Decentralized disaster preparedness builds local climate resilience

India is grappling with the changes in geographical distribution and frequency of disasters due to climate change. The recent Nepal’s disaster, killing around 1500 people and thousands still missing, stirred up global consciousness and was also an eyeopener for India. Devastating floods owing to glaciers or cloudbursts, landslides, cyclones, heatwaves, coastal erosion, and extreme rainfall are no longer exceptional events confined to a few vulnerable districts. These catastrophes pose serious challenges to India and therefore, there is a need to move from aftermath response to disaster preparedness. It is high time to switch from a largely administrative model to one in which communities themselves become the first line of resilience.

It is well-known that a disaster rarely waits for a government vehicle, rescue team or control room to arrive. During the critical initial minutes and hours of a disaster, local communities are often the first to help people, especially senior citizens, women and children, evacuate from flooded homes. Normally, villagers themselves guide others to shift to a safer place. It is the skills, courage and presence of mind of local communities that often make a critical difference, although their efforts cannot replace professional disaster management. Local knowledge, however, remains the first and essential line of response. Decentralised disaster preparedness must begin at the grassroots level and become the next frontier of India's disaster-management architecture.

The Union Government has already recognised this direction. With a corpus of Rs 507.37 crore, the Government, in December 2025, approved a national project that aimed at strengthening community-based disaster-risk reduction through Panchayati Raj Institutions across 20 States and 81 disaster-prone districts. The project integrates preparedness, mitigation, and resilience under a model where Gram Panchayats and local institutions play the most important roles. 

This is obviously a paradigm shift as now village panchayats would not wait from instructions from the district administration after a disaster alert or warning. They already know about vulnerable households, evacuation routes, safe buildings, water sources, local volunteers, and available equipment before the disaster arrives.

India's Aapda Mitra programme points in the same direction. More than one lakh community volunteers have been trained across 350 multi-hazard-prone districts, with training, emergency kits and insurance designed to create a trained community-level response capacity. The next step should be to integrate these volunteers more systematically with Gram Panchayats, schools, self-help groups, fishermen's organisations, youth clubs, resident associations and local health workers.

Several smaller States demonstrate why community ownership matters. Sikkim offers a particularly relevant Himalayan example. By early this year, Sikkim deployed 1,185 trained Aapda Mitras at village, block and district levels, with Disaster Management Assistants present in all Gram Panchayats. People’s participation at panchayat-level committees is the key component of the state’s decentralized disaster preparedness. It is important to note that during the 2023 Teesta floods and earlier disasters, trained first responders helped rescue thousands of people. Kerala has similarly focused on the last mile. The state has introduced Tsunami Ready programme which ensures that warnings are not merely generated by scientific agencies but are actually received, understood and acted upon by coastal communities. 

Local bodies and community-level disaster-management committees play significant role as they are the ones who lead evacuation protocols based on local realities. Odisha has also put in place a decentralized disaster preparedness program after witnessing devastating cyclones. The state has realized the value of community-based disaster-risk management. In its coastal belt, communities were involved in managing shelters, preparing local warning systems, evacuation planning, and search-and-rescue exercises. 

Goa provides an interesting coastal example of how decentralised preparedness can complement technology and institutional capacity. The state has implemented a robust plan combining disaster preparedness, coastal protection and community-oriented interventions. For fishermen, its reforms include safety equipment subsidies, GPS-based vessel tracking, insurance against natural calamities and disaster-preparedness measures. Goa has also been building a stronger community responder network with trained 172 personnel in disaster management, 400 Aapda Mitra and 70 Aapda Sakhi volunteers for local rescue operations. Importantly, 24x7 control rooms are active across talukas. Allocations have been made by the state government to panchayats and municipal bodies for ground-level preparedness. Goa Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant has given a clear message - “Preparedness is the key to saving lives.” He also highlighted Aapda Mitra and Aapda Sakhi initiatives as mechanisms for enhancing community participation in disaster response. 

Goa's approach is also increasingly technology-enabled. The State's Directorate of Fire and Emergency Services has a digital disaster-management response plan, GPS tracking for emergency vehicles and the Agni Sandes mobile application for incident management.

It is widely admitted that there is an urgent need to institutionalize Village and Ward Resilience Plans as seriously as district disaster-management plans. At local level, maintaining a record of elderly people, persons with disabilities, children, pregnant women and households requiring assistance are necessary. Moreover, shelters, evacuation routes, local equipment, trained volunteers, and communication channels must be identified beforehand. Schools, Self Help Groups, ASHA Workers, and Youth can be part of support system. Urban local bodies and panchayats can conduct annual mock drills before the monsoon or cyclone season.

The main advantage of decentralised preparedness is that it also makes climate adaptation more democratic. Communities ground level experience of living with floods, erosion, landslides or heatwaves help in understanding the changing risks in ways that centralised plans may miss.  Realisation of ground-level requirements can improve the design of infrastructure, drainage, shelters, warning systems and livelihood protection. Hence, the next transformation must be to build equally impressive local capabilities.

Ramakant Chaudhary, the author, is a senior journalist and communications strategist with over two decades of experience. He writes extensively on politics, economy, global affairs, infrastructure, renewable energy and sustainability.