Home Minister Amit Shah today said India had made major advancements in the field of disaster management with the adoption of a holistic approach to the subject, giving people confidence in the system.

Shah was speaking as chief guest at the annual conference of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) on Capacity Building for Disaster Response – 2022.

He said a lot of work has been done on the scientific program of saving lives and property, based on early warning, proactive prevention, mitigation and pre-preparation by the agencies.

“Today, in the field of disaster response in the world, we are standing on an equal footing and even ahead in many areas,” he said.

Shah said that in 2016, the Government prepared the first national disaster plan that matched all the parameters of Sendai Disaster Risk Reduction Framework-2015 to 2030.

For the first time, a plan was made for horizontal and vertical integration of all the agencies and departments of the government and the result was obvious.

In this scheme, the government has been linked up to the level of panchayat, urban local bodies and different government departments, making the Collector the nodal agency.

In 2016, 11 disasters were included in this plan and in 2019, 17 disasters more have been added to it. “This tells that we are continuously working on all kinds of disasters and we have brought down the number of casualties due to disasters a lot and this is our great achievement,” he said.

The Union Home Minister said that disaster response work cannot be done by resources or research papers alone. Building the capacity of those who take it to the bottom is very important as many agencies have to work together.

Without clarity on each other’s role, and if there is a gap in someone’s role, then the work of disaster response cannot be done properly till the bottom, until that gap is removed, he said.

“It is through this type of exercise that a mutual coordination is created with the states, districts and down to the villages and in the end this mutual coordination becomes the reason for saving lives and property from disaster,” the Home Minister said.