems in emergency protocols for rescue, relief, mass casualty management, and communication would prove very useful in effective disaster management to save lives and restore health of the people.( 2 – 4 )

Lessons learnt and recommendations

Natural disasters not only cause a large-scale displacement of population and loss of life, but also result in loss of property and agricultural crops leading to severe economic burden.( 3 – 6 ) In various studies,( 3 , 4 , 7 , 8 ) several shortcomings have been observed in disaster response, such as, delayed response, absence of early warning systems, lack of resources for mass evacuation, inadequate coordination among government departments, lack of standard operating procedures for rescue and relief, and lack of storage of essential medicines and supplies.

The disaster management operations by the Indian Army in the natural disaster offered several lessons to learn. The key lessons were:

  • Response time is a critical attribute in effective disaster management. There was no delay in disaster response by the Indian Army. The rescue and relief operations could be started within 1 h of disaster. This was made possible as the Army had disaster and emergency preparedness plans and protocols in place; stocks of relief supplies and medicines as per standard lists were available; and periodic training and drill of the army personnel and medical corps was undertaken as a routine. The disaster response could be immediately activated.
  • There is an important lesson to be learned by the civil administration and the public health system to have disaster preparedness plans in readiness with material and designated rescue officers and workers.
  • Prompt activation of disaster management plan with proper command and coordination structure is critical. The Indian Army could effectively manage the disaster as it had standard disaster preparedness plans and training, and activated the system without any time lag. These included standard protocols for search, rescue, and evacuation and relief and rehabilitation. There are standard protocols for mass casualty management, inventory of essential medicines and medical supplies, and training of the army personnel.
  • Hospitals have always been an important link in the chain of disaster response and are assuming greater importance as advanced pre-hospital care capabilities lead to improved survival-to-hospital rate.( 9 ) Role of hospitals in disaster preparedness, especially in mass casualty management, is important. Army Hospital, Leh emergency preparedness played a major role in casualty management and saving human lives while the civil district hospital had become dysfunctional due to damage caused by floods. The hospital was fully equipped with essential medicines and supplies, rescue and evacuation equipments, and command and communication systems.
  • Standard protocols and disaster preparedness plans need to be prepared for the civil administration and the health systems with focus on Quick Response Teams inclusive of healthcare professionals, rescue personnel, fire-fighting squads, police detachments, ambulances, emergency care drugs, and equipments.( 10 ) These teams should be trained in a manner so that they can be activated and deployed within an hour following the disaster. “TRIAGE” has to be the basic working principle for such teams.
  • Effective communication system is of paramount importance in coordination of rescue and relief operations. In the present case study, although the main network with the widest connectivity was extensively damaged and severely disrupted, the army's communication system along with the other private mobile network tided over the crisis. It took over 10 days for reactivation of the main mobile network through satellite communication system. Thus, it is crucial to establish the alternative communication system to handle such emergencies efficiently and effectively.( 2 , 11 )
  • Disaster management is a multidisciplinary activity involving a number of departments/agencies spanning across all sectors of development.( 2 ) The National Disaster Management Authority of India, set up under National Disaster Management Act 2005,( 1 ) has developed disaster preparedness and emergency protocols. It would be imperative for the civil administration at the state and district levels in India to develop their disaster management plans using these protocols and guidelines.
  • Health system's readiness plays important role in prompt and effective mass casualty management.( 2 ) Being a mountainous region, the Ladakh district has difficult access to healthcare, with only nine Primary Health Centers and 31 Health Sub-Centers.( 12 ) There is a need for strengthening health systems with focus on health services and health facility network and capacity building. More than that, primary healthcare needs to be augmented to provide emergency healthcare so that more and more lives can be saved.( 7 )
  • Training is an integral part of capacity building, as trained personnel respond much better to different disasters and appreciate the need for preventive measures. Training of healthcare professionals in disaster management holds the key in successful activation and implementation of any disaster management plan. The Army has always had standard drills in all its establishments at regular intervals, which are periodically revised and updated. The civil administration and public health systems should regularly organize and conduct training of civil authorities and health professionals in order to be ready for action.( 1 – 4 )
  • Building confidence of the public to avoid panic situation is critical. Community involvement and awareness generation, particularly that of the vulnerable segments of population and women, needs to be emphasized as necessary for sustainable disaster risk reduction. Increased public awareness is necessary to ensure an organized and calm approach to disaster management. Periodic mock drills and exercise in disaster management protocols in the general population can be very useful.( 1 , 3 , 4 )

Source of Support: Nil

Conflict of Interest: None declared.

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Internet Geography

Kerala flood case study

Kerala flood case study.

Kerala is a state on the southwestern Malabar Coast of India. The state has the 13th largest population in India. Kerala, which lies in the tropical region, is mainly subject to the humid tropical wet climate experienced by most of Earth’s rainforests.

A map to show the location of Kerala

A map to show the location of Kerala

Eastern Kerala consists of land infringed upon by the Western Ghats (western mountain range); the region includes high mountains, gorges, and deep-cut valleys. The wildest lands are covered with dense forests, while other areas lie under tea and coffee plantations or other forms of cultivation.

The Indian state of Kerala receives some of India’s highest rainfall during the monsoon season. However, in 2018 the state experienced its highest level of monsoon rainfall in decades. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), there was 2346.3 mm of precipitation, instead of the average 1649.55 mm.

Kerala received over two and a half times more rainfall than August’s average. Between August 1 and 19, the state received 758.6 mm of precipitation, compared to the average of 287.6 mm, or 164% more. This was 42% more than during the entire monsoon season.

The unprecedented rainfall was caused by a spell of low pressure over the region. As a result, there was a perfect confluence of the south-west monsoon wind system and the two low-pressure systems formed over the Bay of Bengal and Odisha. The low-pressure regions pull in the moist south-west monsoon winds, increasing their speed, as they then hit the Western Ghats, travel skywards, and form rain-bearing clouds.

Further downpours on already saturated land led to more surface run-off causing landslides and widespread flooding.

Kerala has 41 rivers flowing into the Arabian Sea, and 80 of its dams were opened after being overwhelmed. As a result, water treatment plants were submerged, and motors were damaged.

In some areas, floodwater was between 3-4.5m deep. Floods in the southern Indian state of Kerala have killed more than 410 people since June 2018 in what local officials said was the worst flooding in 100 years. Many of those who died had been crushed under debris caused by landslides. More than 1 million people were left homeless in the 3,200 emergency relief camps set up in the area.

Parts of Kerala’s commercial capital, Cochin, were underwater, snarling up roads and leaving railways across the state impassable. In addition, the state’s airport, which domestic and overseas tourists use, was closed, causing significant disruption.

Local plantations were inundated by water, endangering the local rubber, tea, coffee and spice industries.

Schools in all 14 districts of Kerala were closed, and some districts have banned tourists because of safety concerns.

Maintaining sanitation and preventing disease in relief camps housing more than 800,000 people was a significant challenge. Authorities also had to restore regular clean drinking water and electricity supplies to the state’s 33 million residents.

Officials have estimated more than 83,000km of roads will need to be repaired and that the total recovery cost will be between £2.2bn and $2.7bn.

Indians from different parts of the country used social media to help people stranded in the flood-hit southern state of Kerala. Hundreds took to social media platforms to coordinate search, rescue and food distribution efforts and reach out to people who needed help. Social media was also used to support fundraising for those affected by the flooding. Several Bollywood stars supported this.

Some Indians have opened up their homes for people from Kerala who were stranded in other cities because of the floods.

Thousands of troops were deployed to rescue those caught up in the flooding. Army, navy and air force personnel were deployed to help those stranded in remote and hilly areas. Dozens of helicopters dropped tonnes of food, medicine and water over areas cut off by damaged roads and bridges. Helicopters were also involved in airlifting people marooned by the flooding to safety.

More than 300 boats were involved in rescue attempts. The state government said each boat would get 3,000 rupees (£34) for each day of their work and that authorities would pay for any damage to the vessels.

As the monsoon rains began to ease, efforts increased to get relief supplies to isolated areas along with clean up operations where water levels were falling.

Millions of dollars in donations have poured into Kerala from the rest of India and abroad in recent days. Other state governments have promised more than $50m, while ministers and company chiefs have publicly vowed to give a month’s salary.

Even supreme court judges have donated $360 each, while the British-based Sikh group Khalsa Aid International has set up its own relief camp in Kochi, Kerala’s main city, to provide meals for 3,000 people a day.

International Response

In the wake of the disaster, the UAE, Qatar and the Maldives came forward with offers of financial aid amounting to nearly £82m. The United Arab Emirates promised $100m (£77m) of this aid. This is because of the close relationship between Kerala and the UAE. There are a large number of migrants from Kerala working in the UAE. The amount was more than the $97m promised by India’s central government. However, as it has done since 2004, India declined to accept aid donations. The main reason for this is to protect its image as a newly industrialised country; it does not need to rely on other countries for financial help.

Google provided a donation platform to allow donors to make donations securely. Google partners with the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP), an intermediary organisation that specialises in distributing your donations to local nonprofits that work in the affected region to ensure funds reach those who need them the most.

Google provided a donation service to support people affected by flooding in Kerala

Google Kerala Donate

Tales of humanity and hope

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Kerala Floods Quiz

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Looking back at the natural disasters that took place in India in 2021

Looking back at the natural disasters that took place in India in 2021

  • Between 1970 to 2019, weather, climate and water hazards accounted for 50% of all disasters, 45% of all reported deaths and 74% of all reported economic losses, according to World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
  • According to the World Economic Forum, disaster events have been recorded in the past 20 years, which have claimed the lives of 1.23 million people.
  • A flashback at the natural disasters that hit different parts of India this year.

Tamil Nadu floods

Tamil Nadu floods

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had predicted heavy rainfall in parts of Tamil Nadu, and it came true from November 1. The flooding was caused by extremely heavy downpours, killing at least 41 people.

Several red alerts were issued for many areas in Tamil Nadu, including Cuddalore, Sivaganga, Ramanathapuram, Karaikal, Tiruvallur, Chennai, Kanchipuram, Chengalpattu, Viluppuram, and Tiruvannamalai for November 10-11. Over 11,000 were displaced due to the incessant rainfall.

Maharashtra floods

Maharashtra floods

Starting on 22 July, Maharashtra saw heavy rainfall in many of its western districts and recorded the highest rainfall in the month of July in 40 years.

Around 251 people died and over 100 were missing due to floods and landslides in Maharashtra.

Its neighbouring state Goa also witnessed the worst floods in decades.

Kerala floods

Kerala floods

Between October 12 and 20, after heavy rains caused rivers to overflow, cutting off towns and villages, 42 people died and 217 houses were destroyed. Out of the 42 people who lost their lives in the floods, five were children.

Kottayam and Idukki were two of the worst affected districts in the state, where days of heavy rainfall had caused deadly landslides.

Cyclone Tauktae

Cyclone Tauktae

It was a powerful, deadly and damaging tropical cyclone in the Arabian Sea that became the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in the Indian state of Gujarat since the 1998 Gujarat cyclone and one of the strongest tropical cyclones to ever affect the west coast of India.

Started on May 14, the storm displaced over 200,000 people in Gujarat and killed 174 people with 80 people still missing.

Tauktae brought heavy rainfall and flash floods to areas along the coast of Kerala and Lakshadweep. There were reports of heavy rain in the states of Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra as well.

Cyclone Yaas

Cyclone Yaas

It was a relatively strong and very damaging tropical cyclone that made landfall in Odisha and brought significant impact to West Bengal in May. Yaas formed from a tropical disturbance that the Indian Meteorological Department first monitored on May 23.

Around 20 people across India and Bangladesh died due to the cyclone and West Bengal was one of the most impacted states in India due to Yaas, with a loss of approximately $2.76 billion, according to several media reports.

Cyclone Gulab

Cyclone Gulab

The third storm in India that impacted eastern India, was formed on September 24 in Bay of Bengal. On September 26, Gulab made landfall in India's Andhra Pradesh, but weakened over land. The storm overall brought heavy rains and strong winds throughout India and the Middle East, killing at least 39 people.

Over 30,000 individuals were evacuated into safety as a result of the cyclone. This number further increased to 46,075 people as the storm further moved inland.

Assam earthquake

Assam earthquake

On April 28, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake jolted Assam. The quake resulted in two fatalities and at least 12 people were injured. The quake struck at a depth of 34 kilometres and 140 kilometres north of Guwahati.

The earthquake occurred as a result of oblique-slip faulting at a shallow depth just at the foothills of the Himalayas. Analysis by India's National Centre for Seismology revealed that the earthquake involved a slip along the Kopili Fault, near the Main Frontal Thrust.

short case study on natural disaster in india

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short case study on natural disaster in india

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Disaster Management in India- A Status Report

January 21, 2012.

India has been traditionally vulnerable to natural disasters on account of its unique geo-climatic conditions. Floods, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes and landslides have been a recurrent phenomena.

India has been traditionally vulnerableto natural disasters on account of its unique geo-climatic conditions.Floods, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes and landslides have been a recurrent phenomena. About 60% of the landmass is prone to earthquakes of various intensities; over 40 million hectares is prone to floods; about 8% of the total area is prone to cyclones and 68% of the area is susceptible todrought. Inthedecade 1990-2000, an average of about 4344 people lost their lives and about 30 million people were affected by disasters every year.The loss in terms of private, community and public assets has been astronomical.

At the global level, there has been considerable concern over natural disasters.Even as substantial scientific and material progress is made, the loss of lives and property due to disasters has not decreased. In fact, the human toll and economic losses have mounted.It wasin this background that the United Nations General Assembly, in 1989, declaredthe decade 1990-2000 as the International Decadefor Natural Disaster Reduction with the objectiveto reducelossof lives and propertyand restrict socio-economic damagethrough concerted international action, specially in developing countries.

The super cyclone in OrissainOctober, 1999 and theBhuj earthquake in Gujarat inJanuary, 2001 underscored the need to adopt a multi dimensional endeavour involvingdiversescientific, engineering, financial and social processes; the need to adopt multidisciplinary and multi sectoralapproach and incorporationof risk reduction in the developmental plans and strategies.

Over the past couple of years, the Government of India have brought about a paradigm shift in the approach to disaster management.The new approach 4 proceeds from the conviction that development cannot be sustainable unless disaster mitigation is built into the development process.Another corner stone of the approach is that mitigation has to be multi-disciplinary spanning across all sectors of development.The new policy also emanates from the belief that investments in mitigation are much more cost effective than expenditure on relief and rehabilitation.

Disaster management occupies an important place in this country’s policy framework as it is the poor and the under-privileged who are worst affected on account of calamities/disasters. Disasters retard socio-economic development, further impoverish the impoverished and lead to diversion of scarce resources from development to rehabilitation and reconstruction.

The steps being taken by the Government emanatefrom the approach outlined above.The approach has been translated into a National Disaster Framework [a roadmap] covering institutional mechanisms, disaster prevention strategy, early warning system, disaster mitigation, preparedness and response and human resource development.The expected inputs, areas of intervention and agencies to be involved at the National, State and district levels have been identified and listed in the roadmap.This roadmap has been shared with all the State Governments and Union Territory Administrations.Ministries and Departments of Government of India, and the State Governments/UT Administrations have been advised to develop their respective roadmaps taking the national roadmap as a broad guideline.There is, therefore, now a common strategy underpinning the action being taken by all the participating organisations/stakeholders.

The changed approach is being put into effect through:

(a) Institutional changes

(b) Enunciationof policy

(c) Legal and techno-legal framework

(d) Mainstreaming Mitigation into Development process

(e) Funding mechanism

(f) Specific schemes addressing mitigation

(g) Preparedness measures

(h) Capacity building

(i) Human Resource Development

and, above all, community participation. These are detailed in the following

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India case study- upscaling community resilience through ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction, 2022, attachments.

