Geopolitics & Economy · March 2026
The Fire Next Door: How a War India Didn’t Start Is Burning Through Its Kitchens, Its Ports, and Its Pride
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. India fired not a single shot. Yet, from a fisherman’s wife in Chennai waiting three weeks for a cooking-gas cylinder to a naval analyst in Delhi watching a torpedo video from the Indian Ocean, the war has landed — quietly, shockingly, and in ways no government briefing had quite anticipated.
The queue outside the HP Gas distributor on Nungambakkam High Road in Chennai had been there for eleven days when Meenakshi Subramaniam, a retired schoolteacher, counted the cylinders in her kitchen cupboard. She had two. At the government’s new rationing pace — one refill every 25 days — her next delivery would come sometime in mid-April. By then, her son’s restaurant in Mylapore, which ran on commercial LPG, would have been shut for nearly three weeks.
Meenakshi’s situation, multiplied across hundreds of millions of Indian households, is both personal and deeply structural. The war between the United States, Israel, and Iran has produced a domestic energy crisis in India that is far more intimate and disruptive than most wars fought 3,000 kilometres away tend to be. India didn’t want this war, hasn’t joined it, and may yet pay a heavier price for it than almost any other non-belligerent.
This is the story of how a country of 1.4 billion people — the world’s fourth-largest economy and keeper of its doctrine of “strategic autonomy” — found itself queuing for cooking gas, watching a guest warship sink in the Indian Ocean, and quietly negotiating with the very country its ally had just bombed.
I. The Strait That Holds 310 Million Kitchens Hostage
To understand why the Strait of Hormuz — a sliver of sea between Iran and Oman, barely 34 kilometres wide at its narrowest — can bring middle-class India to the edge of panic, you need to understand the numbers behind the world’s largest cooking-gas welfare programme.
India’s Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, launched in 2016, enrolled 103 million poor households into subsidised LPG. Including earlier connections, India today has over 310 million LPG connections — the most of any country in the world. In February 2026, LPG demand hit 2.8 million tonnes, a ten percent year-on-year increase and the highest daily consumption ever recorded.
The supply chain behind this is dangerously concentrated. India produces only about 40 percent of its LPG domestically. The rest — around 67 percent of requirements — is imported, and roughly 90 percent of those imports transit through the Strait of Hormuz, primarily from Qatar (India’s largest supplier at 34 percent), the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. When Iran announced on March 1 that the Strait was closed and threatened to “set on fire” any vessel attempting to pass, the numbers for India turned alarming almost immediately.
India’s LPG Exposure — Key Numbers
- 310 million+ LPG connections nationwide
- 67% of LPG is imported; 90% of those imports transit Hormuz
- Strategic reserves at outbreak of War: ~5 days of domestic demand
- Domestic LPG price hike on March 7: ₹60 for a 14.2 kg cylinder (Delhi: ₹913)
- Commercial 19 kg cylinder: rose ~₹115 (Delhi: ₹1,883)
- Black market price in some cities: ₹4,000+ per cylinder
- Government crackdown: 12,000+ raids, 15,000+ cylinders seized under Essential Commodities Act
The disruption cascaded quickly. Commercial LPG allocations were cut by up to 80 percent within days. In Bengaluru, hotel associations reported that only ten percent of member restaurants received gas supplies on March 10. In Mumbai, commercial refill delays stretched to eight days, then stopped. The government invoked the Essential Commodities Act, created a four-tier gas priority system — households first, hospitals second, restaurants last — and asked Coal India to supply coal to small food businesses. Parts of Old Delhi and Chennai’s street-food corridors began smelling of woodsmoke for the first time in decades.
