Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Declaring a National Disaster
Why in the News?
- The Kerala government has requested the Centre to declare the landslide in Vythiri taluk, Wayanad district, as a national disaster.
- The Central government is considering the legality of declaring the landslide a national disaster.
Wayanad Landslide: Destruction and Casualties
|
Defining a Disaster:
- A natural disaster includes natural events like earthquakes, floods, landslides, cyclones, tsunamis, urban floods, and heatwaves.
- Man-made disasters can include nuclear, biological, and chemical incidents.
- According to the Disaster Management Act, 2005, a disaster is defined as:
- A catastrophe, mishap, calamity, or grave occurrence in any area arising from natural or man-made causes.
- It results in substantial loss of life or human suffering, damage to or destruction of property, or environmental degradation.
- The damage must be of such a nature or magnitude that it is beyond the coping capacity of the affected community.
Is there any provision to declare a ‘National Disaster/Calamity’?
- There is NO provision under the existing guidelines to declare any disaster, including floods, as a national calamity.
- The guidelines do NOT contemplate declaring a disaster as a National Calamity.
Attempts to Define National Calamity:
- National Committee (2001):
- Chaired by the then Prime Minister, the committee was tasked with defining parameters for a national calamity.
- The committee did not suggest any fixed criteria for such a declaration.
- 10th Finance Commission (1995-2000):
- It proposed that a disaster be termed “a national calamity of rarest severity” if it affects one-third of a state’s population.
- It did not define “calamity of rare severity” but suggested that each case be adjudged individually.
Response to such calamities in India
- When a calamity is declared as such, support is provided at the national level.
- The Centre considers additional assistance from the NDRF.
- A Calamity Relief Fund (CRF) is established, with the corpus shared 3:1 between the Centre and the state.
- If resources in the CRF are insufficient, additional assistance is considered from the National Calamity Contingency Fund (NCCF), funded entirely by the Centre.
- Relief measures can include the repayment of loans or the provision of fresh loans to affected individuals on concessional terms.
PYQ:[2020] Discuss the recent measures initiated in disaster management by the Government of India departing from the earlier reactive approach.
[2019] Vulnerability is an essential element for defining disaster impacts and its threat to people. How and in what ways can vulnerability to disasters be characterized? Discuss different types of vulnerability with reference to disasters. |
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