Preview of UCREDRRI.pdf

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Since 2019, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in-collaboration with Partners for Resilience (PfR) have developed and implemented scalable Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction (Eco-DRR) models, working alongside various governments and their respective communities in strengthening their capacity and shaping Eco-DRR policy interventions.

This case study highlights Eco-DRR interventions in India focused on integrating Eco-DRR measures on improved water management into local development plans and schemes (such as disaster, wetlands and rural employment) through capacity-strengthening and participation of communities and (local) governments. The key risk being addressed within this context is how wetland degradation reduces community resilience against water-related hazards such as foods, droughts, and storm surges. To address this, the project aims to strengthen resilience of 60,000 women and men to water-related risks and national upscaling model for improved water management focusing in 3 key project sites: Tampara Wetland (Odisha), Kabartal Wetland (Bihar), and a northern dryland region in Gujarat.

A model for upscaling community resilience has been developed through three core components of Eco-DRR: Ecosystem Restoration/Protection, Disaster Risk Reduction, and Climate Smart Livelihoods. In India, there is a greater emphasis on Ecosystem Restoration and Protection through a focus on water related, risk sensitive wetlands restoration and capacity building activities. The project has reached 29,216 benefciaries, out of which 36% were women. 32 Communitybased Organisations were trained on Eco-DRR and 224 women (members of Self-Help Groups) were trained on sustainable livelihoods and wetland wise use, among other capacity building achievements. 3,312 hectares (ha) of wetlands and community common pool resources (ponds, drainages) have now been protected and restored. A Cost-Beneft Analysis (CBA) performed by the University of Massachusetts Amherst demonstrated that the benefts of Eco-DRR and resilience enhancement interventions outweigh the value of their initial costs.

This case study lays the foundation for demonstrating the need for large-scale implementation of Eco-DRR in advancing the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Sustainable Development Agenda. The content for this case study has been developed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in collaboration with Partners for Resilience (PfR) – a global alliance between the Netherlands Red Cross, the Red Crossand Red Crescent Climate Center, Cordaid, Wetlands International, and CARE along with partner civil society organisations in the countries where they work.

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Disaster management in India: are we fully equipped?

  • Research Paper
  • Published: 13 December 2022
  • Volume 24 , pages 242–281, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

  • R. S. Deshpande 1  

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Disasters occur with almost unpredictable probability, even though some ideas about the regions of incidence and likely impact on likelihood are available in the scientific literature. In this lecture, I have taken a full view of six disasters that include hydro-geological, meteorological, climate based like floods and droughts as well as the biological holocaust of Covid-19 pandemic. The approach followed in this lecture is to analyse the occurrences, incidence, history and devastation caused by the disaster. The impact and policies to alleviate the effects are also discussed. The culture of disaster reliance is discussed at the end.

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Introduction

I feel quite honoured to be invited to deliver this prestigious lecture on a subject that is quite close to my academic work for decades. I was very fortunate having not only worked when Professor L S Venkataramanan was at the ISEC as senior Professor and later on as Director of ISEC. I joined his research team on the “Dynamics of Rural Transformation” a project sponsored by ICSSR, spear-headed by Prof C T Kurien. The project was already quite delayed and Prof LSV wanted me to join in order to finish the work. We worked together and completed the project out of which I could publish one or two papers. Unfortunately, his ambition that we should publish a book out of this work and on our joint works on supply & demand projections of food grains in Karnataka remained unachieved. He had negotiated the publications with Late Shri Tajeshwar Singh of Sage publications but unfortunately before it could take final shape that fateful accident took him away. That was a great loss for the academic fraternity and personally to me, as he was quite an affectionate person in my life. I specifically chose this topic to deliver this lecture as I have worked for quite some time in the areas covering many of the aspects which touch the core of disaster management. I am trying my best to bring together my thinking over years as well as the major hypothesis of institutional participation in disaster management.

What are disasters?

In the calculus of disaster management, it is essential to decipher the typology and intensity of the ensuing disasters. The Indian subcontinent distinguishes among others as one of the most disaster-prone area. More than 85% of India’s geographical area is prone to multiple hazards. Out of the total Indian states and union territories, almost three-fourth is disaster-prone (Shah 2011 ). More than 55% of India’s area falls under seismic vulnerability (high seismic zones III–V), about 65% face the occurrence of drought and then cyclones and floods threaten about 10% of the area. After the release of the IPCC reports, the link between disasters and climate change is being increasingly established (Shamsuddoha et al. 2013 ). The eastern coast is more vulnerable since the 2004 tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. The Government of India in the documents on disaster management in India noted that a disaster is an “event or series of events, which gives rise to casualties and damage or loss of properties, infrastructure, environment, essential services and means of livelihood on such a scale which is beyond the normal capacity of the affected community to cope with”. The UNISDR ( 2011 ) defined disaster as “a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources”. Further, refining the concept, the Govt of India in 2011 defined it as “Disaster is also sometimes described as a catastrophic situation in which the normal pattern of life or eco-system has been disrupted and extra-ordinary emergency interventions are required to save and preserve lives and or the environment” (GoI 2011 , p 4). A common understanding from the above is that a disaster disrupts normal human life without sufficient warning and causes huge economic and human losses. It resets the development clock in the affected regions a few years backwards.

Disasters certainly occur without much warning regarding their occurrence or the kind of havoc that they will leave around. It will certainly be futile to answer the question and reason for the causes of disasters since the advance prediction of disasters of all kinds has hoodwinked the best scientific brains of the world (Asimakopoulou et al. 2010 ). Certainly, disasters occur when there are significant changes in the holistic natural equation of the universe which includes biological entities, the earth, climatic factors and above all human interactions with many of the components of these elements. In the Indian Scriptures, it has been stated that there are five Maha-Bhootas (very crudely translated as five demons) that are responsible for cosmic creation (Gopal 1990 , P.79). These five uncontrollable factors that dictate life on the earth are defined as Pruthvi (earth); Aaps (Water), Tej/Agni (Sunshine or Fire), Vayu (Air or Green House Gases), Akash/Dyaus (Space, Atmosphere, Universe) (indianscriptures.com). It has been stated in the scriptures that these are uncontrollable cosmic creations and hence need to be worshipped and pacified, ( www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/RigVeda.pdf ). The interactions between these five and their subcomponents can further create abnormal natural events and human interaction with all these five uncontrollable factors sometimes increases the intensity of such abnormal events. These extreme events occur when humanity takes the naturalness out of nature (O’Keefe et al. 1976 ). Therefore, any event that occurs has a permutation of 120 multiplied by the innumerable geo-climatic zones and mega-human interactions in the world. This fact is truly multifarious and thus any catastrophe that occurs has a very thin, nearly unpredictable probability and is hence called a disaster. Mismanagement of these elements and disturbance to the base element equilibria are the main reasons behind every disaster. At times the disaster management bodies were not able to do anything to prevent deaths. Even a moderate earthquake of magnitude 6.0 on the Richter Scale in Sikkim in 2011 was a disaster, causing large-scale destruction and many deaths. There is little control that can be exercised over these events. The disturbance in the base element equilibria needs to be managed with human efforts. Even though forecasting the probability of occurrence is difficult, being prepared for extreme events is not impossible. Certainly, there have been many efforts towards preparedness for disasters and a list of many such requirements for avoidance and mitigation of disasters due to climatic changes are listed in the IPCC reports. In India, the Ministry of Home Affairs brought out an Act of 2005, a policy document in 2011 that was reviewed in 2013 suggesting a framework for the plan. Further, a Disaster Management Plan was brought out in 2016. However, it is a fact that disasters occur not simply due to disequilibria but more so due to under-preparedness and management failures of such events.

Understanding disasters

Understanding disasters, therefore, involves deciphering the complex interactions between a multiplicity of climatic and manmade factors with the environment and its components. Not all environmental and climatic variables need to behave normally across years and regions. There are always variabilities and these vacillations differ in their intensity across space and time. It is the intensity of these oscillations that distinguishes them from simple aberrations and normal behaviour to reach disaster or catastrophe. There is always a history of the probability of occurrence of most of these climatic events be it rainfall, temperature, pandemic, diseases, floods, droughts, tornados or any such things. The probability distribution of occurrences is shown in Fig. 1 , which indicates the well-known normal probability distribution. This is a distribution of probabilities and standardized occurrences of the events. The most feasible probabilities are clustered in the centre having occurrences that are positive (favourable) and negative (unfavourable). The probability of the occurrences is spread on both sides and any events happening out of the normal (central bell shape) are not desired, whereas the events with probability falling within the central portion of the bell shape are desirable. The basic parameters of the normal distribution are that it has zero expected value and constant standard deviation.

figure 1

Using normal distribution to understand occurrence of disaster. Source : https://images.app.goo.gl/EtA55CzBbwjdfLPF6

The figure shows a bell-shaped curve having four segments on the negative side (left side) and other four segments on the positive side (right side). If we take any event which may occur on either of the sides, they differ from normal occurrences to abnormal occurrences. The normal occurrences are shown in the central portion of the normal distribution. The central portion indicates the normal behaviour of any phenomenon. Initially, the first departure segments on either side beyond one standard deviation away from the mean can be called “Mild shock or aberrations”. The “aberrations” are events that go slightly away from the central portion of the bell-shaped normal distribution. The central portion which ranges from − 1 to + 1 standard deviation (SD or α ) and covers about 68.26% area includes all the events that come within the one SD of the mean or normal occurrence. These could be called mild shocks or adverse situations that are usually in the range of routine management techniques. The second group comes on the right, and the left side includes the fluctuations which go beyond one SD and extend up to 2SD on either side. These should be called aberrations and occur in the probabilities falling in that range of two standard deviations below or above the normal. These events cover 27.18% of the area and therefore will occur approximately at that probability of occurrence. The severe fluctuations come in the range of 2 to 3 standard deviation either below or above the normal occurrences. The Agricultural Commission 1976 defined severe fluctuations in this range of probability and demarcated the regions as susceptible to droughts and floods based on the probability of occurrence in the regions between 2 and 3 standard deviations on either side, and severe fluctuations and up into calamity when the occurrence takes place in the range of 3 to 4 standard deviations from the normal. The severity depends on the closeness of the event towards the border of four standard deviations on either side of the distribution. If we take the example of drought and floods, the first group within one standard deviation show a mild impact depending on the vulnerability of the region. The second group falling beyond two standard deviations on either side will result in a drought or flood situation depending on the closeness of the event to the point mark at three standard deviations. These should be called severe fluctuations and require immediate management on behalf of the policymakers. The calamity occurs when the events take place marking the fluctuations beyond three standard deviations, and the severity depends on the closeness of the event near the four standard deviation point. Such situations are cataclysmic situations and have to be dealt with very carefully as calamities. Any event that occurs at any point beyond the four standard deviation limits on either side requires preparedness as well as skills to deal with catastrophic situations. Such events occur with very thin probability and hence can result in a holocaust. In all these events, the role of administrative response is quite important and necessary to avoid loss of assets and life as well as ameliorate the suffering of the population. Therefore, it is a battle of wits between the learner and scientists and the natural events that require preparedness and management of the calamity.

Disaster: typology and response

The Disaster Management Act, 2005, defined disaster as “a catastrophe, mishap, calamity or grave occurrence in any area, arising from natural or manmade causes, or by accident or negligence which results in substantial loss of life or human suffering or damage to, and destruction of, property, or damage to, or degradation of, environment, and is of such a nature or magnitude as to be beyond the coping capacity of the community of the affected area” (GoI 2005 ). It is a sudden occurrence with a severe jolt that disrupts and destroys normal life and brings economic activities to a standstill, destroying the normal functioning of society and resetting the development clock.

The administration of disasters is certainly a challenging job as the administrators do not get any warning and also have very little knowledge of the severity of the impact (Sharma and Kaushik 2012 ). The administrative response goes by the type of disaster, and it has been very clearly documented in the Disaster Management Manual of the Government of India, 2016. Broadly the type of disasters indicated there are shown in Box 1. These are classified according to the causes of disasters which is the usual way of classifying disasters across the world (UN and World Bank 2010 ; UNESCAP 2016 ). However, it is essential to understand that disasters do not strike uniformly across regions and humanity. The severe impact is felt in the most vulnerable regions, and hence, the impact gets weighed by the intensity of the disaster as also by the vulnerability of the region. The UNISDR/SDMC report ( 2014 ) gave a good framework for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The calculus of disaster management, therefore, works on three important dimensions. First, the type and probable intensity of desire. Second, the vulnerability and the population of the region. Third, the main economic base of the region and its dependent activities matter the most. It was in 2001 that a High Power Committee of the Ministry of Home prepared a report about disaster preparedness in India (GoI 2001 ). There was no institutional set up for managing disasters in India till the 1990s and all calamities were handled with a “firefighting” approach in a great hurry. A disaster management cell was placed under the Ministry of Agriculture after the declaration of “International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction” (IDNDR) by the UN General Assembly and a series of disasters (like Latur Earthquake (1993), Malpa Landslide (1994), Orissa Super Cyclone (1999) and Bhuj Earthquake (2001)). The Government of India constituted a High Powered Committee under the Chairmanship of Mr. J.C. Pant in 2001.The Committee submitted a detailed report, and the recommendation was followed. Subsequently, the Disaster Management Division was placed in the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2002. Subsequently, the Disaster Management Act, 2005 (GoI 2005 ), was passed and the Act gave an elaborate framework for the Institutional set up to deal with such calamities.

figure a

India’s hazard-prone area has been mapped by the Building Material and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC) in their “Vulnerability Atlas of India” presented in Map 1 showing the multi-hazard zones of India. We have placed this map here to give a glimpse of the problem and the dimension of the issues to be tackled. BMTPC has done significant work in mapping the hazard-prone areas of India and mapped the information in policy convenient maps. It has been well documented in the BMTPC work that 85% of India’s area faces multiple hazard vulnerabilities. Almost 22 states are under the continued shadow of disasters of one type or other. The eastern and western coasts are vulnerable to weather storms on both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea coast (Map 1 ). The eastern coast faces several sea initiated turmoil. About 8% of the coastal area is prone to cyclones. Droughts and floods are regular visitors in most of the states, especially in central India. It is seen that India has about 68% of its area categorized as “drought-prone”, and at the same time, about 12% of its area faces frequent floods. Acute seismicity resulting in earthquakes is confronted by almost 57% of the area that falls under the high seismic zone (World Bank 2010 ).

figure 2

Multi-hazard-prone areas of India

Any disaster causes not only huge material losses but also human and animal lives. However, these are not uniform across various typologies of disasters. The predictability, damage, loss of lives and material differs across disasters (Table 1 ). In many cases, all the economic activities come to a standstill and the government has to spend additionally to recoup the losses and bring back economic activities to normalcy. The World Bank report documented 73 such instances of natural catastrophes in just four years between 1996 and 2000 and reported direct losses on public and private economic infrastructure in India (UN and World Bank 2010 ). Similarly, vulnerability across states also differs significantly. Some states are well prepared to deal with such situations (Karnataka, Odisha, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh) with little warning, but a few others squarely face destruction (Table 2 ).

It was noted that “Losses amounted to approximately $30 billion over the past 35 years (nominal values at then applying exchange rates)”. Since less than 25% of the registered loss events actually provide any loss estimates, the official numbers substantially understate the true economic impact of direct losses. A crude grossing up for reporting frequency indicates that direct natural disaster losses equate to up to 2% of India's GDP and up to 12% of federal government revenues” (World Bank 2010 , Table 4 ). Another map from BMTPC clearly gives the geographical locations of climatic disasters. Even though most of the states in India are vulnerable, the Finance Commission has noted the severity in some selected states and accordingly sanctioned funds towards the purpose. The Fifteenth Finance Commission, after reviewing the earlier process under various Finance Commissions, submitted two reports on disaster management. The FC recommended a new methodology which stands as a combination of a) capacity or need of the state (based on past expenditure); exposure to disaster risk of the states (including area and population); and hazard & vulnerability (disaster risk index). The capacity or the need of states was to be prepared for disasters to deal with the situation fully and allocations were indicated to support SDMAs, SIDM, training and capacity building activities and emergency response facilities. The FC recommended funds under two headings namely: Corpus of Rs.1,60,153 crores for SDRMF for states (2021–26); and corpus of Rs.68, 463 crores for NDRMF for states (2021–26) (Finance Commission Report 2021).