Case Study I
The Restaurant Crisis: 10,000 Closures and a ₹1,200 Crore Daily Hit
The National Restaurant Association of India estimated that 75 percent of India’s food-service sector runs on LPG, and that a prolonged shortage could cost the economy between ₹1,200 and ₹1,300 crore per day — roughly $150 million. M. Ravi, president of the Chennai Hotel Association, told journalists that nearly 10,000 establishments across Tamil Nadu faced closure by March 12. Mumbai-based lobby group AHAR warned its members were on the “verge of closure.” Stock markets reflected the damage: shares of quick-service restaurant operators Sapphire Foods and Devyani International fell 21 and 19 percent respectively in the three weeks after war began.
The government eventually approved an extra allocation of 20 percent of each state’s monthly commercial LPG requirement, bringing total supply to about half of normal needs. Restaurants were formally permitted to use biomass for a month. The government asked Coal India to route supplies to small businesses. What was an extraordinary energy crisis was, for now, being managed — but at a cost that no policy framework had priced in.
HSBC, in a note widely circulated in Indian financial circles, called this shock “more complex than previous oil disruptions.” Unlike earlier Gulf crises driven purely by crude price spikes, this one centred on a physical shortage of LNG and LPG — fuels for which alternative routing is either expensive or structurally impossible at short notice. The bank estimated a potential 25 percent shortfall in natural gas supply, which could shave roughly 25 basis points from GDP growth if the crunch lasted a full quarter. The burden would fall approximately 70 percent on consumers and 30 percent on businesses.
Two Indian-flagged tankers — the Shivalik, carrying 40,000 metric tonnes of LPG, and the Nanda Devi — became the unlikely focal point of India’s most consequential diplomatic negotiation of the year. After External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar spoke with his Iranian counterpart four times in less than two weeks, and Prime Minister Modi called Iranian Premier Masoud Pezeshkian on March 12, Iran permitted these two vessels through the Strait on a case-by-case basis. They arrived at Indian ports on March 16 and 17. Two ships, out of 22 waiting.
II. The Guest Ship and the Torpedo
Of all the things this war has done to India, the most symbolically striking happened not in a kitchen queue or on a stock exchange, but in dark water 44 nautical miles south of Galle, Sri Lanka, in the early hours of March 4.
The IRIS Dena was an Iranian Navy frigate returning home. It was not heading to a fight. In the weeks before Operation Epic Fury began, the Dena had participated in India’s International Fleet Review 2026 and the biennial Milan naval exercise, held in Visakhapatnam from February 15 to 25 — India’s largest such event, with 74 countries and 18 foreign warships.
Three days after the Milan exercise ended, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury. The Dena was still sailing through the Indian Ocean. On March 4, the USS Charlotte — a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine — fired two Mark 48 torpedoes without warning. One struck home. The ship sank in under three minutes. Of approximately 180 sailors aboard, 87 were confirmed dead. At least 61 remained missing.
It was the first time since World War II that a US Navy submarine had sunk an enemy surface vessel. And it happened in India’s maritime backyard.
The two surviving Iranian vessels — the Lavan and a second ship — sought sanctuary in Indian and Sri Lankan ports. India agreed.
III. $50 Billion in Remittances, Nine Million Reasons to Worry
Walk through the back streets of Thrissur in Kerala or the smaller towns of coastal Andhra Pradesh and you find a particular kind of prosperity — tile-clad houses that were once palm-thatched, school fees paid in dirhams, families built on Gulf salary transfers that arrive every month via WhatsApp-linked apps. This is the geography of fifty years of Gulf migration, and it underpins a significant share of India’s external finances.
There are approximately 9.1 million Indians working across the six GCC countries — UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain. In FY 2024–25, they sent home an estimated $51.4 billion — about 38 percent of India’s total inward remittances of $135.4 billion, itself a global record. To put this in perspective: India’s entire trade surplus with the United States in 2025 was $58.2 billion. The Gulf remittance flow is, in effect, a second balance-of-payments pillar.
India’s Remittance Exposure — The Gulf Numbers
- 9.1 million Indians in GCC countries — the region’s largest foreign workforce
- ~$51.4 billion annually from Gulf — 38% of India’s total $135.4 billion inflows
- Remittances = ~3.5% of India’s GDP
- ~220,000 Indians have returned since the war began
- March 2026: remittance inflows from West Asia reportedly 20–30% above normal — a sign of worker anxiety.
