While the Bill aims to improve disaster management through UDMAs and strengthen national and state authorities, its effectiveness is being questioned
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On 1 August 2024, the Government of India (GOI) introduced the Disaster Management (Amendment) Bill in the Lok Sabha. The Bill’s Statement of Objects and Reasons reiterates the institutional mechanisms of the Disaster Management Act 2005 for drawing up disaster management plans and monitoring their implementation. Consequently, disaster management authorities and committees were constituted at national, state, and district levels. Nearly two decades later, a need was felt to review this arrangement. Consultations were held with state governments and other stakeholders to discuss the experiences during the administration of past disasters and the recommendations of the 15th Finance Commission.
The Amendment Bill 2024 seeks to bring more clarity and convergence in the roles of authorities and committees and provide statutory status to certain pre-Act organisations like the National Crisis Management Committee and the High-Level Committee.
Based on the review, the government decided to amend certain provisions of the Disaster Management Act 2005. The Amendment Bill 2024 seeks to bring more clarity and convergence in the roles of authorities and committees and provide statutory status to certain pre-Act organisations like the National Crisis Management Committee and the High-Level Committee. The Bill strives to strengthen the working of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the state disaster management authorities (SDMAs) and empower them to prepare disaster plans and establish national and state-level disaster databases. The database is expected to include disaster assessment details, fund allocation, expenditures incurred, preparedness and mitigation plan, risk register according to type and severity of risk and other relevant matters in accordance with policy, as may be determined by the Central government. The Bill also seeks to bring in an extra layer of city-level disaster institutions through the Urban Disaster Management Authorities (UDMAs). The UDMAs will function for state capitals and large cities that have municipal corporations. Finally, the Bill seeks the creation of a State Disaster Response Forces by the state governments.
Following the amendment, the National Executive Committee and the State Executive Committees will no longer formulate national-level and state-level disaster plans. The NDMA and SDMAs would take over these duties. The NDMA could also appoint experts and consultants to assist in performing its functions. The Amendment Act also considers the possible climate change risks. It stresses that the expression “‘emerging disaster risks’ refers to risks of those disasters that may not have taken place but may occur in future due to extreme climate events and other factors.’ The Bill empowers the NDMA to take stock of the entire range of disaster risks, including fresh disasters that the country could face.
The Amendment Act focuses on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) rather than post-disaster management. For this purpose, it brings in a definitional alteration. It states that the expression ‘disaster management’ is inclusive of ‘disaster risk reduction’, that is, the practice of ‘reducing disaster risk through systematic efforts to analyse and manage the causal facts of disaster through reduced exposure to hazard, reduced vulnerability of people, property, infrastructure, economic activity, environmental and natural resources and improved preparedness, resilience and capacity to manage and respond to adverse event.
The Bill empowers the NDMA to take stock of the entire range of disaster risks, including fresh disasters that the country could face.
The Opposition questioned the constitutionality of the Amendment Bill 2004 in the Lok Sabha. It pointed out that an amendment to the Concurrent List of the Constitution would be required so that a proper entry could be inserted to cover the issue of disaster management. They also charged the Centre of encroaching on the territory of state governments and criticised the Bill for creating multiple authorities, creating more confusion.
As cited above, the Bill has multiple objectives. However, from the point of view of larger cities, the most significant provision is the constitution of the UDMAs for state capitals as well as the larger urban settlements that have become municipal corporations. The amendments shall not apply to Delhi and Chandigarh. The exclusion of Delhi, as the national capital, from the application of UDMA is understandable, as it needs to be treated with special care.
The creation of the UDMAs is a welcome step. It draws from the NDMA’s earlier experiences of urban disasters, the scale of destruction they caused, and the complexities they presented. Interestingly, about two decades ago, the NDMA did not consider urban disasters to have characteristics and consequences different from rural disasters. However, the 2005 Mumbai floods compelled the NDMA to rethink its approach to urban disasters. It realised that Indian cities are densely populated and are centres of economic activity with vital physical, commercial, industrial, and social infrastructure. As such, any disruptions caused by a disaster were likely to have serious all-round implications. This understanding led the NDMA to look at urban disasters differently and adopt a more proactive pre-disaster preparedness and mitigation-centric approach.
The Amendment Act places the collector as vice chairman, recognising that there would still be coordination issues where the presence of the district administration would be required.
In institutional terms, this has ultimately led to the proposal to set up UDMAs in larger cities. This effectively means that regarding disasters, municipal corporations would be managed by UDMAs and would no longer be part of the District Management Authority. UDMAs, as a consequence, would be headed by the municipal commissioner as the chairman. The Amendment Act places the collector as vice chairman, recognising that there would still be coordination issues where the presence of the district administration would be required. For example, in many states, fire, transportation, and water services are under the jurisdiction of the state, and the law-and-order machinery throughout the country is controlled by the states. The provision also means that UDMAs will multiply over the years. Today, there are 268 municipal corporations in India. With time, the march of urbanisation will convert many of the larger municipal councils into municipal corporations, and they will have their own UDMAs. The Amendment Act also stipulates that the DDMAs and UDMAs will prepare district and urban disaster management plans, respectively, in accordance with the national and state plans and will require the approval of the state authority. For this purpose, the state authority will ‘lay down guidelines’ for preparing the plans.
The point of worry is that while municipal corporations are endowed with greater disaster management authority in relation to the geographies under their control, they may be thwarted by minimal overall powers and resources. In the administrative world, seniority is vital. While this has generally been taken care of in megacities, where municipal commissioners are very senior officers drawn from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), this is frequently not observed in many smaller cities, where the district collectors are senior to the municipal commissioners. With the municipal corporations rapidly increasing in numbers, some states may even find it difficult to find IAS officers to place in the cities and may have to post officers from the state services. The inability of the municipal commissioner to control and deploy state-level officers involved in disaster management may be a huge stumbling block.
The Amendment Act places the collector as vice chairman, recognising that there would still be coordination issues where the presence of the district administration would be required.
Coupled with leadership and coordination issues, the ability of the ULBs to find resources to set up, equip, and run the UDMAs and carry out DRR and disaster management activities may be highly doubtful. DRR activities would especially require the creation of infrastructure that will provide resilience to ULBs. Unfortunately, the Amendment Act does not at all talk about resources at the local level. However, there is a possibility that some money could be drawn from the National Disaster Mitigation Fund. In the days to come, despite the very noble intentions of the Amendment Act, these factors will come into play and reveal the weaknesses of the arrangement.
Ramanath Jha is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation
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Dr. Ramanath Jha is Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai. He works on urbanisation — urban sustainability, urban governance and urban planning. Dr. Jha belongs ...
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