It is known that the Indian subcontinent falls under severe disaster-prone regions and it has to confront various types of disasters. In the hundred years from 1900 to 2000 402 events could be termed as disasters and 354 in the two decades thereafter (2001–21). Each one of these has historically been subjected to such calamities. Based on the probability of occurrence of such events taken together with scientific data about the climatic factors and other geological formations disaster-proneness is arrived at. BMTPC and the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India have recorded the vulnerability maps (see Map 2 ). In about two decades after 2001, a total of 100 crore people have been impacted and nearly 83,000 lost lives due to these disasters. If the losses are adjusted with current prices, the losses come out to a staggering Rs. 13 lakh crore or 6 per cent of the GDP as estimated by the State Bank of India (SBI). The damages caused by the hydro-meteorological calamities were reported in the Indian Parliament recently under an un-starred question. The data from the Ministry of Home affairs are presented in Table 3

figure 3

India climatic disaster risk map

It can be noted that in the last two decades more than 46.19 thousand lives, 16.35 lakh animals and 261 lakh houses have been damaged. Besides this, 89 million hectare crops have been destroyed (Table 3 and Fig.  2 ). Almost annually human and livestock lives that are lost are about 2 thousand and 74 thousand, respectively. The damaged houses count per year is 11.8 lakhs, and the cropped area damaged goes up to 40 lakh hectares a year. It is reported in the 15th Finance Commission report that the total expenditure on disaster response and relief across twenty-eight states between 2011 and 2019 was Rs. 1,66,702 crore (Table 8.1 of the report). A significant jump in the expenditure could be noted. Besides impromptu grants from the Government of India during calamities, successive Finance Commissions have followed different approaches to determine the allocation of funds for disaster management to the State Governments. Initially, from 1957 to 1984–89 it was called Margin Money Scheme to cover the ad-hoc expenditures incurred by the States. After 1995 and till 2010, the approach was based on providing the Calamity Relief Fund. That was changed during 2010–2015 to National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) and State Disaster Relief Fund (SDRF). Besides adding the National Calamity Contingency fund, the 15th Finance Commission brought in a new nomenclature of National Disaster Mitigation Fund (NDMF) and State Disaster Mitigation Fund (SDMF). The 15th Finance Commission Report also uses a new methodology, which is a combination of capacity (as reflected through past expenditure), risk exposure (area and population) and hazard and vulnerability (disaster risk index) for determining state-wise allocation for disaster management. This shall be continued for the five-year award period from 2021–22 to 2025–26. The mitigation funds at the state and country level were intended to aid the implementation of mitigation measures in states for the award period, as provided in the Disaster Management Act 2005.

figure 4

Losses due to disasters in India: 2001–2022. Source : Based on the Emergency Events Database ( 2016 ), author’s work

Broadly, disasters can be placed into six groups: (I) Water and Climate Related: (a) Floods and drainage management; (b) Cyclones or Tsunami, Tornadoes and hurricanes; c) Hailstorm; d) Cloud burst; (e) Heat wave and cold wave; Snow avalanches; Droughts; Sea erosion; Thunder and lightning; (2) Land Related: Landslides and mudflows (b) Earthquakes (c) Dam failures/Dam bursts (d) Minor fires; (3) Natural Accident Related: (a) Forest fires (b) Urban fires (c) Mine flooding (d) Oil spills; (4) Accidents due to Human errors: (a) Major building collapse (b) Serial bomb blasts (c) Festival related disasters d) Electrical disasters and fires e) Air, road and rail accidents f) Boat capsizing g) Village fire; (5). Industrial: (a) Nuclear Leak; (b) Industrial Chemical leak; (c) Operational Negligence and the last one are: (6) Biological: (a) Biological disasters and epidemics; (b). Pest attacks; (c). Cattle epidemics; (d).Food poisoning. Usually, these originate as natural hazards or human-induced vulnerabilities. These can also result from a combination of any of these. As indicated earlier, it is the non-normal behaviour of the “Pancha Mahabhutas ” coupled with human interactions that result in these disasters. Most human-induced factors can worsen the negative impacts of a natural disaster. The UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also noted that human-induced climate change has a significant role in both the frequency and intensity of these episodes (Mall et al 2006 , 2011a ; b ; Kelman 2008 , 2009 ; Dhar 2010 ). At the policy level, the Government of India recognized the severity of the impact due to climate change even before 2001 and set in motion preparations accordingly (GoI 2008 , 2012 ). IPCC ( 2013 ) brought forth the necessity of inter-governmental cooperation while keeping in view the probability of increasing disasters (Seidler et al ( 2018 )). At about the same time, the Government of India appointed a task force to review disaster management in India and the task force gave clear guidelines which were followed in the Act (2005) and Disaster Management Plan that followed in 2016 (GoI 2013 , 2016 ). While heavy rains, cyclones, or earthquakes are all extreme natural events, the impacts relate mainly to actions or inactions in human activity. Extensive industrialization and urbanization increase both the probability of human-induced disasters and the extent of potential damage to life and property from both natural and human-induced disasters. Climate change has also contributed to the severity and frequency of these events (UNISDR/SDMC ( 2014 ; Shamsuddoha et al 2013 ). In the first kind, we have hydro-meteorological disasters that cause significant damage to the ecology as well as human and animal lives. The economic impact of these disasters is quite significant. The impact of the four important components as recorded and analysed in the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India, namely cyclones, tornadoes, whirl winds and floods as well as droughts, come under this severe most category. The second major cause is due to the changes in the geological patterns, especially reflected in earthquakes, landslides and avalanches are seemingly caused by geological causes, but the role of human activities in them cannot be undermined. The third typology of disasters is due to unpreparedness and failure to understand the pattern of natural events. Therefore, these are caused mainly due to the inaction of the State agencies and the response of the population. The last category includes biological disasters either due to human intervention or the intrusion of biological elements like viruses, bacteria or any such epidemiological events. These phenomena are of organic origin or carried by biological vectors, including exposure to pathogenic micro-organisms, toxins and bioactive substances. Major accidents due to the mishandling of chemicals, atomic energy or radioactive material also have a significant impact on human lives. It is, therefore, necessary to understand the mechanics of most of these disasters to equip and be prepared to meet the calamities for reducing the losses.

Mechanics of disasters

Disasters have different typologies. Among the disasters that we have taken for discussion in this lecture are cyclones or tornadoes, earthquakes, floods and droughts followed by the pandemic. It was necessary to keep the contours of this lecture limited to the available data and time at my disposal. Each one of the typologies mentioned above has a serious impact on human life and livelihood. Besides, most of them force to restart many developmental initiatives destroyed during the disaster. These include houses, roads, railway lines, bridges, factories, banking, trees, crops and many other things that come in the region.

Cyclones, tsunamis, thunderstorms and tornados

Cyclones, thunderstorms and tornadoes are among the worst impacting events that come with little warning but visit frequently. The eastern coastline covering about 8% of the land is extremely vulnerable. It is estimated that approximately three cyclones visit the coastal line every year with varying intensity. Therefore, regions from West Bengal to Tamil Nadu are highly vulnerable. The west coast is relatively less vulnerable due to its geographical formation, but any event on that side of the sea cannot be ruled out. If the west coast gets any visitations of events similar to that on the east coast of India, the devastation and loss of life will be unparalleled. In the event of a fully developed cyclone, the coastal line also faces gales and strong winds; torrential rain and high tidal waves. As the storm surges, it destroys human habitations. Large human casualties take place as many times it comes without sufficient warning (Table 4 ).

The East Coast of India, along the Bay of Bengal, affects the population of West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, but also parts of Karnataka, Pondicherry, and Telangana. A similar event on the West Coast adjoining the Arabian Sea will impact Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Kerala. India has a coastline of 7516 km, of which 5700 km is susceptible to cyclones and tornadoes. About eight per cent of the country’s area and one-third of the population living in the 13 coastal states and UTs are vulnerable to cyclone related disasters. 5700 km. of the coastline stays continuously exposed to tropical cyclones. Usually, these events originate in the deep side of the Bay of Bengal and south western side of the Arabian Sea.

The Indian Ocean is one of the six major cyclone-prone regions of the world. Cyclone incidence is very high during April–May and October–December. About 80% of total cyclones invariably touch the long eastern coastline. Cyclones of various intensities peak in October or November (Cyclone Phailin) and a few with low intensities strike in May (Cyclone Mahasen). Most of the cyclones have caused damage to the eastern states in India. It is noted that the ratio of cyclones occurring in the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea is approximately 4:1. Gujarat is the state that faced a few cyclones originating from the Arabian Sea. A cyclone gets formed due to coriolis force and with variations in the vertical wind speed or upper divergences above the sea level systems. A mature tropical cyclone has strong spiralling wind around the centre called EYE, and this enters the region of calm subsiding air pocket. The diameter of any storm in the ocean is between 600 and 1200 km, and the system sometimes moves slowly but often with heavy speed. There are six main requirements for a tropical cyclone to start. These are sufficiently warm sea surface temperatures, atmospheric instability, and high humidity in the lower to middle levels of the troposphere; enough coriolis force to develop a low-pressure centre; a pre-existing low-level focus or disturbance; low vertical wind shear. The table above indicates the typologies of disturbances and associated wind speed along with the possible impact as seen with historical data. It was since the mid-90 s the practice of naming the storm has come into being and almost every storm is named by the World Metrological Department and it is followed by the metrological departments in the country of its origin. The worst tropical cyclone called Mitch visited in 1998 followed by hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Nargis in 2008. Phallin struck India in 2013 and Fani from 26 April 2019 to 5 May 2019. SCATSAT is the Indian satellite developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation to keep a close eye on cyclones and prepare an early warning system for the East Coast to help give warnings. However, such warnings come only a few days or a week before the actual strike. Besides, there are a few Doppler radars that have been placed at various places on the East Coast, but the density of radars in the Arabian Sea is comparatively less. That side depends more on the naval intelligence data (Table 5 ).

The history of cyclones world over is quite distressing. On 7 October 1737, a Bay of Bengal-originated cyclone destroyed 20,000 ships and left 300,000 people dead. It is also recorded that on 25 November 1839, the City of Coringa in Andhra Pradesh, a harbour city was destroyed. In 1789, a different cyclone passed near the area, generating a large storm surge killing over 20,000 persons. The November 1839 cyclone killed 3,00,000 people and devastated the entire area. It is recollected that on 5 October 1864, most of Calcutta was denuded by a cyclone and 70,000 people drowned and the devastation of the region was unprecedented. There were many episodes of climatic strong aberrations after that but in October1967, a massive cyclone struck rural Orissa leaving behind a trail of deaths and destruction. The precise number of fatalities and destruction is unknown. After this, the next significant strike of the cyclone was in September 1971 along with huge tidal waves in the Bay of Bengal killing more than 10,000 people in Orissa. In Andhra Pradesh, cyclone and tidal waves claimed more than 20,000 lives in November 1977 and again in the same month in 1996 cyclone struck Krishna district. It took an unexpected turn towards the Godavari delta with high speed winds causing severe devastation and many deaths. Eastern Orissa confronted a super cyclone in October 1999 that recorded a wind speed of 190mph and sea waves which rose up to 15 feet high. All that caused devastation in the districts of Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur, Puri, Cuttack and Jajpur. About 9,500 people died, and 2.5 million became homeless. Four hundred thousand heads of livestock were drowned, and damage estimation reached 3.5 US $ billion (cyclone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone ).

It can be seen from Table 5 that from1990 till recently almost 50 major cyclones visited the east coast of India, the maximum visitations being to Tamil Nadu followed by West Bengal. The severity was quite strong in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. “The frequency of cyclones on the east and west coasts of India between 1877 and 2005 shows that nearly 283 cyclones occurred (106 severe) in a 50 km wide strip on the East Coast; comparatively the West Coast has had less severe cyclonic activity (35 cyclones) during the same period. More than a million people lost their lives during this period due to these cyclones” (National Disaster Management Plan 2016 , P. 20).

Cyclones are one of the thin probability events, and predictions are hardly a few days to a week before. The event occurs, and the central spot as well as the starting point can be located. The Doppler radars and naval intelligence provide continuous signals, and the progress in intensity and direction could be tracked. Even then, preparedness to meet the effects of disasters does not totally eliminate the losses as the spillover effect is deep in the mainland too. The Super Cyclonic Storm Amphan 2020 in the Indian Ocean was one that created huge devastation. It impacted most of the eastern coast leaving behind a trail of severe damage. A large number of lives were lost, and as per records due to the cyclone about 98 persons died and 1167 km (725 mi) of power lines were damaged, 126,540 transformers and 448 electrical substations were destroyed, leaving 3.4 million without power. (The Times of India, 22 May 2020). The damage to the power grid reached ₹3.2 billion (US$42 million). Four people died in Odisha, two from collapsed objects, one due to drowning, and one from head trauma. Across the ten affected districts in Odisha, 4.4 million people were impacted in some way by the cyclone. At least 500 homes were destroyed, and a further 15,000 were damaged. Nearly 4000 livestock, primarily poultry, died (various news reports then). The cyclone was strongest in its northeast section. The next storm was a depression that did not affect India. Then, a severe cyclonic storm Nisarga hit Maharashtra, with significant damage. Nisarga caused 6 deaths and 16 injuries in the state. Over 5033 ha (12,435 acres) of land were damaged (Effects of the 2020 North Indian Ocean cyclone season in India, en.wikipedia.org and various news reports). Cyclones cause huge-scale devastation to society and life gets totally disrupted. Lakhs of livestock get inundated so also did the property and crops. All economic activities come to a standstill and even though rehabilitation works begin immediately, it takes a few years for the livelihood cycle to assume normality.

Policy response

India’s Disaster Management preparedness has improved substantially since 1996. Following the 2001 expert committee recommendation, in May 1916, the Government of India released a detailed Natural Disaster Management Plan. In chapter three of this report, a detailed framework of rehabilitation and recovery after the cyclone is systematically recorded. First, emphasis is laid on understanding the risk through observation networks, information systems and research forecasting. Zoning and mapping as well as monitoring the progress of cyclones need to be emphasized. Hazzard risk and relative vulnerability along with dissemination of the warning systems data and information are to be recognized as important aspects. The report further provided policy guidelines about the institutions involved and overall disaster governance, and response systems as well as responsibilities to be shared. It is recommended that multi-purpose cyclone shelters, social housing schemes and hazard-resistant constructions be built. Capacity building and legal systems needed for meeting emergencies during cyclones have also been stated. Pandey ( 2016 ) suggested revisiting the existing legal framework of disaster management in India. This report is quite holistic as far as policy is concerned. It is only to be seen how the implementation process takes it forward and that comes only during the next episode of the disaster.

Floods and water related disasters

The rainfall pattern in India is marked by its erratic fluctuations. The climatic conditions here range from snowy Himalayan heights in the north to the arid deserts of Rajasthan. The annual normal precipitation ranges between 83 and 4000 mm. Ruyli located in the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan receives the lowest amount of rainfall measuring only 83mms, whereas Mawsynram in Khasi hills in East India gets 11,872 mm annual average rainfall. The two major problems associated with erratic rainfall are flood and drought. In unusual conditions, these turn into calamities, if accompanied by severe management and perception failures. Floods in the Indo-Gangetic-Brahmaputra basins have become almost an annual feature. On average, a few hundred lives are lost every year, some years even millions were rendered homeless and several hectares of crops were damaged.

