Natural Hazards and Disasters in India

Natural Hazards, Disasters and Vulnerability of India

A natural hazard is a naturally occurring physical phenomenon capable of causing loss of life, property damage, social and economic disruption, or environmental degradation. A disaster is the realisation of a hazard: it occurs when a hazard event intersects with a vulnerable human community and overwhelms local capacity to cope. India is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world by virtue of its unique physical geography, which exposes it to virtually every category of natural hazard. The Himalayan arc to the north, the peninsular coasts facing the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, the Great Plains subject to river flooding, the rain-shadow interiors vulnerable to drought, and the active seismicity of western and northeastern India together produce a country in which some part is almost always experiencing a natural disaster. According to national estimates, over 58 percent of India's landmass is vulnerable to moderate to very high intensity earthquakes, more than 40 million hectares of the flood plain lie in the floodprone zone, approximately 5,700 kilometres of coastline out of a total of 7,500 kilometres is prone to cyclones and tsunamis, and drought conditions periodically affect more than half the country.

The Disaster Management Act of 2005 provides the legal and institutional framework for disaster management in India. It established the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) at the apex, chaired by the Prime Minister, to lay down policies and guidelines. Below it are the State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) chaired by Chief Ministers, and District Disaster Management Authorities (DDMAs) chaired by the District Collector or District Magistrate. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), raised under the DM Act, is the specialised force for disaster response, comprising battalions drawn from paramilitary forces trained and equipped for different hazard scenarios. The National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) functions as the nodal centre for capacity building, training, research, and documentation. India is also a signatory to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015 to 2030), which emphasises understanding disaster risk, strengthening governance, investing in resilience, and enhancing preparedness for effective response.

Earthquakes in India

India's seismic vulnerability arises from its position on the Indo-Australian plate, which continues to press northward against the Eurasian plate at a rate of approximately five centimetres per year. The compressive stress accumulated along the Himalayan collision zone and the faults of the peninsular shield produces frequent and sometimes catastrophic earthquakes. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has divided India into four seismic zones based on the intensity of ground shaking expected, classified from Zone II (least hazardous) to Zone V (most hazardous). Zone V, the highest risk category, covers the entire northeastern India, parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, northern Bihar, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Zone IV encompasses the remaining parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Delhi, parts of Haryana, northern Punjab, Sikkim, parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra including Mumbai, and coastal Andhra Pradesh. Zone III covers most of peninsular India including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and parts of the eastern coast. Zone II, the safest, covers parts of the Deccan plateau and the Thar Desert region.

The Himalayan seismic belt is the most active, corresponding to the zone of collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates and the Himalayan frontal thrust system. The Himalayan earthquakes tend to be shallow-focus, high-magnitude events capable of triggering secondary hazards including landslides, avalanches, and glacial lake outburst floods. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands lie at the trijunction of the Indian, Burmese, and Eurasian plates making it one of the most seismically active zones on the planet. The peninsular region, though broadly stable on the ancient Precambrian shield, contains reactivated old fault systems that produce intraplate earthquakes. The Koyna earthquake of 1967 in Maharashtra, one of the largest reservoir-induced seismic events in the world, demonstrated that even the stable peninsular shield is not immune. The Bhuj earthquake of 2001, with a magnitude of 7.7, struck the Kachchh region of Gujarat and caused over 20,000 deaths, demonstrating that even Zone IV regions carry catastrophic risk. The Uttarkashi earthquake of 1991 and the Chamoli earthquake of 1999 highlighted the vulnerability of the Himalayan states. The Nepal earthquake of 2015, centred near Gorkha, caused widespread destruction across the border in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh as well as in Nepal.

Earthquake disaster management in India encompasses prediction, early warning, preparedness, and response. True earthquake prediction in the sense of specifying the time, location, and magnitude of an upcoming event remains scientifically impossible, but probabilistic seismic hazard assessments based on historical seismicity data, fault mapping, and ground motion modelling provide the basis for zonation maps and building codes. The National Building Code of India mandates earthquake-resistant design standards for buildings in all zones, but enforcement is weak and a large proportion of the existing building stock, especially in rural areas, predates modern codes or was built without following them. Microzonation studies, which map local soil conditions and their effect on ground amplification, are being completed for major cities including Delhi, Bengaluru, and Guwahati. NDRF battalions specialised in urban search and rescue are positioned in high-risk zones and have been deployed in major national and international disaster events. Post-earthquake reconstruction programmes incorporate seismic-resistant construction techniques for community buildings, schools, hospitals, and housing.

