Sustainable disaster risk reduction is not possible unless the legal framework of the National Disaster Management Act is backed by a national plan for disaster management containing effective strategies spelling out the roles and responsibilities of all the stakeholders. NDMA, under the directives of the Hon'ble Prime Minister and Chairman, has prepared a comprehensive and progressive National Disaster Management Plan, which has enabled better planning and risk reduction at all levels.
A pressing need for a national disaster management plan
It was only in 2016, more than ten years after enactment of the Disaster Management Act 2005, that the country got its national plan for disaster management.
India—a country vulnerable to disasters: India is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Due to its geo-climatic and socio-economic conditions, the country is prone to all kinds of disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, cyclones, droughts, thunderstorms and lightning strikes, glacial lake outburst flood (GLOFs), heat waves, biological and public health emergencies, fires (including forest fires), etc. Hence, a national plan for disaster management is of prime importance for disaster risk reduction in India. Section 11 of the Disaster Management (DM) Act 2005 mandates a national plan for disaster management for the whole country. While NDMA had earlier issued hazard-specific guidelines, there wasn't a national plan which tied them together.
States/ministries/departments had no common reference plan: Though some states had prepared their own disaster management plans, the activities at the Central and State levels could not be synchronised in the absence of a national plan. Section 37 of the DM Act 2005 mandates Central ministries and departments to prepare their own DM plans based on a national plan, but the absence of such a plan made this dicult for them. And, there being no national plan in place, NDMA had no moral authority to ask the ministries, departments or states to prepare their DM plans.
As a large country on the world stage, it was vital for India to have a DM plan: At the global level, India, which houses more than one-sixth of humanity, was seen as a nation without a plan at the national level for disaster risk reduction.
Bringing a effcted people/stakeholders into the fold—issues and challenges: The absence of a national plan to guide disaster management planning at all levels was affecting the people of the country and impeding work for the stakeholders involved in disaster management. It created the following issues/challenges:
(i) Vulnerable sections of the population, particularly, elderly persons, women, children, economically weaker sections and persons with disabilities are more affected than others in any disaster. Focusing on vulnerable groups in the absence of an inclusive national plan was a challenge.
(ii) Managing a disaster calls for multi-stakeholder involvement, including participation of the government and non-government sectors. But without a national plan, there could neither be any clarity on the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders nor any coordinated eort for disaster management on their part.
(iii) Stakeholders, like Central ministries/departments, states, NGOs, academic and research institutions, business corporations, media, etc., had no information as to their roles and responsibilities in the implementation of risk reduction activities in any given time frame.
(iv) While the DM Act and Policy did talk about a paradigm shift—from an emphasis on post-disaster relief to one on pre-disaster risk reduction—implementing this was not possible. This was due to the Central ministries being unable to set priorities and align them with a national plan.
(v) Despite India's commitment to implement the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA, an international framework for disaster risk reduction for the period 2005–2015), we could not monitor its implementation.
(vi) The lack of an integrated approach to disaster risk reduction (DRR) at the district, state and national levels meant that the impact of loss of lives, damage to assets and suering among the people continued for many years following a disaster.