More than 70% of the total annual precipitation occurs during pre-monsoon, south-west, north east and retreating monsoon seasons (De et al. 2005 ). It is estimated that roughly about 40 million hectares or 12% of Indian land is prone to flood hazards. Floods are very regular in Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, but states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala also have faced sporadic inundation. The horrifying memory of the Morvi Floods in Gujrat which was described as the “city of dead bodies” cannot be wiped out of our memory (Noorani 1979 ). Map 3 shows the flood-prone areas of India and the regions with a high probability of catastrophe. Between 1998 and 2017, 10 of the 14 extreme weather-related disasters that hit the country were floods. The floods also claimed 3,396 human lives and 239,174 cattle, besides damaging 35,07,542 houses and affecting more than 370 million people (Central Water Commission 2022, Table 6 ). Floods reset the development clock in these regions: roads, bridges, dwelling houses on river banks; cattle, and whatever comes in the way of water flow is washed away. In the recent past, floods are noticed even in traditional, non-flood-prone areas like Rajasthan, Gujrat, or Kerala. Various reasons like a phenomenon connected to global climate change or El-Nino, La-Nina & ENSO could be the cause (Bhat et al. 2015 ). Annually 32 million people are vulnerable to floods in various regions. Largely in the Indo-Gangetic and Brahmaputra plains, the floods are annual devastating agents.

figure 5

Flood-prone areas of India

The incidence of floods has increased in both number and intensity during the twenty-first century as compared to the twentieth century. In the earlier century, the most devastating floods were recorded in 1943, 1979, 1987, 1988 and 1993; as per the records. However, during the twenty-first century when the recording became substantially good it is observed that we had more than 10 devastating floods after 2000. These were experienced in 2005, 2013, 2015 (3), 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (Central Water Commission 2020). The worst floods recorded were in August 2018 in Kerala in Wayanad and Idukki districts causing 400 deaths and about Rs.30,000 crore in losses in terms of livestock houses and infrastructure. The urban floods in Mumbai (July 2005) caused thousands of deaths and more than 14,000 houses were inundated with a loss to the economy ranging up to Rs. 1000 crore. The Chennai flood of November 2015 caused 500 deaths and about 1.8 million displacements with 50,000 homes inundated. The total economic loss was in the range of Rs. 50,000 crore. The flood-prone areas of India as delineated by the National Disaster Management Authority are shown in the map.

Flood preparedness is one of the important areas discussed in most of the plans as certain areas are habitually flood-prone like the states of Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Ganges, Yamuna, Brahmaputra basins, North Eastern regions, Godavari basin, Krishna and Cauvery basins. Every flood sets back the development clock in the region affected by the floods. The devastation begins at the banks of the rivers but moves inside the mainland as the feeder rivers also get flooded. Initially, the impact is reflected in the inundation of regions, crops, houses along with other economic activities. The NDMA has categorized eight groups of impacts due to floods. These include (1) The devastation of Property and Life; (2) Livestock, crops and agriculture; (3) Energy and Communication facilities; (4) Food, and Drinking Water; (5) Shortage of Basic Necessities; (6) Outbreak of Epidemics, (7) Health Hazards and viii. Economic Activities. The Central Water Commission in its report in 2019 reported the average losses due to flood which is presented in Table 6 .

It is seen that the total losses to the economy from 1953 to 2020 are to the tune of 437 thousand crores in which only the damage to the crops, houses and public utilities are included. Cost relating to the loss of cattle and human lives and the cost to reset the development clock have not been calculated. The estimates of the loss provided in the table are reported losses, but then there are losses that happen in remote areas not covered by the agencies collecting statistics. These losses are quite huge in terms of all the sectors mentioned above. Floods have been our regular visitors and the region of the incidence as well as the likely intensity is easily understood from the studies conducted at the Central Water Commission of the Government of India. The important alleviation measures that have been suggested include (1) Early warning system based on the metrological data and forecasting of the rainfall in the catchment areas of the rivers; (2) The evacuation mechanism to be organized by NDRF and SDRF and keeping continuous alert in any situation; (3) The historical areas prone to floods have imbibed a perfect culture of accommodating the natural event and trying to adjust in the event of mild shocks but that does not help in unusual calamities. In the case of catastrophes, the losses even in the usual flood-prone areas are enormous despite experience & preparedness. More important is the identification of the new areas that are not usually affected by floods in the past. These regions report heavy damages both in economic as well as human and animal capital loss; iv. The embankment of the rivers every year and its maintenance needs to be high on the agenda. There are various flood control authorities for most of the rivers, however, the devastation of floods continues unabated. Either the authorities do not have a grasp of the real problem or the behaviour of the floods hoodwinks, the preparation of the authorities. v. For a long time now Inter Basin Transfer of Water Resources (IBTWR) and connectivity of rivers have been under discussion, but little has been achieved as yet. IBTWR is a project that envisaged connecting two or more rivers by creating a network of reservoirs and canals, expecting to alleviate the regular flooding of some rivers and using the water resources in the drought-prone areas. It is based on the assumption that surplus water in some rivers can be diverted to deficit rivers by creating a network. It all began with the Garland Canal Scheme proposed by an innovative Bombay-based consultant engineer Dinshaw Dastur in the year 1977. It is regarded by some scientists as a panacea for the country's ills, particularly the chronic flood problem and equally frustrating regular visitations of droughts. Under this (IBTWR) National Perspective Plan (NPP) for the interlinking of rivers, was prepared by the then Ministry of Irrigation (now Ministry of Jal Shakti) in 1980. Under NPP, 30 links were identified covering 14 links under Himalayan Rivers Component and 16 links under Peninsular Rivers Component for Inter Basin Transfer of Water based on field surveys and investigation and detailed studies. Precious little has happened after that.

Geological and land based disasters

India has a significant share of the Asian seismic zones and unlike cyclones, earthquakes occur without any prior warning. Therefore, the damage and loss of lives, as well as property, are huge and sudden. Asimakopoulou et al. ( 2010 ) reported that India’s 12% area is prone to “Very Severe” earthquakes, 18% to “Severe” earthquakes and 25% to “Damageable” earthquakes. The severe most quakes occurred in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Kutch, Himachal and the North-East. The Himalayan regions are particularly prone to earthquakes. The last two major earthquakes shook Gujarat in January 2001 and Jammu and Kashmir in October 2005. Beyond these, many smaller-scale quakes occurred in other parts of India in 2006. All 7 North East states of India—Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya; Andaman & Nicobar Islands; and parts of 6 other states in the North/North-West (Jammu and Kashmir, Uttaranchal, and Bihar) and West (Gujarat), fall in the Seismic Zone V. These confront higher probability of occurrence of quakes.

An earthquake is caused by a sudden change in the tectonic plates that are continuously moving, albeit at a snail’s pace. The plates that are deep below the earth’s surface are called “continental plates”. These plates move under a few kilometres in the deeper part of the earth (the mantle). They are always moving, bumping, or sliding past each other at a very slow speed but can brush against each other. Suddenly, when these plates brush strongly with their edges due to friction, a tremor eventuates. It is this stress on the edge that creates friction, which gives rise to an earthquake releasing huge energy waves and kilometres causing tremors through the earth's crust. This gets manifested into shaking of the earth’s surface which is experienced as an earthquake. The tectonic plates below the bottom of the sea also experience a similar phenomenon that gives rise to tremors. Such occurrence under the oceans also causes tremors and these are called oceanic quakes.

Measurement of the energy released that causes destruction is done with the help of seismographs. This is a scale-based measurement of the magnitude of earthquake given by Richter (e.g., Richter 1958 ). This is called “Richter scale”. The magnitude on the Richter scale is obtained through recordings of ground motion on seismographs through a seismometer. There are advances in the measurement of earthquakes that help to decipher tiny movements in the Earth's outermost layer that can provide a “Rosetta Stone” Footnote 1 for deciphering the physics and warning signs of big quakes. New algorithms that work a little like human vision are now detecting these long-hidden micro-quakes in the growing mountain of seismic data (Tables 7 , 8 , Map 4 ).

India has a long history of earthquakes. Increasing population and urbanisation with skyscrapers and indiscriminate apartments, factories, flyovers, gigantic malls, supermarkets and most of these being unscientific constructions, have all increased the frequency and magnitude of loss. Since 2001, the country has experienced 22 major and minor tremors that have resulted in over 30,000 deaths and large–scale devastation. The map of India’s seismic sensitive zone (IS 1893: 2002), indicates that about 60% of the land area is risk-prone due to seismic hazards. The entire Himalayan belt is prone to earthquakes of magnitude between 6 to 8 MSg on the Richter Scale. Geologists have indicated the likelihood of severe earthquakes in the Himalayan region that may endanger the lives of several million in that region. These events not only cause loss of life but also damage that includes: houses devastated, destruction of roads, bridges, breaches in barges and dams that can develop fissures, loss of livestock, an outbreak of diseases, and resetting all economic activity to the start. The cost of rehabilitation exerts strong pressure on the economy and many houses with families are totally destroyed. Latur earthquake caused many children to be orphans with all the elders of the hose getting crashed in the houses. One NGO named “My Home” (“आपलघर”) looked after 1650 orphaned children in Latur earthquake and educated them.

The Government of India through a special purpose vehicle namely the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) prepared earthquake disaster resources, shelf and capacity building programmes. The National Earthquake Risk Mitigation has also been ongoing as a Centrally Sponsored Plan Scheme with an outlay of Rs.24.87 crore, to be implemented between 2013 and 2015. The major components of National Earthquake Risk Mitigation Techno-legal Regime involving the adoption, enforcement and updating of the Techno-legal Regime in concerned Cities/States assumed prime importance as done in the Philippines (Britton 2006 ). This was allocated funds to the tune of Rs.8.20 Crore. Strengthening of institutional network and capacity building among citizens through colleges and educational centres was taken up at the cost of Rs.9.52 crore. This also involved practising engineers, civil contractors and works for which a separate fund of Rs 3.85 crore and for public awareness, a separate fund of Rs.1.88 Crore was allocated. A few important components were given priority in the action to mitigate the devastating effects of earthquakes in the NDMA ( https://www.ndma.gov.in/Natural-Hazards ):

Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Buildings typologies work was assigned to IIT Roorkee for North Zone, (2) IIT Kharagpur for East Zone, (3) IIT Guwahati for North East Region, (4) IIT Mumbai for West Zone, and (5) IIT Madras for South Zone. IIT Mumbai prepared the draft final report. However, the recommendations of these reports are awaiting implementation for want of funds.

Work has been undertaken for identifying and monitoring through the seismograph earthquake hazard zones.

NDMA has undertaken a project through Building Materials Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC) for the upgradation of Earthquake Hazards Maps for the country.

Project on research on soil piping in the highlands and foothills of Himalayas to avoid the disaster.

Soil piping Footnote 2 is a recently noticed phenomenon in Kerala. It is a sub-surface soil erosion process which is a dangerous disaster since the soil erosion also takes place beneath the soil. The Centre for Earth Science studies (CESS) with financial assistance from NDMA is undertaking Soil Piping Project to study this phenomenon and suggest measures to avoid a disaster.

NDMA is financing the proposal of Mission for Geospatial Applications (MGA), Department of Science and Technology for River Monitoring, Modelling and development of Early Warning System.

Landslide Mitigation and Management in India, a technical committee has been constituted by the Ministry of Mines on the initiative of NDMA.

Flood protection, NDMA is coordinating with MoWR/CWC and Survey of India for steering and approval of the project for River Bathymetric Survey and Preparation of Digital Elevation Models.

In addition to these steps, every state government was advised to take steps that include undertaking training in the construction of earthquake proof housing, bridges and barges. Identifying and pin pointing seismically active regions and categorize them into acute, moderate and low risk categories so that the efforts could be accordingly directed. It is essential to establish a network of seismometers and undertake deep earth research on plate movements with expert geologists.

Droughts: that breaks the spine Footnote 3

Drought is not simply a climatic phenomenon, but it also represents the failure of the human intellect to meet a situation that occurs due to climatic variability with a certain frequency. Over centuries human civilisation accommodated the climatic fluctuations of various magnitudes and evolved by imaginatively adjusting to them. There were also incidents of critical travails owing to the destructions created during some extreme events (Sen 1981 ; Dreze 1988 ; Sen and Dreze 1991 ; McMinn 1902 ). There are usual climatic aberrations that are regular micro climatic within one standard deviation of the bell shaped normal distribution. However, the extreme fluctuations in the climatic parameters crossing certain limits and extreme events like famines cause significant devastations resulting in human miseries.

Drought is an unescapable phenomenon which prevails in almost every region of the country with different intensities. Irrigated regions are insured with the availability of water but more frequently drought visits the rainfed regions of the country. It is a climatic event that intensifies the already fragile ecosystem of the rainfed regions and the extreme cases result in famine. It is only a climatic aberration of various magnitudes depending on the intensity of aggregate rainfall as well as the timelines of rainfall (Deshpande 2022 ; Nadkarni and Deshpande 1982 ). A devastating drought resulting in a famine fully nullifies the development efforts, besides inflicting serious miseries on the human population. The examples of these kinds of famines are many in history.

The phenomenon of droughts culminating into famines was quite pervasive in British India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Famine Commission’s Reports from 1870 to 1901 documented the travails and suffering of the population. Several researchers have analysed these reports of the Indian Famine Commission (IFC) from 1878 to 1901 (Romesh Dutt 1901 ; Loveday 1914 ; Bhatia 1967 ; Srivastava 1968 ; Baishya 1975 ; Brennan 1984 ) and brought out the failure of the state to ameliorate the impact. Therefore, the efforts in understanding the phenomenon of drought or for that matter famine could be traced back to the Famine Commission’s Reports of 1880 to 1901 as well as the First Irrigation Commission 1903, Royal Commission on Agriculture 1928 (GoI 1928 ).

As can be seen from Table 9 , famines and droughts were certainly frequent during the British Raj. Despite their numbers being lower than that of independent India, the intensity was quite piercing. There is also a possibility of underreporting of drought miseries in smaller regions during British India. However, during those years famines were severe in impact and enveloped vast regions coupled with sluggishness in protection from the British state. In fact, the colonial government did not heed very easily into declaring a famine and bringing in any kind of amelioration measures. History of the British administration recorded that Lord Lytton (Viceroy of India between 1876 and 1880) remarked negatively to the British citizens urging relief for the suffering Indian population in 1877. Lord Lytton wrote back to London, “Let the British public foot the bill for its 'cheap sentiment’, if it wished to save life at a cost that would bankrupt India” and “there is to be no interference of any kind on the part of Government with the object of reducing the price of food," and he instructed his district officers to "discourage relief works in every possible way” (Osborn 1879 ).

Drought is a situation largely dictated by quite a few agro-climatic parameters. It must be noted that the announcement of drought till 1972–73 was based on what was commonly called the “Annawari” system, wherein the normal crop was taken as a quality to 12 anna (before the decimal system in the currency entered India, where a rupee was equivalent to 16 Annas). It was the duty of the village accountant to report to the “tehsil office” about the crop condition. Twelve Annas were considered equal to perfectly normal crop conditions and anything below eight Annas was to be reported to the Tahsildar (Government official in charge of a Tehsil). In addition to this, the activities of migrating cattle, human population, stoppage of certain usual village activities, and availability of food grains in the market were reported to the higher ups by the village official. There was a Famine Code prepared and implemented in British India after 1883. Drought as a failure of rainfall was certainly recognized in official circles; however, the declaration of a drought affected village was solely done by the revenue department through the tehsildar and the district collector (Table 10 ).

