India has emerged as a leading nation in disaster response as was evident when it responded swiftly to provide succour to earthquake-hit Nepal and is well-equipped to deal with natural calamities by building capabilities, the Government said here on Wednesday.
Making this statement in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju said Indian planes were already on their way to Nepal in less than an hour after Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting last Saturday to assess the situation.
Fielding questions on India's preparedness to tackle natural disasters like earthquakes, cyclones and floods, he said the country is bolstering its capacities by extensive use of technology and satellite communication besides a well-trained 10,000 strong National Disaster Relief Force(NDRF).
As regards allocation of funds for disaster relief, the Minister said Rs61,220 crores were allotted to State Disaster Response Fund(SDRF) for the next five years to provide assistance to people affected by natural calamities. He also informed that nearly Rs17,00 crores were allotted this year for such efforts.
When asked about the loss incurred every year by India due to disasters as per a United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction's Global Assessment report for 2015 that pegged the figure at $9 billion, Rijiju said the Government neither accepts nor rejects this estimate. However, some elders said the figure is much more than $9 billion and gave the example of Bihar where floods every year ravaged lakhs of acres of land. This claim came as the UN report said out of $9 billion, $7.4 billion dollars loss was due to floods
Rijiju said 58.6 per cent of India's land was prone to earthquake, 8.5 per cent vulnerable to cyclone and five per cent to floods, as per vulnerability Atlas of India published by Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council under the Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Ministry.
He also said the Government has not appointed any agency to estimate the economic losses from disasters adding damage and losses due to natural disasters are assessed by the State Governments concerned, as they are primarily responsible for managing the situation after any natural disaster.