Floods in India

Flooding is the most frequently recurring natural disaster in India, affecting multiple states every year during and immediately after the southwest monsoon season. The principal causes of flood are intense and prolonged rainfall concentrated in the monsoon months, the physiography of major river basins that concentrate discharge from vast catchment areas into relatively narrow floodplains, and the progressive aggradation or raising of riverbeds through sediment deposition that reduces channel capacity and causes rivers to overflow their banks at lower discharge levels. The construction of embankments, intended to prevent flooding, can paradoxically worsen long-term flood hazard by preventing sediment dispersal and causing progressive elevation of the riverbed inside the embankment above the surrounding floodplain, as has happened extensively in Bihar along the Kosi and Gandak systems.

The Brahmaputra and its tributaries form the most flood-prone river system in India. The Brahmaputra flows through a very young, geologically active, seismically disturbed belt that produces enormous quantities of sediment, which the river deposits in its broad floodplain in Assam, causing the river to be extraordinarily braided and shallow. Assam experiences severe flooding in nearly every monsoon season, affecting districts such as Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta, Morigaon, and Lakhimpur. The Kaziranga National Park, home to the world's largest population of Indian one-horned rhinoceros, is submerged annually, and while some level of flooding is ecologically beneficial, extreme floods cause animal deaths and displacement. The Kosi River in Bihar is known as the Sorrow of Bihar because of its extraordinary frequency of course changes and catastrophic floods. The Kosi has shifted its course by approximately 120 kilometres westward over the past two centuries through repeated avulsions. The disastrous Kosi flood of 2008 was caused by a breach in the embankment at Kusaha in Nepal, inundating over 3.5 million people across northern Bihar.

Flash floods and cloudbursts affect the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and the northeastern states with increasing frequency and severity. The Kedarnath disaster of June 2013 in Uttarakhand was triggered by an exceptional cloudburst over the Chorabari glacier that caused a glacial lake to breach, unleashing a debris-laden torrent down the Mandakini valley that killed over 5,000 people and swept away entire villages and pilgrimage infrastructure. The scale of the disaster was amplified by unregulated construction in the valley, the concentration of pilgrims during the peak season, and the failure of early warning systems. Urban flooding has emerged as a major hazard in metropolitan cities because rapid, unplanned urbanisation has replaced permeable land surfaces with impervious concrete and asphalt, drastically reducing infiltration and increasing surface runoff. The July 2005 Mumbai floods caused by a 24-hour rainfall of 944 millimetres, the heaviest ever recorded in a single day in India, killed over 1,000 people and caused enormous economic damage. Chennai experienced catastrophic flooding in November and December 2015 driven by extreme rainfall associated with a northeast monsoon depression combined with drainage failures and lake encroachment. Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Gurugram have all experienced severe urban flooding in recent years due to the destruction of natural drainage systems.

Flood management strategies in India are divided into structural and non-structural measures. Structural measures include the construction of embankments, dams and reservoirs for flood moderation, diversion channels and flood bypasses, and the dredging and desilting of channels. Non-structural measures include flood forecasting and warning systems operated by the Central Water Commission (CWC), flood plain zoning regulations that restrict development in the highest-risk zones, community preparedness programmes, and flood insurance. The Flood Management Programme (FMP) provides central funding to states for both structural and non-structural flood management works. The use of remote sensing satellites including RISAT and Resourcesat for real-time flood inundation mapping is an important tool for both early warning and relief coordination. NDRF teams, along with the Indian Army and Navy, are the primary responders for evacuation and search-and-rescue during major flood events. Long-term rehabilitation after floods must address not only reconstruction of physical infrastructure but also restoration of livelihoods, as flood-affected communities in the Indo-Gangetic plain are predominantly agricultural and highly dependent on the condition of their land and livestock.