There are a few other typologies of drought. In meteorological parlance broadly drought is viewed as a situation where the annual rainfall is less than 75% of the normal or there is a departure of − 25% from the normal. In addition to this, meteorological scientists have also developed criteria based on Moisture Index and Aridity Index (Aridity Index (AI) = {Rainfall/Potential Evapotranspiration} in mms), The Aridity Index (AI) classifies regions as Hyper-Arid: AI < , 0.05; Arid Area 0.05 < AI < 0.20; Semi-Arid 0.20 < AI < 0.50 and Dry Sub-Humid 0.50 < AI < 0.65. Another definition is that “Drought occurs at a period in a certain area when its rainfall is less than decile − 2 and severe drought occurs when rainfall is below decile-1”. Similarly, another method of Palmer’s Drought Index (1965), a two-layer approach is employed in arriving at water balance. The Palmer Drought Index includes the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), the Palmer Hydrological Drought Index (PHDI), and the Palmer Z (Moisture Anomaly Index) Index. Hydrological Drought is a result of the meteorological drought which puts stress on the surface and groundwater, thereby reducing the availability of water for different uses and arriving at the Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI). These measurements are used for the hydrological drought (Nagrajan 2010 ); (3) Agricultural Drought is a result of meteorological drought and hydrological drought as all the activities in the agricultural sector actually refer to the adequacy of the soil moisture during the growing season and increased aridity index. Even though it is very simple to understand the agricultural drought with satellite imagery, a Crop Moisture Index is utilized in order to declare an agricultural drought; (4) Ecological Wide Spread Drought: Ecological drought occurs when primary productivity of the natural ecosystem significantly goes down as an effect of reduced precipitation and availability of water in the ecosystem on which human as well as animal population is dependent; (5) Famine like conditions prevail when there is extreme aridity and the moisture index is at its lowest. Famine conditions are indicated by significant human and animal migration (GoI 1901 ; De Supriyo 2019 ), stress on the availability of water for drinking and other purposes, and deaths of animals and infants due to water shortages and drinking contaminated water (Fig. 3 ).

The early cautioning system is one concept that entered the lexicography of planning or amelioration of drought impact very late. It was till the 1987 drought, the approach to dealing with drought was only of the firefighting type. The Famine Code of 1883 continued in the books and from the declaration of drought to amelioration, works were handled in the same manner as in the fifties. The development of an early warning system was almost absent and the lag between the incidence and administrative action was quite huge. The first signals as well as the warning system should begin from the village. There is a large scope of handling it at the village level and the information seeking to be placed with the village panchayats, taluk panchayats and district panchayats. The management of the data and overseeing the data transfer from the village panchayat level was successfully carried out in Karnataka through the telemetric rain gauge stations at the village panchayat (Karnataka State Natural Disaster Management Centre). This initiated drought monitoring and preparations to meet the conditions as well as ameliorate the distress from the village level. However, the implementation of such systems needs to take precedence over the mere understanding of drought (Fig. 7 , Map 5 ).

figure 6

Seismic vulnerability Map of India

figure 7

Long run Rainfall behaviour. Source : Compiled by Author using data from Indian Meteorological Department

figure 8

Frequency of the occurrence of drought in16 years (2000–2016)

Among the essential steps to improve the monitoring of drought situation, the first step begins with the formation of a contingency plan from the micro level aggregating to the macro level. This plan should be further totalled at the state level and must include all the requirements of data at the village level to understand the intensity and spread of drought. Principally, the data have to be collected on the rainfall incidence, variability, moisture index of the soil with the well spread samples, crop conditions, and socio-economic responses of the people. The Soil Health Card scheme followed recently in many States provides only scientific information about the soil on the card supplied to the farmer, which the farmer neither understands nor can take corrective action and therefore, these are of little use other than keeping them in the cupboard. Recently, a World Bank-funded project on Watershed Development in Karnataka emphasized the Land Resource Inventory Card (LRI) with huge funds invested at the behest of the World Bank. This is not the only a case of putting investment down the drain on half-baked expert advice. Earlier on the advice of the World Bank experts, vetiver grass was planted as a vegetative bund with large investments in Manoli, Kabbalnala, Maheshwarnala and Puruanala watershed projects. Unfortunately, not a blade of that grass is available today in any of these watersheds and the borrowed funds invested certainly went down in the soil (Deshpande 2022 ).

As a submission to the Agricultural Commission 1976, the Indian Meteorological Department prepared a map of rainfall failure zones across meteorological sub-divisions. These maps were quite useful in drought planning and preparedness. The probabilities of rainfall failures in different ranges across states were arrived at and that served as a basis for future planning presented in Table 11 . The states could be categorized into five levels, namely: very rare; rare, frequent, very frequent and severely drought-prone based on the probability of failure of rainfall.

The system diagram (Fig.  4 ) represents three stages in the process of the impact of drought. In the first stage as soon as pre-sowing tillage is undertaken, the farmer expects the first monsoon shower that drenches the field. Sometimes, the pre-monsoon showers as well as the initial monsoon showers record failure below the normal rainfall of those three weeks. If protective irrigation is available, then the farmer continues in the first season of farming activities.

figure 9

A system diagram of drought impact

The crops start growing, and this is the initial stage of the crops when at least 2 to 3 showers are required for healthy crop growth as well as the application of fertilizers and manure. In this mid-season of crop growth, if there is a dry spell and if protective irrigation is available only, then the farming activities continue. In the absence of a dry spell also farming and activities continue. In case these two conditions are not satisfied and if the areas are already sown, the farmer suffers the loss of seeds, labour charges utilized for tillage, sowing and other activities. Initially, the farmer can postpone sowing and may get connected to either the place indicated as (A) or (B) to reach the second stage in the system diagram. The impact on the large farmers (LF), small farmers (SF) and agricultural labourers (AL) is different, and the availability of resources only dictates the further journey of the farmer. At this stage, the farming activities get connected to (C) (D) or (G1), as depicted in stage I.

The second stage in the system diagram picks up from (A), (B), (C) from stage 1 and the farming activities continue under the condition of availability of resources to continue on the second season cropping. It is necessary to bear in mind that the loss in the kharif season makes it difficult for the farmer to have working capital in hand and thus continue cultivation in the rabi season cropping. In such situations, many farmers tend to borrow from the moneylenders as already the crop loan is used out and the usual sources of credit are also exhausted in the first season. An early dry spell in the rising rabi season puts two conditions, namely: 1. Availability of irrigation and if there was no drought in the kharif that signifies that the economic condition of the farmer is better and therefore the cultivator continues with farming. 2. In case there was a kharif drought confronted earlier by the farmer, the economic condition of the household gets deteriorated. However, in case there is protective irrigation available the farmer continues with farming, but in case it is not available, and Rabi sowing has already taken place then the farmer suffers rabi season drought and loss of seeds fertilizers and other costs of cultivation. Again, survival to the third stage depends on the resource position of the farmers and those who cannot afford to sustain the usual lifestyle either migrate out of the village or seek employment in their own village or outside. At this stage, the farmer tends to diversify their activities. The third stage of the system diagram begins with connectors (D), (E), (F), (G) and (GI) from the earlier stages. If the drought prevails and if the said position is quite strong, then the farmer continues with normal economic activities or diversifies into other economic activities. In this position, the farmer’s availability for employment decides quite a bit about future sustenance. Otherwise, if there are household assets for the purpose of sale and at times even land, the cultivator resorts to the sale of livestock, household assets, jewellery, and even land. At this point of time the cultivator is absolutely helpless and the entire household economy is in a wreck. The economics of drought directly hinges on three important components. The first one is the timeliness of rainfall at the proper time and the availability of resources for continuing the cultivation. The second is the capability to diversify and enter into the labour market or other economic activities ensures survival of the household from a complete wreckage. Third, many times extreme steps are taken by the farmers by either committing suicide or migrating to far off places.

Drought can lead to economic wreckage only when the cultivator fails in his/her ingenuity to adjust to the situation of drought at the earliest and has non-diversified economic activities. The non-availability of water leads to the collapse of many economic activities and gives rise to epidemics like cholera, influenza and many such diseases due to the use of contaminated water. The other economic activities also get impacted and the prices of usual household goods as well as agricultural necessities increase substantially. That puts heavy pressure on the cultivator households. As seen above in the system diagram, the impact of drought varies according to its severity and the point of its incidence. However, a wide spread drought causes damage not only to the crop economy in terms of productivity, production and quality of crop output but other economic activities also. It also impacts the non-recoverable cost as there is a total loss of production, loss of animals and the usual professional activities besides non-availability of the basic requirements like drinking water, milk and of all work for the workers. The impact of drought is all pervasive as it has a spillover effect on related economic activities. The loss of crop activities exerts pressure on connected production and service sector activities thereby slowing down the process of increasing GDP. This is visualized in the form of troughs observed in GDP data during drought years. All these are shown in Table 12 .

Drought has been one of the major despoilers of growth in the rainfed areas affecting economic activities. In the Indian context, drought strikes with a probability from as low as 10% to 50%. There are many regions which confront drought almost every second year like Rajasthan and a few other districts in the country. A complete review of the drought situation in the country as can be understood from various reports and academic researchers suggests failure of systematic efforts till the 1987 drought. There onwards, however, the preparedness has improved substantially.

It is necessary to put in place an early warning system connected from taluk to district and through the State Government to NRAA. The best example of the early warning system is available in the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Management Centre’s program of establishing a network of Telemetric Rain Gauge Stations and obtaining the data on a real-time basis.

National Weather Watch Committee takes note of the process of drought in the country. The meetings of the Weather Watch Committee take place almost every week and almost daily during the drought situation.

Drought is an usual phenomena in rainfed areas, but it can also strike irrigated regions. A drought striking an unusual area is more devastating than its strike in the usual drought-prone areas. This possibility cannot be ignored, and hence, there should be preparation for drought striking even in the assured rainfall region or in non-rainfed areas.

Rural-based industries have not been proliferating as they should, in the rainfed areas these would employ the rural youth who prefer to work in industries rather than agriculture. This will also control the outmigration from rural India to urban centres.

MGNREGS is a flagship programme of the Government of India that employs a large number of agricultural labourers from rural India. Under this scheme, employment is provided for hundred days and the rest of the time the labourer is left to fend for his/her life as it goes. It will be possible to establish a Labour Supply Corporation (LSC), wherein the labourer should register with the corporation about their availability and time.

Watershed management practices are considered a panacea for the development of rainfed areas. Beginning with the initial projects in the domain of agricultural universities followed by a huge World Bank-funded Watershed Development Project at four important centres in the country has shown only the path. The technologies developed by the World Bank experts are pushed down the throat of the State governments, implementing agencies and stakeholder farmers. Therefore, these interventions disappear as soon as the World Bank team leaves the country.

There is a strong need of increasing public investment in rainfed areas as well as drought-prone areas taking up projects in rural industrialisation with the help of private industries supported by the government, wherever possible. With the availability of alternative employment, it is possible that the out-migration from rural India will reduce and the rural folks will find a better alternative for sustaining their livelihood.

Public awareness and drought proofing efforts have to be initiated and incentivized at the village level with the complete participation of the locals.

Crop insurance is not a fool proof remedy anymore due to faulty administration and manifesting as an institution governed solely by private interests. Private companies are given full authority to insure and pay the indemnity as they get State support in this operation. Area approach is being followed by these insurance companies, and this will depend on the crop cutting experiments or the metrological data which comes with a lag. It must be understood that if the farmers’ kharif crop has failed, she/he will not be able to undertake cultivation of Rabi crop immediately due to delay in the payment of indemnity.

More than anything, the “water, seed, fertilizer, pesticides” culture of technology is certainly not a solution towards drought proofing. It will not only increase the cost of cultivation and consequently net income of the farmer will fall, thereby making more farmers poorer, the farm unviable, pushing peasants out of agriculture. It was noted that between 1991and 2011 above 5 million cultivators have gone out of cultivation and that swelled the ranks of agricultural labourers moving to urban areas (Deshpande and Shaha 2021 ).

The best policy for drought-prone areas is diversification of rural industries along with agro processing.

COVID-19: pandemic: the biological holocaust

Covid-19 started in early 2020 with the first patient reporting from Trissur, Kerala. However, initially the Indian medical fraternity either had no knowledge of the potential threat or due to negligence did not note the severity of the threatening pandemic. Airports were not sealed immediately, and soon it spread like a whirlwind across the country. It needs no statement that Covid-19 spreads faster in high density regions and that explains why it was so severe in metropolitan cities in urban India, than in rural India. The initial wave of Covid-19 seemed to have subsided by October 2020 but immediately a second shock came in the summer of 2021. This was followed by a moderate amount of recovery in 2021–22. The first wave was at the peak in mid-September 2020 but slowed down thereafter till the end of that year. That allowed the Government to lift the nationwide restrictions were relaxed by June 2021. By the end of the second phase and till recently as of 30-09-2022, India reported officially4.46 crore cases along with 5.29 lakh deaths. The cumulative data are shown in Fig.  5 based on “ourworldindata.org” database.

figure 10

Cumulative number of Covid-19 cases: 04/03/2020 to 30/09/2022. Source : https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/india?country=~IND#daily-confirmed-cases

One can see there are more than three spurts in the number of cases, the first came in October 2020 and steadily kept increasing. The second spurt in the cases was experienced in April 2021 and immediately by the end of May 2021 the country experienced another spurt in cases. The real jump came as the third push in April 2021 followed in July 2021. The next spurt in the cases appeared in Jan 2022, and the cases got in control from February 2022. It will be erroneous to generalize (fed by the news papers) that the pandemic had struck in two waves, actually 15 September 2020 saw a peak of 97,894 cases soon to reach 103,558 on 3 April 2021. It was assumed to be the peak but was negated by a new number of 414,188 on the 5 of May 2021. It is clear from Fig.  5 that there were three strong spurts but more fluctuations. It is argued that the recovery period was from August 2021 to January 2022, during which Covid-19 cases began declining rapidly, and the economy started recovering from the shock. By April 2022, however, again a spurt was seen on 4 August 2022. As the severity of the waves of the pandemic began subsiding, many of the nationwide mobility restrictions were gradually relaxed from June 2021 and again reintroduced in January 2022. The daily increments in the cases are shown in Fig.  6 starting from 4 March 2020 to 30 September 2022 (Fig. 11 ).

figure 11

Daily increase in the Covid-19 cases in India. Source : as in Fig.  5

figure 12

Daily addition to the number of deaths. Data from: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/india?country=~IND#daily-confirmed-cases

figure 13

Culture of resilience in India

The government initially responded with a partial lockdown and then clamped a full and strict lockdown. Almost all economic activities came to standstill. Economic activities in the informal sector and MSMEs (specifically dependent on casual workers) came to a complete cessation. The major dent was on the informal sector, out-sourced employees, the hospitality industry, travel, tourism, aviation, restaurants, entertainment, commercial real estate, small transport operators, etc. The workers dependent on these vocations suffered the real blow and unemployment shot up (CMIE 2020, 2021; Azim Premji University 2021 ). The economy underwent a severe contraction with severe suffering.

