Managing Disasters

Subhashis Mittra

Concerned over recent spate of cloudbursts and landslides in Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre is formulating a strategy to deal with such natural calamities. Union home minister Amit Shah shared this input with members of Parliaments (MPs) at a meeting of the parliamentary consultative committee for the ministry of home affairs (MHA) on ‘Disaster Management and Capacity Building’.

Addressing the meeting, the home minister said that before 2014, there was a relief-centric approach towards disaster management, which was changed to a rescue-centric approach by the Modi government, by changing the approach and strategy. He said that in the last 10 years, many major policy-related and institutional decisions have been taken in the field of disaster management. He said that the disaster response policy of the Modi government is based on four pillars—capacity building, speed, efficiency and accuracy. This has resulted in significant prevention during disasters—from the 1999 Odisha Super Cyclone that killed 10,000 people to the 2023 Biparjoy in Gujarat and 2024 Dana in Odisha with zero casualties.

The home minister said that because of the efforts of the Modi government in the field of disaster management, there has been 98 per cent reduction in the damage caused by cyclones and a significant reduction in the casualties of heat waves. He made a specific mention of the recent cloudburst and landslide incidents in several states and said a strategy is being formulated to deal with cloudbursts and landslides.

Shah said that the Modi gove