Disaster Management In India

Disaster Management In India

J.Thomas Britto

Dept of civil engineering

Thomasbritto3@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

India has been traditionally vulnerable to natural disaster on account of its unique geo-climate conditions. Floods, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes and landslides have been a recurrent phenomena. About 60% of the landmass is prone to earthquake of various intensities;over 40 million hectares is prone to floods; about 8 % of total area is prone to cyclones and 68% of the areas is susceptible to drought. Inthe decade 1990-2000, an average of about 4344 people lost their lives about 30 million people were affected by disaster every year.The loss in terms of private, community and public assets has been astronomical. At the global level, there has been considerable concernover natural disaster. Even as substantial scientific and material progress is made, the loss of life and property due to disaster has notdecreased. In fact human toll and economic losses have mounted. It was in this background that the UN general assembly in 1989 declared1990-2000 as the International decade of natural disaster reduction with the objective to reduce loss of lives and property and restrict socioeconomic

damage through concerted international action. The Government of India have adopted mitigation and prevention as essentialcomponents of their development strategies. The Tenth Five Year Plan documents has a detailed chapter on Disaster Management. Theplan emphasizes the fact that development cannot be sustainable without mitigation being built into development process. Each State issupposed to prepare a plan scheme for disaster mitigation in accordance with the approach outlined in the plan. In brief, mitigation is being

institutionalized into development planning. The Government of India have issued guidelinesthat where there is a self of projects, projects addressing mitigation with be given priority. It has also been mandated that each projects in ahazard prone area will have disaster prevention/mitigation as a term of reference and the project documents has to reflect as to how projectaddresses that term of reference. In the sections are discussed the measures shortcoming, measures taken for the mitigation of the disaster.