Cyclones in India

Tropical cyclones are among the most destructive natural hazards affecting India's coastline. A tropical cyclone is an intense low-pressure system developing over warm tropical oceans, characterised by a warm, calm, cloudless centre known as the eye surrounded by a dense wall of cumulonimbus cloud called the eyewall, from which spiral rain bands extend outward. The eye wall is the zone of maximum wind speed and rainfall. Cyclones derive their energy from the latent heat released when warm, moist oceanic air rises and water vapour condenses into cloud. The minimum sea surface temperature required for cyclone development is 27 degrees Celsius, and the absence of strong vertical wind shear is also a prerequisite. Tropical cyclones do not form within five degrees of the equator because the Coriolis force, which imparts the cyclonic spinning motion, is effectively zero at the equator. Cyclones are known by different regional names: they are called hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, typhoons in the South China Sea, and willy-willies in Australia. In the Indian Ocean region, they are simply called cyclones.

India's eastern coast, particularly the coastlines of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal, is far more cyclone-prone than the western coast. Cyclones developing in the Bay of Bengal are approximately 35 percent more frequent than those in the Arabian Sea because the Bay of Bengal maintains higher sea surface temperatures due to being a semi-enclosed, relatively shallow basin that retains heat effectively. Remnants of typhoons crossing the South China Sea enter the Bay of Bengal and intensify further. The Bay of Bengal cyclone track typically curves northward and makes landfall on the Odisha or Andhra Pradesh coast, which has a wide continental shelf and a densely populated, low-lying delta coastline making it extremely vulnerable to storm surges. Storm surges, caused by the extreme low pressure of the cyclone lifting the sea surface, are the most lethal element of cyclones in India, responsible for the majority of deaths in major events. The funnel-shaped northern Bay of Bengal geometry amplifies storm surge heights as cyclone-driven water is squeezed into the progressively narrowing coastline. The Super Cyclone of 1999 in Odisha, with a surge height of over five metres, killed nearly 10,000 people and affected 15 million. Cyclone Phailin in 2013, of comparable intensity, killed fewer than 50 people due to the evacuation of nearly one million people, demonstrating the life-saving impact of improved early warning and evacuation systems. Cyclone Amphan in 2020, one of the strongest cyclones ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal, caused enormous damage to the Sundarbans delta region of West Bengal and Bangladesh. Cyclone Fani in 2019 made landfall near Puri in Odisha with wind speeds exceeding 200 kilometres per hour but caused relatively fewer deaths due to one of the largest pre-cyclone evacuations in India's history.

The Arabian Sea is generally less cyclone-prone but has produced several very severe cyclones in recent years, including Cyclone Gonu in 2007, the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Arabian Sea, and Cyclone Ockhi in 2017, which struck the Kerala and Lakshadweep coast with devastating effect on the fishing community. The warming of the Arabian Sea due to climate change is associated with increasing frequency and intensity of Arabian Sea cyclones. Cyclones do not form during the southwest monsoon season because strong low-level south-westerly winds and intense upper-level easterly jet streams create excessive vertical wind shear that disrupts cyclone formation. Cyclone season in the Bay of Bengal is primarily from October to December for the northeast monsoon period and April to June for the pre-monsoon period.

The naming of cyclones in the Indian Ocean region began in 2004. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) serves as the Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC) for tropical cyclones in the North Indian Ocean, providing cyclone advisories to eight member countries: Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, arranged alphabetically in rotation for naming. The IMD uses a five-category classification based on sustained wind speed: cyclonic storm (64 to 89 kilometres per hour), severe cyclonic storm (89 to 117 kilometres per hour), very severe cyclonic storm (117 to 167 kilometres per hour), extremely severe cyclonic storm (167 to 222 kilometres per hour), and super cyclonic storm above 222 kilometres per hour. Cyclone disaster management in India includes early warning and real-time tracking using INSAT and IRNSS satellite systems, Doppler weather radars positioned along the coastline, and storm surge prediction models. Cyclone shelters built to withstand Category 4 wind speeds, with a semi-circular cross-section to minimise wind resistance, are established in coastal villages. Coastal green belts, with mangroves in the intertidal zone and casuarina and coconut plantations behind, serve as effective natural buffers against storm surge and cyclone winds. Odisha's transformation from being a state with the highest cyclone mortality in the 1990s to one of the best cyclone-managed states in the world is a model of how institutional preparedness, early warning infrastructure, and community training can dramatically reduce disaster losses.

