Introduction and Background 

Natural and man-made disasters have been a bane of India’s economy since time immemorial. In ancient Indian literature, there  are  references to natural disasters such as prolonged droughts, flash floods, hail storms, land slides, cyclones and  forest fires. All those disasters were generally  then  attributed to planetary factors  and evil spirits (Kanwar 2001: 3). According to the Kautilya\'s Arthashastra, disaster management was  a  prime duty of the state. The state used to provide relief, when the distress conditions became acute (Sharma 2003: 3). According to the Indian Famine Commission (1888), droughts were the root cause of the devastating famines of the nineteenth century in India. In a nutshell, we could say  that India  was then and still is  vulnerable to almost every type of natural disaster. About 60 % of the  landmass in India is vulnerable to earthquakes; over 40 million hectares (ha) is prone to floods; about 8 % of the total area is prone to cyclones; and about 68 % of the total area is susceptible to droughts. Eight thousand kilometer long coastline is prone to severe cyclonic formations. About 55 % of the total area lies in Seismic Zones III-V and is  vulnerable to earthquakes. Sub-Himalayan  regions and Western Ghats are vulnerable to land slides. (Kanwar 2001: 7, and GOI, 2004:32).   Besides, man made disasters such as fires; air, road and rail accidents; industrial accidents; strikes and  bandhs, civil commotion;  and wars take  a heavy toll of thousands of lives in the country  every year. The vulnerability of India’s population, especially the poor, to both natural and man made disasters, has been  increasing over  time, with the increasing  population densities, unplanned growth, urbanization, industrialization and other factors such as global warming, green house effect, social violence, terrorism, civil unrest and conflicts. Almost every day, news papers publish stories of natural and man-made disasters and crises occurring in one part, or the other of the country, and television channels show scenes of mishaps and their  effects on people. 

At the global level also, there has been a growing concern over enormous losses of lives and property caused by natural disasters. This was reflected in a  decision taken by the United Nations .General Assembly in 1989 to declare 1990-2000 as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.  

 It is an irony that in  many  parts  of India, we have droughts and in many others, we have floods occurring almost concurrently every year. Yet, this kind of risk is not even  recognised in India’s policies and plans, not to speak of absence of  any national policy for disaster management. It is a sad commentary that despite several  programmes launched by the Government of India (GOI) from time to time for minimising their adverse impacts, natural disasters such as droughts, floods, and cyclones continue to haunt almost every year millions of people  living in disaster- prone areas of India and there is no national policy on disaster management, The natural and man-made disasters  and  crises create hardships for the poor, who are chronically  vulnerable  in terms of their access to resources, entitlements and livelihood support. In fact, the lives of people in the hazard- prone regions, particularly the poor, are  almost completely insecure (Dreze and Sen 1988). Irrespective of the type of disaster, it is mostly the poor who are the worst sufferers. According to a study conducted in the 2001 earthquake-affected areas in Gujarat,   most of the victims of the quake were the poor, comprising the landless households, rural artisans, and SC and ST people Reference: Sudhir) Therefore, the poor should be the focal) target group for disaster management. Effective disaster management requires a multi-sectoral, multi-disciplinary, and holistic approach, encompassing pre-disaster preparedness initiatives, disaster response, and post-disaster rehabilitation, all with active  participation of  local people living in hazard-prone regions. As the incidence and severity of disasters has increased over time, disaster management deserves highest priority at both the national and sub-national levels and the traditional approach of postdisaster response and relief need to be replaced by an all-in-compassing holistic approach.  

In this paper, we attempt to: (i) define and characterise various types of disasters and crises; (ii) examine current policies and strategies for disaster management; (iii)  study the effects and  impacts of disasters; (iv)  document various technological and institutional innovations for disaster management; (v) identify and discuss the strategies that various organisations  adopt to cope with disasters and crises; (vi) study the current  practices  for convergence and coordination of disaster management programmes adopted by various agencies; and (viii)  finally outline a  long –term approach to effective disaster and crises management. 

 The  paper  is   mainly based on a critical survey of the  literature that we could access from various sources,  visits to a  few  governmental organizations (GOs) and non-governmental organisations  (NGOs) engaged in disaster and crises management,  and partly on the research work  done by the authors in the field of natural resources management over the last two decades or so. The issues involved are illustrated with suitable examples from disaster prone states of India, particularly, Bihar, Gujarat, and Orissa.