Indian economy had the first huge jolt from April to June 2020, with the country’s GDP declining by 24.4%. Followed by this in the second quarter of the 2020/21 (July to September 2020), the economy suffered another contraction of 7.4%. The mild reversal in the third and fourth quarters (October 2020 to March 2021) was not enough to cover the earlier loss. The contraction of GDP in India was (in real terms) 7.3% for the whole 2020/21 (RBI 2022a , b ). The decline was the main reason for emboldening the picture of global inequality, which had been falling earlier but has started to widen again observed by some economists. While economies worldwide have been hit hard, India suffered one of the largest contractions. During the 2020/21 financial year, the rates of decline in GDP for the world were 3.3% and 2.2% for emerging markets and developing economies. Quarterly growth rates in Indian GDP in 2020–21 were − 24.4%, − 7.4%, 0.5% and 1.6%, respectively. The fact that India’s growth rate in 2019 was among the highest, caused the drop due to Covid-19 to be sharper and more noticeable. Unemployment has been one of the highly referred, important injuries inflicted by Covid-19. This was due to the lockdowns and the employers of the casual labourers did not care for them. Reverse migration was an inevitable outcome protected neither by their employer nor by the State Governments. Labour as a sector is under the concurrent list as given in the Constitution of India and, therefore, the State and Union Governments together carried the responsibility to ameliorate their livelihood shocks. India’s unemployment rate peaked at10.4% (CMIE, Jan 2020, p.5) indicating that the Govt of India could not manage this effectively compared to the reference group economies with similar per capita incomes. Possibly this was due to the composition of the Indian urban workforce where casualization of labour markets is pre-dominant. However, it should be noted that the data used for these rates were from CMIE and in the methodology of the survey, the CMIE report states “The sample size is 174,405 households (out of approx. 40 million households). Of this, 110,975 (out of approx. 11 million households) are urban households picked from 7920 CEBs of 322 towns, and, the remaining 63,430 (Approx. Out of 22 million households) rural households were picked from 3965 villages” (CMIE, Report, 2021, P. 193). This is certainly questionable, but probably at that time, there were no other sources available to get an idea of unemployment (Fig. 7 ).

The worst impact of the Covid-19 disaster was manifested in the number of deaths that occurred in this period. India lost 5, 28,655 persons up to 30 Sept 2022. This is from official records but many cases were not reported as death due to Covid. People carried a stigma attached to such declaring of death due to Covid and the neighbourhood stayed away from the entire family. Another severe agony was inflicted on the returning migrant labourers to their villages. There was a case reported from Kolhapur district that the migrants from the village were made to stay out of the village for a few days. During 1991 and 2011, there has been a significant increase in rural to urban migration from 21.2% in 1991–01 to 24.1% in 2001–11. This was due to the increase in economic activities at a very high speed in the urban locations. There were skyscrapers, new housing schemes, roads and other infrastructure, fly-over bridges, malls and many other casual employment opportunities that vindicated the Lewisian theory of rural–urban migration in search of higher wages. Unfortunately, this was without any preparations in urban areas to facilitate their stay in the urban cities.

The Government of India took quite a few steps to provide support to the affected population and these include some out of box measures such as direct spending and foregone/deferred revenue that included provision of in-kind (food; cooking gas) and in-cash transfers to lower income households; insurance coverage for workers in the healthcare sector; wage support and employment provision to low-wage workers, improving health infrastructure and increasing the number of hospital beds, ventilators, intensive care facilities and quarantine centres. In order to support businesses and shore up credit provision to several sectors of the economy and sections of the population, many of these measures are taken, but the implementation has many questions to answer.

Until August 2020, the Government of India had emphasized a supply-cantered strategy to boost GDP growth and the fall-out was squeezing the purchasing power needs. The employment losses due to the closure of the entire informal sector needed the generation of employment or providing some income support. In such a situation, it was certainly difficult to start any new employment programme and the MNREGS attendance also thinned down. As a result, the expenditure of the Union government on MNREGS declined between April and September 2020 as well as in April–September 2019. This was compensated by providing essential food articles to the poor and the reverse migrants. The government had little scope in expanding budgetary spending as the funds were directed towards the States as special grants.

Under the lockdown, complete disruption of all production activity was experienced with shrinking availability of capital, labour, and raw materials. All wholesale and retail markets as well as small shops were closed; even e-commerce was not operating. Under this pressure the MSMEs and all small businesses collapsed and these needed financing to restart, they downsized their businesses adding to unemployment. Along with this, the RBI announced a reduction in the policy rates and release of more liquidity and introduced a moratorium on term-loan repayments for six months. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana (PM-KISAN) providing Rs 6000 per year began with a total allocation of Rs. 160 billion. A new scheme of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) to old-age people, widows along with Ujjwala Yojana, and under Jan Dhan Yojana was speeded up amounting to Rs. 470 billion. On the employment front, MNREGA was extended to migrant workers and some workers in organized employment with an allocation of Rs. 922 billion. Besides, a special fund was created for construction workers of Rs. 310 billion. Direct food distribution through PDS was undertaken with an allocation of Rs. 35 billion. For the MSMEs, collateral-free bank loans of up to Rs. 3 trillion was announced. Along with this, aGovernment investment of Rs. 100 billion was initiated in funds that in turn will invest Rs. 500 billion in the equity capital of MSMEs. In addition to this and recognizing the stress on MSMEs a Rs. 200 billion subordinate debt was issued by banks and other financial institutions for strained MSMEs. Non-Banking Financial Companies were helped with Rs. 450 billion partial credit guarantee scheme, where the first 20% of the loss was guaranteed to be borne by the government. These were the new policy reforms including amendments to the Essential Commodities Act, liberalisation of investment norms for some sectors, etc.

Developing a culture of resilience

Disasters strike with a very thin probability and these events could be placed at the tail end of the normal distribution. Therefore, predictability of any disaster is a difficult process and even with historical experience, we understand the region of incidence with a rough probability of likelihood in about a decade. Most of the major disasters in India are now about too much or too little water and the meteorological forecasts are available to the population only a few days ahead of the event. There are short and focus which are given a few hours before the event and then medium and extended forecasts on the time scale. However, we must confess that our understanding of hydro-metrological or geophysical phenomena is still far away from advanced predictability. Therefore, disasters like earthquakes, landslides, flash floods and cloud bursts happen when the population is totally unprepared resulting in huge human and animal casualties besides the devastation of property, crops and infrastructure. At least since a few decades, the regions classified as most disaster-prone have been identified and maps are prepared accordingly. Footnote 4 The Government of India has also opened offices of the National Disaster Management Authority along with the deployment of NDRF and SDRF in the regions. Even then, the administration fails to intake a rational decision while preparing for disaster management.

Certainly, disasters strike without sufficient warning and at times the events crawl into human life. Preparedness for the eventuality is one of the important steps before the disaster strikes. Even in Chanakya’s Arthshastra, it has been recorded that “There are eight kinds of providential visitations: These are fire, floods, pestilential diseases, earthquakes, famine, rats, tigers, serpents, and demons. From these shall the king protect his kingdom” (Shamasastry, p 294). Thus, the responsibility for ameliorating the conditions rests on the king or the government. It is necessary to note that the form of the government had changed from a kingdom to the Republic of India. It is not just a change of nomenclature, but such transformation enforces equal responsibility on the government and the people and that is most important to understand in today’s context. People’s participation in the preparedness as well as getting ideas from those who have been historically suffering disasters is essential. Our approach has always been top-down rather than learning from those who are at the bottom and suffer the most. This is expected in the republic of India (Map 6 ).

The map shows resilient, slightly non-resilient, moderately non-resilient and severely non-resilient districts in the country. This was prepared based on the perceptions of the disaster indicated by the population residing in the district. The level of resilience is largely decided by the probability of occurrence of extreme events and as some of the events occurred with very thin probability the perception of resilience differs significantly. Resilience is formed by three overlapping elements: (1) exposure (the shocks and stresses experienced by the system), (2) sensitivity (the response of the system), and (3) adaptive capacity (the capacity of the system with adaptive action) (Chakraborty and Joshi 2016 ). Like some of the coastal districts of Tamil Nadu and Odisha have a frequency of cyclones but their expectations are not formed based on the probability the population is not so much frightened of the event or rather thinks that precautionary steps can be taken at the time of the event itself. In the olden days, society was more cohesive and social interests preceded self-interests but during the commercialisation process when self-interest predominated, social insurance slowly vanished. Society as a whole is not taking collective decisions to protect from disasters. Panicky behaviour and herd mentality predominated in society and that increased the intensity of the damages. Information also plays a very important role in preparedness for such events. It will be essential to state here that every disaster causes huge devastation and loss of lives and livelihood. Many extreme disasters reset the development clock and every effort is forced to start right from the region. Infrastructure, houses, schools and roads and whatever comes in the way of the brute force of nature are destroyed and wrecked. It takes a long time to rebuild the physical assets but even longer to recoup the psychological impact on the population.

In the current situation, it should not be simply the responsibility of the government alone, but the entire rehabilitation and response work must be carried out by the people as well as the State. In India, we have accepted our Constitution and defined the nation as the Democratic Republic and therefore, the responsibility is equally on the people of the nation to meet the challenge thrown by the natural elements. Preparedness for the worst is the best kind of insurance besides the usual disaster insurance provided by financial intermediaries. The first step in such preparedness requires identifying the vulnerable regions at three levels, namely: (1) Seriously vulnerable, (2) Vulnerable and (3) Regions with low vulnerability. Similarly, in society also susceptibility differs according to the sensitivity of a social group and its social economic status. It is well known that disaster strikes fiercely at the most vulnerable. Therefore, poverty and destitution are quite common and located in these most vulnerable regions (Bhalla et al. 2022 ). The government has made significant efforts in putting several institutional frameworks to meet the disaster and ameliorate the after effects. Footnote 5 It is necessary that these institutions work with horizontal coordination enhancing efforts of each other. Therefore, a coordination Body like NDC involving State Home Ministers with Non-Government Expert Participation is necessary to take a periodic overview. The coordination or joint meetings of NEC and NCMC are also necessary to discuss resilience. Actually, equal responsibility and liability also lie with the private sector operating in the region. Community participation; cooperation of local administration with NDRF and Permanent Disaster Management Funds and regular contributions from the States and Central Budget are essential components.

A final plan to meet the requirements of managing every type of disaster in India requires integration of disaster mitigation and preparedness in development programmes with multi-sectoral/inter-departmental coordination and multi-hazard approach in disaster management planning. An important component is the preparedness of society through public awareness and community capacity, to cope with the hazards, reduce dependence on the government and build a culture of self-help. It needs to be seen if the Task Force for Review of DMA Recommendations-2013 as well as the NDMA Plan of 2016 is implemented, and that step can go a long way if executed scrupulously. In all, full transparency of plans and actions needs to be maintained with clear documentation. Integration of State and National DM Plans for ensuring food security and establishing quick shelter facilities is a vital component. In any disaster, transportation gets impacted; therefore, establishing proper transport networks is crucial. Preparedness at the household level also needs to be looked into in the capacity building programmes. Finally, it is a battle of wits between human intelligence and Pancha Mahabhutas ; therefore, disaster strikes without much warning throwing a challenge of ingenuity for defence with all the preparations to the human race.

Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes.

Soil piping is a naturally occurring hydraulic process that leads to the development of macrospores (large air filled voids) in the sub-surface.

This section draws from my earlier work (Deshpande 2022 ).

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Acknowledgements

I thank my guru Prof M V Nadkarni, Hon Professor, ISEC, Dr V S Prakash, former Director KSNDMC, and Dr Khalil Shaha for help as well as many inputs.

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L.S. Venkataramanan Memorial Lecture; This lecture was delivered by Prof. R. S. Deshpande at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore (ISEC) as LSV Memorial Lecture on October 28, 2018. The article was submitted to ISEC for publication and circulation. This lecture is presented here in its original version (with minor modifications).

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Deshpande, R.S. Disaster management in India: are we fully equipped?. J. Soc. Econ. Dev. 24 (Suppl 1), 242–281 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-022-00225-w

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India: Managing the Complex Problem of Floods and Droughts

Assam-EPIC-Response.jpg

  • Floods and droughts are on the rise in India. But they need not become disasters. It depends on how society manages them.
  • The World Bank has put forward the EPIC Response framework to better manage these climate extremes. It emphasizes that floods and droughts be addressed as different ends of the same spectrum, and the whole of society be involved in the response – including the government, private sector, local government, academia, and civil society.
  • The Framework is now being piloted in India’s flood-prone state of Assam, along with a new tool that enables various agencies to assess the status of their flood and drought protection programs, identify where collaboration can be enhanced, and track progress over time.

Floods and droughts have long been a part of life in India. Almost 150 years ago, the Ganga canal system was developed to bring water to farmers in the fertile upper Gangetic Plain.  In southern India too, the early 20 th century Krishna Raja Sagar Dam and other systems helped manage floods and prevent crop failures.

Today, however, the challenges are of a different magnitude altogether. The monsoon has become more erratic and unpredictable, bringing extreme rainfall on the one hand and sudden drought on the other. Worryingly, India's drought-prone area has increased by 57 percent since 1997 1 , while instances of heavy rainfall have risen by almost 85 percent since 2012.  This can have far-reaching impacts, affecting several generations.

To mitigate the impacts of floods and droughts, India has launched many policies and programs to improve water security and build climate resilience – several with World Bank support. This includes advances in technologies such as flood forecasting models, hydromet services and early warning systems, greater dam safety, and a national plan for disaster management. Even so, these measures, although laudable, will not be enough to address the scale of India’s water woes.

The World Bank

Importantly, floods and droughts don’t need to become disasters. It depends on how society manages these climatic extremes. While national governments tend to deal with them in a siloed manner, what is needed is a paradigm shift in the way these events are managed altogether. It is a complex problem that requires a multi-sectorial approach to reduce the risks and impacts.

Given the urgency of staying ahead of the changing climate, the World Bank, with support from Deltares, a Netherlands-based research institute, has put forward a new perspective to better manage these risks – the EPIC Response framework  (Enable, Plan, Invest, Control).

The framework is being piloted by the World Bank supported Assam Integrated River Basin Management Program . The program seeks to reduce the vulnerability of Assam’s people to climate-related disasters and help the state develop its substantial water resources in an integrated and sustainable manner.  

Speaking of the program, Mr. Bhaskar Das, Chief Technical Officer, Flood and River Erosion Management Agency of Assam (FREMAA) pointed out: “The Water Resources Department and the State Disaster Management authorities are working in close coordination and in an integrated manner.”

Assam-EPIC-Response-2.jpg

To demonstrate the applicability of the EPIC Response framework in other Indian states, a workshop, co-organized by the Indian Water Partnership and the World Bank , was held in New Delhi in April 2023. Various central government agencies, leading experts and a mix of states that face recurrent floods and droughts participated.

While these states - Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala and Odisha - face many common challenges, they have different climatic, economic, and social conditions. In Karnataka, for instance, around 20,000 water bodies have dried up and, in many districts, groundwater is depleting by the day. In Assam, on the other hand, where the mighty Brahmaputra flows, floods, riverbank erosion, and encroachment of riverine areas are the major challenges. In Bihar, too, where many rivers flow down from the mountains of Nepal carrying large sediment loads, more than 70 percent of the land is flood prone. What’s more, 28 out of Bihar’s 38 districts are affected by either floods or droughts, and sometimes by both every year.

The workshop underscored three key messages:

·       Addressing floods and droughts as different ends of the same spectrum.

·       Collaboration between various water agencies and presenting a joint government response to the challenge.

·       Involving the whole of societ y in the response - private sector, local government, academia, and civil society.

Delivering his keynote address, Mr. Kushvinder Vohra, Chairman, Central Water Commission , stated: “Floods and droughts are one of the most pressing issues of our time.” Therefore, he stressed, it is essential to develop climate-resilient structural and non-structural solutions for effective water governance.

The newly developed EPIC Response Assessment Methodology (ERAM) tool that is being piloted in Assam was also presented at the workshop. The tool is a decision support system that enables various agencies to assess the status of their hydro-climatic risk management systems, identify areas where program components can be strengthened, ascertain where collaboration can be enhanced, and track progress over time. The results can facilitate a policy dialogue to generate a common understanding of their programs’ status, as well as the challenges and opportunities for enhancing flood and drought risk management systems.  