Tsunamis

The Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26, 2004, triggered by a magnitude 9.3 submarine earthquake off the northern coast of Sumatra at the subduction boundary between the Indian and Burmese plates, caused over 2.5 lakh deaths across 14 countries and remains the deadliest tsunami in recorded history. In India, the tsunami killed approximately 10,749 people, with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Tamil Nadu (especially Nagapattinam district), and coastal Puducherry suffering the greatest losses. The tsunami demonstrated India's complete lack of preparedness: there was no ocean-wide early warning system, no community education about tsunami signs, and no evacuation plans or designated shelter zones.

Following the 2004 tsunami, India established the Indian Tsunami Early Warning System (ITEWS) at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad. The system uses a network of seismographs, bottom pressure recorders, and tide gauges across the Indian Ocean to detect tsunami-generating earthquakes and estimate wave arrival times and heights. The deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) buoy network, deployed in collaboration with the United States, provides real-time sea level data. INCOIS can now issue tsunami warnings to coastal authorities within minutes of a triggering earthquake. India is also part of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (IOTWS) coordinated by UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. Community-level preparedness includes the establishment of tsunami hazard zones with signage, vertical evacuation structures, mock drills, and public awareness campaigns about natural warning signs such as sudden withdrawal of the sea from the shore, loud roaring sounds from the ocean, and unusual wave behaviour.

India's coastline is vulnerable to tsunamis generated from multiple source zones: the Andaman-Sumatra subduction zone to the east, the Makran subduction zone off the Pakistan and Iran coast in the northwest Arabian Sea which last produced a tsunami in 1945, and submarine landslides anywhere in the Indian Ocean. The eastern coast of India is more exposed to Andaman-Sumatra source tsunamis, while the Gujarat coast is potentially vulnerable to Makran-source events. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, being located directly above the subduction zone, have the highest tsunami hazard in India.

Landslides and Mass Movements

Mass movement refers to the downslope displacement of rock, soil, or debris under the direct influence of gravity, classified by speed, moisture content, and the nature of the material involved. Soil creep is the slowest form, involving almost imperceptibly slow downhill movement of the weathered surface layer without significant water involvement. It is evidenced by the tilting of poles, walls, and trees on hillslopes. Soil flow or solifluction occurs when the weathered material becomes fully saturated with water to the point where individual particles lose cohesion and the saturated mass behaves as a viscous liquid flowing rapidly downslope, destroying everything in its path. Soil flow is particularly destructive in Uttarakhand during cloudbursts and in the tundra of high altitudes during snowmelt. In volcanic regions, a mixture of mudflow and volcanic ash or lava called a lahar is an especially deadly hazard. Landslides are rapid or instantaneous downslope movements of large masses of rock or regolith, with water acting primarily as a lubricating agent along a failure plane rather than as a saturating medium. Slumping is a specific type of rotational landslide in which a block of material rotates backward along a curved failure surface.

India has two major landslide-prone regions of very high risk: the Himalayan region and the Western Ghats. In the Himalayas, landslides are driven by a convergence of factors. The young fold mountains are still tectonically active, lying in seismic Zone IV and V, and earthquakes routinely trigger mass movements. The extreme height of the Himalayas and the structural steepness produced by the complex folding mechanism create inherently unstable slopes, particularly on the southern face where the gradient is most severe. The Himalayas contain one of the world's largest concentrations of glaciers, and the melting of glaciers during summer months introduces large volumes of meltwater into slope materials, reducing shear strength. The mighty rivers originating in the Himalayas, including the Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra, and their tributaries, are in the youthful stage of their development and vigorously undercut valley walls, steepening slopes and triggering mass failures. Human factors have greatly amplified natural landslide susceptibility. Population growth in the Himalayan states has increased pressure on steep terrain for agriculture, settlements, and infrastructure. Road and railway construction involves slope cutting, blasting, and the removal of supporting material at the toe of slopes. Deforestation removes the binding effect of tree roots and increases surface runoff. Construction of large dams and reservoirs, through reservoir-induced seismicity and saturation of adjacent slopes, has triggered landslides. The Kedarnath disaster of 2013 and the Chamoli disaster of 2021, in which a rock and ice avalanche from Nanda Devi triggered a flash flood in the Rishiganga valley destroying hydropower projects and killing over 200 people, illustrate the cascading multi-hazard character of Himalayan disasters.

