Discuss the recent measures initiated in disaster management by the Government of India departing from the earlier reactive approach.

From reactive to a legal-institutional cycle

• DM Act, 2005 created NDMA, SDMAs, DDMAs, and a statutory policy–plan–guidelines chain. Relief is one phase; mitigation is supposed to be first.
• National Disaster Management Plan (2016, revised later) and hazard-specific NDMA guidelines (flood, cyclone, heat, landslide) try to make departments own risk before the event.
• NDRF (and SDRFs) are standing specialised responders, a break from ad-hoc army-only rescue as the default civil picture — the army still leads many ops, but the civil capacity exists.
• Finance: National and State Disaster Response Funds, plus a growing mitigation fund logic after the Fifteenth Finance Commission, so money is not only post-facto.

Recent measures that show the departure

• Early warning: IMD’s cyclone track and coastal warning, INCOIS tsunami and ocean, CWC flood forecasts, and last-mile SMS/sirens. Phailin (2013), Fani (2019), Amphan (2020) deaths were far below the 1999 Odisha super-cyclone scale because evacuation and warning, not only relief camps, worked.
• Heat-action plans (Ahmedabad model spreading), urban flood SOPs, and school/hospital safety campaigns — slow, but mitigation-minded.
• Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI, 2019): India-hosted international coalition so roads, power, and telecom are designed for shocks, not rebuilt after every cyclone.
• Prime Minister’s Ten-Point Agenda on disaster risk reduction (after the Asian Ministerial Conference): international cooperation, risk mapping, women’s leadership, and building codes as politics, not only engineers.
• Aapda Mitra, community volunteers, and civil-defence refresh — capacity in the village before the NDRF column arrives.
• GIS, drones, and satellite (ISRO Disaster Management Support) for maps in hours, which is preparedness technology.
• COVID-19 as a biological disaster stretched the Act and showed the unfinished shift: health infrastructure is mitigation; one-time PPE airlift is still reactive. The honest lesson is mixed.

What remains reactive

• Encroached floodplains, unsafe hill construction, and relief politics after every urban flood show the old muscle memory.
• Early warning without enforced zoning is still a better forecast of a preventable ruin.

Recommendations that fit the new approach

• Make building-code compliance and land-use the real mitigation spend.
• Integrate climate projections into dam and city drainage design.
• Keep NDRF professional; do not let every event wait for a ministerial aerial survey to start work.