Commenting on the relevance of the EPIC framework in the Indian context, Mr. A.B. Pandya, Secretary General, International Commission on Irrigation & Drainage , said: “The EPIC framework serves as a good guideline and benchmark against which the readiness of the individual region or subregion can be assessed.”

Outlining the complex situation in Bihar, Mr. Pravin Kumar from the Bihar State Disaster Management Authori ty (BSDMA) spoke about their mandate to develop disaster management policy, lay down guidelines, approve plans across departments, coordinate implementation of plans, recommend funds for mitigation measures and review measures taken. He said that the EPIC Response Framework and the ERAM tool will be useful to assess these measures.

[1] “Drought in Numbers”, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification 2022. 

The workshop, Improving Flood and Drought Governance: Applying the EPIC Response Framework, took place on April 28, 2023, in New Delh i.

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Natural Disasters and Community Resilience A Case Study of Uttarakhand Disaster India

Profile image of SUBHRAJIT RATH

2022, Eastern Geographer

Community resilience against natural disasters assumes a lot of importance in policy circles. Natural disasters not only disrupt the foundation of overall economic processes, they also affect different groups of victims differently. In this paper, we have made an attempt to present how the socioeconomic variations dictate the differential impacts of natural calamities on people living in a disaster prone area, taking Uttarakhand disaster 2013 as a case that caused a loss of substantial material and life in Uttarakhand state of India. The case study is based on 652 sample respondent households of four disaster affected districts of the state namely; Chamoli, Pithoragarh, Rudraprayag and Uttarkashi. For the sake of comparison, Dehradun is taken as a controlled district. The paper makes a conscious effort to analyse the differences in losses to communities owing to their caste, educational attainment, income class and occupational trades. With the help of both primary and secondary information, the paper highlights significant differences in losses incurred by different community groups. The resilience against the disaster was found to be high for the upper caste and affluent groups compared to the marginalized communities.

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Globally, natural disasters have caused a large scale of damage and destruction every year, affecting millions of people, the economy, and development – and developing countries are the most severely affected. Odisha is one of India’s most disaster-prone states. This study explores the effects of, and resilience to, cyclones, floods, droughts, and heatwaves in Odisha, and identifies government strategies that help mitigate these natural disasters. We mainly used primary data collected through a qualitative study undertaken from April 2017 to June 2017 in three districts of Odisha. We conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with community members and key stakeholders at different levels. In addition, our study analyzed secondary data on natural disasters using DesInventar, a disaster information management system data source. The findings show that floods, cyclones, and drought in recent years, along with heatwaves and lightning, have severely affected the people of...

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This paper is based on a study that examines an urban coastal area in a developing country and explores how the resilience of communities to deal with the potential impact of disasters could be quantified and measured. It is part of a multi-country study supported by the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University. The JTCDM, TISS focussed on India and attempted a methodology of computing the disaster resilience index of informal settlements in hazard-prone areas. It contributes to the discourse around enhancing the resilience of a community, particularly in urban informal settlements in the coastal megacity of Mumbai where disaster impacts are likely to be severe. It is predicted that disaster events induced due to climatic change will increase and developing countries will be most affected by such variations. Reports suggest that society, resilient to such impacts with high coping capacity will be better able to survive and bounce back after crisis situations. The main objective of this study is to work towards developing indicators addressing the disaster resilience of communities in urban areas and to compute a resilience index. Such an index would help policymakers identify vulnerable areas, enable comparison and intervene proactively to enhance resilience. The idea of creating a resilience index is expected to provide a simple method of predicting if a community will reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning after a disaster. Since about 40 percent of the people in Mumbai live in slums, certain locales in the city were identified to pilot the methodology of measuring resilience, examining the scenario of specific disasters experienced by them. Indicators were identified based on the livelihood frameworks and factors considered were physical/ natural (electricity, water supply, accessibility to roads, housing), economic (income, employment, debt), social (knowledge and awareness, social conflict), human (education, health status and infrastructure) and institutional (internal and external). These as indicators collectively add to the understanding of vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms of the community. Findings of the study have been analyzed in terms of the current status of communities, potential impacts and the strategies for building resilience. The study contributes to the discussion on risks faced by informal settlements with an understanding that more efforts are needed to improve basic infrastructure, access to services and thus strengthen the adaptive capacity of the communities to enhance their resilience. This preliminary effort to develop an index it is hoped, would help formulate policies with a comparative perspective. It would also help identify areas that are vulnerable and lacking in resilience and requiring urgent attention for intervention at various levels. It could provide critical information for designing pre-disaster intervention strategies especially in vulnerable communities in urban areas.

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Disaster Management Case Study on River Flooding at Uttarakhand

By Mohak Rana, NMIMS, School of Law, Mumbai

‘Editor’s Note: Disaster or catastrophe or any such accident is inevitable. Almost all the nations witness such misfortune. Therefore planning and organizing of rapid forces which can work during such mishaps have been developed by all the nations in the form of natural disaster management. India which has different types of vegetation and geography witnesses almost all the kinds of disasters most common among them all being floods. Therefore National disaster Management Authority has been established. It is the apex body which looks after the management and control of such accidents. It has been established under Disaster Management Act, 2005. Its responsibility is like that of a state which is also helped by central government through the ministry of Home Affairs. Any disaster be it manmade or natural, always leads to loss of life and property. For instance the recent floods in the state of Uttarakhand led to loss of 30% of economy.  Many international organizations like Red Cross, United Nations, World Bank also work in this field. They collaborate with domestic agencies to work. Therefore it is concluded that a strong and effective management system is a must for prevention and control of such disasters.’

Introduction

“What has so often excited wonder is the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation; the disappearance, in a short time, of all traces of the mischiefs done by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the ravages of war.” John Stuart Mill

What does Disaster mean?

The word “disaster” means a catastrophe, mishap, calamity or grave occurrence in any area, arising from natural or manmade causes, or by accident or negligence which results in substantial loss of life or human suffering or damage to, and destruction of, property, or damage to, or degradation of, environment, and is of such a nature or magnitude as to be beyond the coping capacity of the community of the affected area.[1] In other words we can understand disaster as a natural or man-made hazard resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment. It is a phenomenon that can cause damage to life and property and destroy the economic, social and cultural life of people.

 Disaster is of two types:-

 i)  Natural disaster

A natural disaster is a consequence when a natural hazard affects humans and/or the built environment. Human vulnerability, and lack of appropriate emergency management, leads to financial, environmental, or human impact. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster: their resilience.

Various phenomena like landslides, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods and cyclones are all natural hazards that kill thousands of people and destroy billions of dollars of habitat and property each year.

ii.)   Man Made disasters

Man-made disasters are the consequence of technological or human hazards. The examples of manmade disasters include stampedes, fires, transport accidents, industrial accidents, oil spills and nuclear explosions/radiation. War and deliberate attacks may also be put in this category.

According to the world bank disaster management report developing countries suffer the greatest costs when a disaster hits any such developing country. More than 95% of all deaths caused by disasters occur in developing countries, and losses due to natural disasters are 20 times greater (as a percentage of GDP) in developing countries than in developed countries.[2]

short case study on natural disaster in india

What is Disaster Management?

 “Disaster management” means a continuous and integrated process of planning, organizing, coordinating and implementing measures which are necessary or expedient for-

i.  prevention of danger or threat of any disaster; ii.  mitigation or reduction of risk of any disaster or its severity or consequences; iii.  capacity-building; iv.  preparedness to deal with any disaster; v.  prompt response to any threatening disaster situation or disaster; vi.  assessing the severity or magnitude of effects of any disaster; vii.  evacuation, rescue and relief; viii.  Rehabilitation and reconstruction.[3]

According to the international federation of Red Cross and red crescent society Disaster management can be defined as the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters.[4]

Disaster, Disaster Management and India

Natural disasters in India cause massive loss to life and property. Flash floods, cyclones, avalanches, droughts, landslides brought on by torrential rains, and snowstorms pose the greatest threats. Other dangers include frequent summer dust storms, which usually track from north to south; they cause extensive property damage in North India and deposit large amounts of dust from arid regions. Hail is also common in parts of India, causing severe damage to standing crops such as rice and wheat. But floods are the most common natural disaster in India.

The heavy southwest monsoon rains cause the Brahmaputra and other rivers to distend their banks, often flooding surrounding areas. Though they provide rice paddy farmers with a largely dependable source of natural irrigation and fertilization, but the floods can kill thousands and displace millions. Almost all of India is flood-prone, and extreme precipitation events, such as flash floods and torrential rains, have become increasingly common in central India over the past several decades, coinciding with rising temperatures.

As the apex Body or as an authoritative body for Disaster Management in India, mandated by the Disaster Management Act, 2005, is the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). Prime Minister of India is the chairman of NDMA, and the Vice Chairman is Shashidhar Reddy. Under the Vice chairman are eight members, all superannuated officials, who have the status, pay, and entitlements of ministers of state. Also there is a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) of 12 battalions, under the NDMA. It is organized on paramilitary lines, and is manned by persons on deputation from the para-military forces of India. As on 6 October, 13, it was headed by Mr. Krishna Chaudhary.

The responsibility for Disaster Management in India’s federal system is that of the State Government with the supporting role of the national government. The ‘nodal Ministry’ in the central government for management of natural disasters, is the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). In the MHA this function is discharged by the Disaster Management Division (DMD). When ‘calamities of severe nature’ such as the natural disaster in Uttarakhand occur, the Central Government is responsible for providing aid and assistance to the affected state, as may be needed, including the deploying, at the State’s request, of Armed Forces, Central Paramilitary Forces, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), and such communication, air and other assets, as are available and needed. The response of the central government is based on ‘gravity of a natural calamity’ and the ‘scale of the relief operation’.

Microeconomics Aspect

Natural disasters are the one which can disrupt both the local economy as well as the national economy. Calculation of the damages of such an event can be a difficult task because the cost of a natural disaster is ultimately wedded to several factors, and varies by type of disaster. The key factors are the magnitude and duration of the event, the structure of the local economy, the affected geographical area, time and population base. Naturally, disasters that affect densely populated areas have the greatest potential for inflicting the most damage because not only are large numbers of people endangered, but the potential loss to homes, roads, bridges, businesses, highways and utilities is also magnified.

The factors that contribute to the over-estimation of losses vary considerably. In some cases, buildings, infrastructure and crops that appear totally destroyed may in fact be only partially damaged. To some extent, this phenomenon may be driven by the media, who are merely striving to add a monetary flavor to the disaster. Other factors also come into play. According to some economists who have studied natural disasters, there is an incentive for states to overestimate their losses in order to maximize their political leverage.

Till now we have discussed the cost of a natural disaster and the losses that stem from a natural disaster as if they are one and the same; economically they are two separate terms. Losses occur principally through destruction of an economy’s wealth like the physical assets that help generate income. These assets include levees, roads, bridges, utilities, factories, homes, buildings, forests or other natural resources. To correctly measure these losses, one must attempt to calculate either the lost income that these physical assets help generate, or the decline in the assets’ values. But to count both is to double count. By contrast, costs are incurred when an economy undertakes to replace, repair or reinforce those tangible assets (capital) that are destroyed.

Despite these limitations, economists attempt to measure the total loss of a disaster by estimating two separate types of losses i.e. direct and indirect. Direct losses are easier to estimate. For example, in an earthquake or Tsunami, they would consist of the structures that are destroyed or damaged as a result of the actual force; in the case of a flood, they would consist of water damage to levees, crops or buildings.

Indirect, or secondary, losses occur as a result of destruction to buildings, structures or bridges. These include lost output, retail sales, wages and work time, additional time commuting to work, additional costs to business from rerouting goods and services around the affected area, utility disruptions, reduced taxable receipts, lost tourism or increased financial market volatility. Disaster losses manifest themselves in numerous ways and can never be estimated with absolute certainty. Economists believe that the true value of a physical asset is its present discounted value.

Probably the next best alternative will be the structure’s market value, but this measure also presents problems because some physical assets are not traded in the marketplace and hence determining their true market value is next to impossible. Thus, with the lack of reliable information, asset’s replacement cost is used. But endlessly other issues also arise like how do you measure the decline in property values that sometimes occurs in the vicinity of the disaster area? What prices and production should you attach to crops that were washed away before harvest, or livestock that were unable to gain weight during severe weather? And finally, how do you calculate the expected lifetime earnings of individuals who perished?

 In this chapter we will see that what happened in Uttarakhand when the river flood came and what role did Union and state played to manage the disaster and economic effect on Uttarakhand because of this flood –

River flooding at Uttarakhand: a timeline of events [6]

i. 13 June 2013: Meteorological Department, Dehradun, forecast “heavy to very heavy rainfall in the upper regions of Uttarakhand in the next 48 to 72 hours”. The Central Government, Uttarakhand Government, and National Disaster Management Authority, ignored the warning.

ii. 14–16 June 2013: Heavy unseasonal monsoon rain in north India, which triggered floods, and landslides, in the north western mountain states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh. But state of Uttarakhand  was highly affected.

iii.  17 June 2013: Army helicopters conduct aerial reconnaissance of Kedarnath. Army orders an infantry unit to send a foot column to establish contact with the temple town. Next day, early morning, after a night march, an infantry column, under its Commanding Officer reaches Kedarnath. India Army’s Central Command starts deployment of 5000 troops in the flood affected areas, in response named “Operation Ganga Prahar”. Indian Air Force(IAF) helicopters conducts relief and rescue missions. Medium lift helicopters including MI -17 and V5 helicopters, moved to Jolly grant helipad, Dehradun. Late in the evening, Defense Minister A.K. Antony, alerts the Armed Forces for relief and rescue mission.

iv.  18 June 2013: Lt-General Navtej Singh Bawa, the General Officer Commanding Uttar Bharat Area, moves to Dehradun, to lead the Army disaster response and coordinate with the State government, and other agencies. Indian Air Force’s started humanitarian mission, named Operation Rahat. MHA, outlines response to unfolding disaster. On 15 June, the Inspector General, Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Uttarakhand, ordered to “get in touch with Chief Secretary and provide whatever assistance was required by the State Government” as ITBP posts and troops are already there in affects areas and are working and rescuing the people from day one; Border Road Organization (BRO) asked to “facilitate restoration of road communication across the different routes”; 12 additional teams of the NDRF ordered to be deployed to Uttarakhand, and 34 deaths confirmed in Uttarakhand.

v.  19 June 2013: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is also Chairman of the NDMA and the Indian Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, carry out an aerial survey of affected area. The PM calls the situation in Uttarakhand a ‘disaster’ and directs “all Central Agencies to render all possible assistance in their domain to the State.” Army’s names its response to the natural disaster in Uttarakhand as Operation Surya Hope. Army carries out aerial reconnaissance of Kedarnath, Jungle Chatti, and other inaccessible areas where people are stranded. Army plans paratroop operations, and the establishment of heli-bridge to rescue, and evacuate the stranded people. Responders in affected area include 5500 Army man’s 3000 BRO person’s, ITBP – 600, NDRF 13 teams- 422, 18 helicopters (IAF, army and civil) and 1 Hercules C-130.

vi.  20 June 2013: Official communication from the Government of Uttarakhand, for army assistance reaches Home ministry. Disaster toll : Districts affected-09; deaths-71; Injured- 53; missing-23; Lives stock lost -1157; houses ‘fully’ damaged -366; houses partially damaged-272; bridges damaged-21; stranded pilgrims-62,122; persons rescued- 22,392

vii. 21 June 2013: One of the eight members of the NDMA with status of Minister of State, designated as nodal officer, to coordinate rescue, relief, and assistance mission. Uttarakhand Government posts 12 officers to disaster affected areas as nodal officers to coordinate the response. The officers reach their respective post on 22 and 23 June.

viii. 25 June 2013: IAF Mi-17 V5 helicopter on a relief and rescue mission from Gauchar to Guptkashi and Kedarnath on return leg from Kedarnath crashed. 20 persons on board killed [ 5 IAF crew members, and 15 ITBP soldiers, including 9 on deputation with NDRF]. But even after this incident rescue operation is going on by military persons.

ix.  26 June 2013: Central Command launches a web site for reporting progress on Operation Surya Hope in Uttarakhand. The site provides location wise list of stranded and rescued persons, and press releases issued by Central Command. Government imports 25 satellite phones from Hong Kong for the ill-prepared NDMA, and NDRF.

x.  28 June 13: General Bikram Singh, the Chief of the Army Staff, on a visit Gauchar, in Uttarakhand, while speaking to journalist, says Operation Surya Hope was “aid to civil authorities”, to “strengthen the hands of the civil administration”. Army confirms that all people stranded in Kedarnath had been evacuated, and that the road to Badrinath was open.

xi. 30 June 2013: Ministry of Defence update, notes that IAF from 17 -30 Jun 2013, airlifted 18,424 persons, in 2,137 sorties, and delivered 3,36,930 kg of relief supplies.

xii.  2 July 2013: Evacuation of all stranded pilgrim complete. BBC described it as “one of the world’s largest air rescue operations”.

xiii.  10 July 2013: Army Engineers started work on a new 20 km route to restore land communication with Kedarnath, which has remained cut off since the 16 June. An advance team of four officers and 21 soldiers reached Gomkar on 11 July.

xiv.  15 July 2013: Officials confirmed that the disaster toll was 580 dead, and 5,748 missing (924, from Uttarakhand and 4,824 are from other Indian states), and that a total of 108,653 people have been evacuated from affected area by air and foot.

xv.  16 September 2013  : Subhash Kumar, Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand, issued revised figures for missing persons from 5100 to 4,120, including 421 children. The revised figures, compiled by Dehradun-based Missing Persons Cell, are based on a review of the First Information Reports recorded in the state’s 13 districts.

xvi.  As on today rehabilitation work is going on which is supposed to be completed in 2015.

