Context: Recently, the Disaster Management (Amendment) Bill 2024 was introduced in the Lok Sabha. The bill aims to amend the Disaster Management Act, 2005.
About Disaster Management Act, 2005 (DM Act, 2005)
DM provides for effective management of disasters in India
The DM Act puts in place necessary institutional mechanisms for
(i) Drawing up and monitoring the implementation of disaster management plans.
(ii) Ensuring measures by various wings of government for preventing and mitigating the effects of disasters.
(iii) For under-taking a holistic, coordinated and prompt response to any disaster or threatening disaster situation.
Salient features of Disaster Management (Amendment) Bill
- Inclusion of new definitions of disaster risk, evacuation, exposure, recovery, rehabilitation, resilience etc. in line with the Sendai principles on Disaster Risk Reduction.
- Clarification on man-made disasters: The bill proposes to clarify that man-made disasters does not include any law-and-order issues. Thus, loss of lives, displacement, or property damage due to riots, violence etc. would not invoke the DM Act.
- Bring more clarity and convergence in the roles of Authorities and Committees working towards disaster management.
- Provide statutory status to centain pre-DM Act organisations like National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC) and High Level Committee (HLC). (Note. NCMC is a nodal body to deal with major disasters & High Level Committee is the nodal body for the approval of financial assistance for recovery and rehabilitation from disasters).
- Strengthen and efficient working of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMA).
- Empower the NDMA and the SDMAs to prepare the disaster plans at national level and state level instead of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and State Executive Committee (SEC), presently.
- Provide for creation of a disaster database at national and state level. The database will collect information on assessment of disaster, fund allocation, expenditure, preparation and mitigation plans.
- Provision for constitution of 'Urban Disaster Management Authority' (UDMA) for State Capital and large cities having municipal corporations. Currently, the DM Act only provides for District level District Disaster Management Authority. However, considering the economic importance of cities, large capacity and need for quick & decentralized response in the face of disasters. The bill proposes to create Urban Disaster Management Authority for large cities for unified and coordinated approach towards city level disasters such as urban flooding.
- Provisions for constitution of 'State Disaster Response Force' by State Governments. Currently, many states have raised disaster response forces on the lines of NDRF. However, the state level disaster response forces have not been mandated under the DM Act, which this amendment aims to provide for.
Need for Empowerment of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA)
- Disaster Management to be separate department or ministry:
- Given the growing role and importance, NDMA should be elevated to the status of a full-fledged government department or a separate ministry.
- Currently, the NDMA functions as an agency under Ministry of Home Affairs. Therefore, all its communication and coordination is done through Union Home Ministry, which is the nodal ministry for NDMA.
- Climate change has increased the frequency of extreme climate events and resultant disasters in large parts of country. This means NDMA is active throughout the year and regularly coordinates with central and state governments and their agencies.
- Lack of financial or administrative powers: Currently, NDMA does not any administrative or financial powers. This makes it dependent on the Union Home Ministry for even small decisions leading to slow decision making and inefficiencies.
- Vacancy in office of Vice-Chairperson of NDMA: Though the PM is the chairperson of NDMA, the day-to-day functioning of NDMA is the responsibility of vice-chairperson, who has a rank of cabinet minister. However, the post of vice-chairperson of NDMA has remained vacant for more than decade, this deprives NDMA of necessary leadership and political heft to deal with states and other central government agencies.
- Shortage of staff: NDMA is severely short-staffed at the top with only three members overlooking the entire gamut of disasters in the country. Earlier, NDMA used to have 6-7 members, each in charge of a specific type of disaster.