In the Western Ghats, landslides are primarily driven by the extremely heavy rainfall that the escarpment receives during the southwest monsoon, often exceeding 3,000 to 5,000 millimetres in the wettest sections. The western slopes of the Ghats are structurally steep, and numerous small, swift streams originating on the escarpment rapidly expand during the monsoon, eroding valley walls and weakening slopes. Rapid and often illegal urbanisation in the Ghats, including flattening of hillsides for construction, building of houses on unstable slopes, sand mining along rivers, and deforestation, has dramatically increased landslide hazard. Major landslide events in the Western Ghats include repeated disasters in Kozhikode, Wayanad, Munnar, Idukki, and Kodagu districts.

Landslide disaster management involves hazard zonation mapping by the Geological Survey of India at the national level and the District Collector at the local level. Remote sensing and aerial photography have greatly extended the reach of mapping into otherwise inaccessible terrain. Doppler weather radars in hill districts provide early warning of extreme rainfall events. Mitigation measures include retaining walls, gabion structures, slope drainage channels, and afforestation programmes to stabilise slopes. Strict enforcement of building regulations prohibiting construction in high-risk zones, managed retreat from extremely hazardous locations, and community training in early warning recognition and evacuation are critical non-structural components.

Droughts in India

Drought in India is classified into three types. Meteorological drought is defined as a sustained period of rainfall deficiency below a specified threshold, typically taken as 25 percent below the long-period average for a region. Hydrological drought refers to the depletion of surface and groundwater resources below normal levels, which may persist for months or years after the end of a meteorological drought. Agricultural drought occurs when soil moisture is insufficient to sustain crop growth regardless of whether surface water or groundwater levels have been affected, and is most directly connected to food production losses.

The drought-prone regions of India include the rain-shadow zone on the leeward side of the Western Ghats, covering parts of Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh, which receive less than 750 millimetres of annual rainfall. The western Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat and Haryana in the Thar Desert region are hyper-arid and chronically drought-prone. Parts of the Deccan plateau interior in Marathwada, Vidarbha, Bundelkhand, and Telangana are semi-arid and highly vulnerable to sequential droughts. Eastern regions including parts of Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh experience drought in years of deficient or erratic monsoon rainfall despite being outside the traditional drought belt. The frequency of drought years correlates strongly with El Nino events in the Pacific Ocean, which suppress monsoon rainfall over India. The droughts of 2002, 2009, 2014, and 2015 were associated with El Nino conditions and caused significant agricultural losses and distress among farming communities.

The consequences of drought extend well beyond crop failure. Livestock mortality due to lack of fodder and water is a major economic loss for pastoral communities. Drinking water scarcity drives distress migration from rural to urban areas. Groundwater overdraft during droughts permanently depletes aquifer storage. Farmer distress, including debt and suicides, has been a documented consequence of sequential droughts in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The National Drought Management Policy and the Manual for Drought Management provide the framework for drought declaration, relief distribution, and long-term mitigation. Integrated watershed development programmes, promotion of drought-resistant crop varieties, expansion of micro-irrigation including drip and sprinkler systems, and groundwater recharge through check dams and percolation ponds are the principal long-term strategies for reducing drought vulnerability.

Heat Waves

A heat wave is declared in India when the maximum temperature at a weather station reaches at least 40 degrees Celsius in plains and at least 30 degrees Celsius in hilly regions, and the departure from the normal maximum temperature is 4.5 degrees Celsius or more, or when the actual maximum temperature reaches 45 degrees Celsius regardless of the departure from normal. Severe heat waves are declared when the departure is 6.4 degrees Celsius or more, or when the actual maximum exceeds 47 degrees Celsius. The northwest plains of India, including Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and the upper Gangetic plains, and the central Indian peninsula including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Vidarbha, are the most heat-wave-prone regions. The hot, dry wind called the loo blows from the west and northwest across the Great Plains during the pre-monsoon months of May and June, greatly intensifying heat stress. Heat waves cause death through hyperthermia, dehydration, and cardiovascular collapse, primarily affecting outdoor labourers, the elderly, and the economically marginalised who lack access to cooling. The heat wave of May 2015 killed over 2,300 people across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, one of the deadliest heat wave events in India's recorded history. Heat wave mortality is increasing as mean temperatures rise due to climate change and urbanisation intensifies the urban heat island effect in major cities. Heat Action Plans developed by cities such as Ahmedabad, which pioneered India's first heat action plan in 2013 following a deadly 2010 heat wave, have demonstrated significant reductions in heat mortality through public cooling centres, early warning systems, and targeted outreach to vulnerable populations.