Operation Surya Hope[7]

It is the name that Indian Army’s Central Command gave to its response in Uttarakhand following the June 2013 North India floods. Operation Surya Hope was conducted by Indian Army’s Lucknow based Central Command.

Operation Surya Hope is a successor to Operation Ganga Pharar. Operation Surya Hope was commanded by Lieutenant General Anil Chait, General Officer Commanding in Chief Central Command. Over 10,000 troops participated in Operation Surya Hope. It was conducted in tandem with the response by IAF (Operation Rahat), the BRO, NDRF, ITBP and other para military forces under the Ministry of Home.

The floods and landslides in Uttarakhand, the worst natural disaster in the area in a hundred years, has been called a Himalayan Tsunami by the Government of India. According to the Indian Meteorological Department, the total rainfall in Uttarakhand was the highest in the last 80 years. The rainfall was 440% above the normal.

The total number of aircrafts involved in the evacuation, relief, rescue, and search tasks, according to government sources, was 83 (IAF-45, Army-13, hired helicopters- 25). The helicopters carried out their mission in hazardous mountain conditions, often in rain and fog.

For relief and rescue operations, the army divided the affected areas into four axis, or sub sectors. On 19–20 June, the army conducted reconnaissance, and  stranded people. By 20 June evening the army reported that it had ‘rescued more than 11000 people, and was sheltering, feeding, and providing medical assistance to about 10,000. As follow up to aerial reconnaissance of inaccessible areas on 19 June, army plans heliborne operations by paratroopers and special forces to rescue stranded people, in Jungle Chatti, Kedarnath, and other areas. On 20 June, the army, started work on the maintenance and improvement, and expansion of helipad at Gagaria on Hemkund Sahib axis to make it ready to accommodate the larger MI-17 helicopter to allow for speedier aerial evacuation.

On 23 June, relief, rescue, search, and evacuation operations were started by indian army. Army works on securing, marking, and improving helipads; repairing and installing bridges; improving and restoring tracks; establishing staging areas, transit areas, reception centers, medical aid posts; escorting and guiding people; providing food, water, shelter, and medical aid to the affected population, and most importantly providing through their presence, example, and leadership, hope, and encouragement to the stranded population.

Medical aid formed an important component of the mission. Doctors from Army Medical Corps, and nurses from the Military Nursing Service were amongst the lead elements to be deployed in the area. By 19 June, it was reported, 12 self-sufficient medical teams were deployed in the area. An emergency medical helpline was opened, and military communication channels were provided to affected people to speak with their families and friends.  In addition the IAF deployed Air Force Rapid Action Medical Teams, with the air stations, and detachments.

On 26 June 13, A team of two psychiatrists from Army Medical Corps, opened a post disaster and trauma counseling center in the Joshimath sector, to provide counseling to the civil population stranded at Badrinath and Kedarnath. On 26 June 13, veterinary teams from the Army Veterinary Corps consisting of a veterinary doctor and two paramedics were inducted by helicopter to establish Animal Aid Posts along the Hemkund axis to take care of ponies and mules stranded in the area.

Economical hit

After the river flood; economy of Uttarakhand whose major part comes from tourism was badly affected. As people are threatened to come in Uttarakhand, around 30 % of the economy suffered. Many people became jobless and moreover almost all the tourist places were destroyed. There was a huge loss of infrastructure and man power.  Around 1000 crore is the money which is decided to be given as a compensation part which is not sufficient at all as loss is much more than that for example a person who lost his 1 family member and around 20 lacs of property is getting only 10 lacs which is not in any kind of comparison and for that also; he had to wait.

So at the end one can clearly say that economical condition of affected people as well as of state is in very bad condition. To overcome the situation state of Uttarakhand had demanded a special package from union government.

From the happening of river floods in Uttarakhand the clear picture of seriousness of state and union towards Disaster management was displayed. All the work done including rescue operations and relief camps were done by localites and military forces and official agencies for this work responded after 3 days with a lot of confusion in there mind. Our great politician at both level are just trying to blame each other and were in busy in making the plan that how can they take the political advantage of this situation. However there are some serious and good politicians and bureaucrats who helped and were trying to cope up with the situation.

At both the levels state as well as union there was a very late response to this situation as seen earlier but because of the activeness of army and co operation of civilians somehow situation was managed.

Comparative Study

In this chapter we will see the various organization working for the purpose of disaster management and disaster management in other countries

 Organisation working at international level for the purpose of disaster management

I.  red cross/red crescent[8].

National Red Cross/Red Crescent societies often have pivotal roles in responding to emergencies. Additionally, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies may deploy assessment teams. After having assessed the needs Emergency Response Units (ERUs) may be deployed to the affected country or region. They are specialized in the response component of the emergency management framework.

ii. United Nations

Within the United Nations system responsibility for emergency response rests with the Resident Coordinator within the affected country. However, in practice international response will be coordinated, if requested by the affected country’s government, by deploying a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination team.

iii.  World Bank[9]

Since 1980, the World Bank has approved more than 500 operations related to disaster management, amounting to more than US$40 billion. These include post-disaster reconstruction projects, as well as projects with components aimed at preventing and mitigating disaster impacts, in countries such as Argentina, Bangladesh, Colombia, Haiti, India, Mexico, Turkey and Vietnam to name only a few.

Common areas of focus for prevention and mitigation projects include forest fire prevention measures, such as early warning measures and education campaigns to discourage farmers from slash and burn agriculture that ignites forest fires; early-warning systems for hurricanes; flood prevention mechanisms, ranging from shore protection and terracing in rural areas to adaptation of production; and earthquake-prone construction.

In a joint venture with Columbia University under the umbrella of the ProVention Consortium the World Bank has established a Global Risk Analysis of Natural Disaster Hotspots.

·         Various National organizations working in their respective countries

I.  australia.

Natural disasters are part of life in Australia. There Drought occurs on average every 3 out of 10 years and associated heat waves had killed more Australians than any other type of natural disaster in the 20th century.

Australia’s emergency management processes embrace the concept of the prepared community. The principal government agency in achieving this is Emergency Management Australia.

ii.  Canada

Public Safety Canada is Canada’s national emergency management agency. Each province is required to have legislature in place for dealing with emergencies, as well as establish their own emergency management agencies, typically called an “Emergency Measures Organization” (EMO), which functions as the primalization with the municipal and federal level. They also work with other levels of government, first responders, community groups, the private sector (operators of critical infrastructure) and other nations.

iii.  Germany[10]

In Germany the Federal Government controls the German disaster relief ( Katastrophenschutz ) and civil protection( Zivilschutz ) programs. The local units of German fire department and the Technisches Hilfswerk ( Federal Agency for Technical Relief ,) are part of these programs & The German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr), the German Federal Police and the 16 state police forces (Länderpolizei) all have been deployed for disaster relief operations.

iv.  New Zealand[11]

In New Zealand, responsibility for emergency management moves from local to national depending on the nature of the emergency or risk reduction program. Within each region, local governments are unified into 16 Civil Defence Emergency Management Groups (CDEMGs). As local arrangements are overwhelmed by an emergency, pre-existing mutual-support arrangements are activated. As warranted, central government has the authority to coordinate the response through the National Crisis Management Centre (NCMC), operated by the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM). These structures are defined by regulation and best explained in The Guide to the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Plan 2006, roughly equivalent to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Response Framework.

 v. Pakistan

Disaster management in Pakistan revolves around flood disasters with a primary focus on rescue and relief. Within disaster management bodies in Pakistan, there is a dearth of knowledge and information about hazard identification, risk assessment and management, and linkages between livelihoods and disaster preparedness. There are no long-term, inclusive and coherent institutional arrangements to address disaster issues with a long-term vision. Disasters are viewed in isolation from the processes of mainstream development and poverty alleviation planning. Absence of a central authority for integrated disaster management and lack of coordination within and between disaster related organizations is responsible for effective and efficient disaster management in the country. State-level disaster preparedness and mitigation measures are heavily tilted towards structural aspects and undermine non-structural elements such as the knowledge and capacities of local people, and the related livelihood protection issues.[12]

vi.  United States

Disaster management  in the United States has utilized the functional All-Hazards approach for over 20 years, in this approach emergency managers develop processes (such as communication & warning or sheltering) rather than developing single-hazard/threat focused plans (e.g., a tornado plan). Processes then are mapped to the hazards, with the emergency manager looking for gaps, overlaps, and conflicts between processes.

In the United States, all disastrous events are initially considered as local, with local authorities usually a law enforcement agency having charge. However, if the event becomes overwhelming to local government, state emergency management becomes the controlling emergency management agency. Under the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is lead federal agency for emergency management and supports, but does not override, state authority.

Some of the significant natural disasters in India over the last two decades are as follows:

  • 1993 Latur earthquake. Killed 20,000, injured 30,000 and destroyed about 52 villages.
  • 1999 Odisha cyclone. Killed almost 10,000, left over 2 million homeless and disrupted 20 million lives.
  • 2001 Kutch earthquake. Killed 20,000, injured 1,67,000 and left over 6 lakh people homeless. Bhuj was devastated.
  • 2004 the Indian Ocean Tsunami affected over 2,200 kms of coastline, killed over 15,000 people rendered lakhs of people homeless.
  • 2005 floods in Gujarat killed 123 because thankfully over 2,50,000 were evacuated in time by helicopters of the Indian Air Force. The state suffered losses of over Rs 8,000 crores.
  • 2005 Mumbai floods killed 5,000 people, more than 24,000 animal carcasses disposed.
  • 2012, Uttarakhand was the victim of very similar flash floods. 38 people were reported dead.
  • 2013 Uttarakhand. Not done counting. Toll  reports are ranging from 900 to 10,000.

And in all these disasters there has been loss of crores and crores of Indian money. These incidents and disasters are sufficient to tell that what union and states are doing when it come to disaster management. Our union and states are complete failure in ensuring the safety or prevention from disaster.

Because of the failure in properly implementing the disaster management act, we are facing a heavy loss of capital and human life over the years.

If we see the recent floods in uttarakhand then also we are able to see that because of lack of proper management and preventive methods we lost around 10,000 lives and a huge chunk of money invested as in capital form or in infrastructure, which tells that we are complete failure on the economic front of natural disaster also.

There is a huge lack of co ordination and the disaster management act, 2005 is only a paper law in India. There is a lack of seriousness towards the disaster management which results in the heavy economic losses.

We cannot stop natural disasters but yes we can prevent them and we can take appropriate measures for lowering the losses and saving the lives of hundreds.

RELATION WITH LAW

Disaster management act, 2005.

The Disaster Management Act, 2005 ( No. 53 of 2005) was came into effect on 12 December 2005. It received the assent of The President of India on 9 January 2006. It  has 11 chapters and 79 sections. The Act extends to the whole of India. The Act provides for “the effective management of disasters and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.”

i.  The Act calls for the establishment of NDMA, with the Prime Minister of India as chairperson. The NDMA have nine members including a Vice-Chairperson. The NDMA is responsible for “laying down the policies, plans and guidelines for disaster management” and to ensure “timely and effective response to disaster”. It is responsible for laying “down guidelines to be followed by the State Authorities in drawing up the State Plans”.

ii.  The Act enjoins the Central Government to Constitute a National Executive Committee to assist the National Authority. This committee consists of Secretaries to the Government of India in the Ministries of home, drinking water supply, environment and forests, finance (expenditure), health, power, agriculture, atomic energy, defence, rural development, science and technology, space, telecommunication, urban development, and water resources, with the Home secretary serving as the Chairperson, ex officio. The Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, is an ex officio member of the NEC.  The NEC under section of the Act is responsible for the preparation of the National Disaster Management Plan for the whole country and to ensure that it is “reviewed and updated annually”.

iii. This act mandate all the State Governments to establish a State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) on the framework of NDMA.

iv. This act also call for the establishment of District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) whose chair person will be the Collector or District Magistrate or Deputy Commissioner of the district.

v.  The Act provides for constituting a NDRF “for the purpose of specialist response to a threatening disaster situation or disaster” under a Director General to be appointed by the Central Government.

vi.  The Act provides for civil and criminal liabilities for those who violate the provision of the Act.

When it comes to the implementation of the National Disaster Act, 2005 it has been slow, and slack. On 22 July 2013 Indian Supreme Court Justices A K Patnaik and M Y Eqbal in response to a Public Interest Litigation which is filed on after the failure of this so called management machinery issued notices to the Governments of Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan Maharashtra and the Central government.

  The petitioner alleged that the non-implementation of the Disaster Management Act by the Government of Uttarakhand endangered the lives of citizens . He sought “reasonable ex-gratia assistance on account of loss of life, damage to houses and for restoration of means of livelihood to victims of flash floods in Uttarakhand under the Disaster Management Act”.

Formatted on 15th March 2019.

[1]The Disaster management act 2005

[2]World bank disaster management

[3]See supra note 1

[4]http://www.ifrc.org/what/disasters/management/index.asp accessed on 01-Oct-13 7:51:57 PM

[5]Brookshire and McKee (FEMA, July 1992), p. 282.

[6]India Today 3 rd issue of june, 2013 and local newspapers

[7] See supra note 6

[8]http://www.ifrc.org/en/what-we-do/disaster-management/responding/disaster-response-system/dr-tools-and-systems/eru/ accessed on 06-Oct-13 5:33:17 AM

[9]World bank disaster risk management projects Web.worldbank.org (2004-04-28). Retrieved on 2013-10-06.

[10]http://www.kavoma.de/ accessed on 06-Oct-13 5:35:09 AM

[11]Legislation.govt.nz (2008-10-01). Retrieved on 2013-10-06.

[12]Natural hazards and disaster management in Pakistan”. MRPA . Munich Personal RePEc Archive. Retrieved 2013-10-06.

[13]The disaster management act,2005

[14] Natural hazards and disaster management in Pakistan”. MRPA . Munich Personal RePEc Archive. Retrieved 2013-10-06.

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