Cloudbursts and Flash Floods in the Himalayas

A cloudburst is a sudden, extremely intense rainfall event defined in India as rainfall of 100 millimetres or more per hour over a localised area. Cloudbursts occur when a convective cell becomes stationary over a confined area due to topographic channelling of moisture-laden monsoon air against a mountain barrier, releasing its entire water content in a very short time. The Himalayan states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and the hilly districts of the northeastern states are highly susceptible. The sudden release of intense rainfall over steep, already saturated slopes triggers flash floods, debris flows, and landslides simultaneously and without sufficient warning for evacuation. Cloudbursts are difficult to forecast because their spatial scale is smaller than the resolution of operational weather models and their duration is too short for conventional warning chains to operate effectively. The installation of dense networks of automatic weather stations and rain gauges in Himalayan valleys, combined with local-language SMS and radio alerts to village communities, has improved warning effectiveness. The broader long-term challenge is reducing exposure by relocating settlements from valley floors and restricting infrastructure development in high-risk zones, which conflicts with developmental pressures in these economically marginalised mountain regions.

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) occur when a moraine dam or ice dam containing a proglacial lake fails suddenly, releasing large volumes of water and debris in a catastrophic flood downstream. They are an increasingly significant hazard in the Himalayan region as global warming accelerates the melting of glaciers, enlarging existing glacial lakes and forming new ones. The Space Applications Centre of ISRO has identified hundreds of potentially dangerous glacial lakes in the Himalayas, many of which have grown significantly in area and volume over the past three decades. GLOFs are particularly deadly because they travel at extremely high speed down steep Himalayan valleys, giving little warning to downstream populations, and they carry enormous quantities of rock debris that dramatically amplify destructive power. The South Lhonak Lake GLOF in Sikkim in October 2023 breached the Teesta dam and caused catastrophic flooding through the Teesta valley into West Bengal. Managing GLOF risk requires remote monitoring of glacial lakes by satellite, construction of siphon drainage and controlled release structures to lower lake levels below dangerous thresholds, and establishment of community-level early warning and evacuation systems in downstream valleys.

Desertification

Desertification is the process of land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations and human activities, leading to a reduction in biological productivity, vegetation cover, and soil quality. India has one of the highest levels of land degradation among developing nations, with the National Remote Sensing Centre estimating that approximately 30 percent of India's total geographical area of about 329 million hectares is degraded to some degree. Wind erosion is the dominant process in the Thar Desert region of Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat, where mobile sand dunes called barchans advance onto agricultural land, roads, railways, and settlements. Overgrazing by livestock in the semi-arid zones of Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, and the Deccan plateau destroys the protective vegetation cover and loosens topsoil, accelerating both wind and water erosion. Deforestation on the fringes of the Thar and in degraded forest land of central India progressively extends the zone of active desertification. Soil salinity and waterlogging, caused by the mismanagement of canal irrigation in the canal-irrigated zone of Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh, render formerly productive agricultural land barren. The National Action Programme to Combat Desertification aligned with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) provides the policy framework, and major programmes including the Green India Mission, the Integrated Watershed Management Programme, and the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana address different dimensions of land degradation control.

Institutional Framework for Disaster Management in India

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) at the national level formulates policies, plans, and guidelines and coordinates their enforcement across ministries and agencies. State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) perform the equivalent role at the state level. District Disaster Management Authorities (DDMAs) are the implementing agency at the ground level, responsible for district disaster management plans, relief distribution, and coordination of local response. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) comprises sixteen battalions drawn from the paramilitary forces of the Border Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Central Industrial Security Force, and Sashastra Seema Bal, each trained and equipped for specific hazard types including flood rescue, earthquake urban search and rescue, chemical biological radiological and nuclear response, and hazmat management. NDRF units are pre-positioned in disaster-prone states and have a consistent track record of rapid deployment and effective rescue operations. The National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) functions as the apex body for capacity building, training, and research. At the international level, India is a party to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015 to 2030), which replaced the Hyogo Framework and emphasises upstream risk reduction rather than post-disaster response, targeting a substantial reduction in global disaster mortality, economic losses, and damage to critical infrastructure by 2030. India has adopted a National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP) aligned with the Sendai Framework, covering prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery as the five elements of the disaster management cycle.