Since the war began, Iranian strikes have spread beyond Iran itself to industrial zones across the Gulf. Two Indian workers were killed and nine injured in a drone strike near Sohar, Oman. U.S. embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait were targeted. The financial panic arrived quickly: March remittance inflows from West Asia ran 20 to 30 percent above normal as workers sent home larger sums — not because they were earning more, but because they were afraid. Workers were, in effect, liquidating their Gulf bank accounts while they still could.
The present surge should not be mistaken for good news. It is a sign of anxiety. If the conflict extends beyond six months, it will have a material impact on the Indian economy. A slowdown in Gulf construction, hospitality, and oil services — where most Indian blue-collar workers are concentrated — could translate into mass layoffs, falling remittance flows, and a surge of returning migrants that India’s domestic labour market would struggle to absorb.
Case Study II
The Kerala Circuit: When the War Arrives at a District Collector’s Desk
Kerala, which sends more migrants to the Gulf per capita than almost any other Indian state, runs what amounts to a shadow economy calibrated entirely to the Gulf business cycle. The state’s NORKA department runs a dedicated crisis cell. Since early March, district collectors in Malappuram and Thrissur — both heavy Gulf-migration districts — have been fielding a new kind of distress: families unable to reach relatives in Oman and Bahrain, or receiving sudden lump-sum transfers that signal panic rather than prosperity. The Ministry of External Affairs has set up a special control room for Gulf-based Indians. What is notable is how quickly these welfare systems activated — India had, in some sense, prepared for a human Gulf crisis. What it had not planned for was a simultaneous energy crisis arriving through the same geography.
IV. The Unseen Casualties: Rice in Warehouses, Tea in Storage, Fruit at the Docks
The trade damage has received less attention than the LPG queues or the diplomatic manoeuvring, but for those living inside it, it is both acute and — in many cases — financially irreversible.
Case Study III
The Rice Mills That Went Quiet: Madhya Pradesh’s Basmati Crisis
When there is no war, the rice mills of Raisen district in Madhya Pradesh hum through the night in March. The Pusa basmati — long-grained, fragrant, grown along the banks of the Narmada — tumbles through milling machines in the industrial clusters of Mandideep, Satlapur, and Obedullaganj, gets sorted into cream and golden sella varieties, loaded into containers at Nhava Sheva in Navi Mumbai, and sails into the Persian Gulf just in time to stock up for Ramzan. Raisen district cultivates paddy on approximately 3.45 lakh hectares, producing over 6 lakh tonnes of rice annually, with more than two dozen factories feeding markets in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Dubai.
This year, the machines have gone quiet.
Since February 28, basmati rice from Raisen is stuck in ports, factories, and warehouses. Freight rates have climbed more than 30 percent, container availability has collapsed, and war-risk insurance for Gulf-bound vessels has become either unavailable or too expensive. Exporter Mithlesh Soni told journalists he cannot locate 40 containers of his own rice. “We are unable to track our shipment. There is no clarity on where they are or when they will reach,” he said. Another exporter, Hansraj Soni, said shipping lines are imposing surcharges of $2,000 to $2,500 per container and buyers are refusing to pay. “Around 35 of my containers are stuck. I am already looking at a loss of roughly ₹2 lakh per container,” he said.
The price of Pusa basmati has fallen ₹300 to ₹500 per quintal in wholesale markets. Rice factory operator Manoj Soni put it plainly: “This has disrupted the arrival of paddy and raw materials, weakening the supply chain. It has distressed farmers. If the war continues, small and medium industries will be particularly affected.” Across India, over 4 lakh metric tonnes of basmati rice are currently stranded at ports or in transit. Payments worth ₹2,000 crore to ₹25,000 crore are pending. The Gulf absorbs 70 percent of India’s total rice exports — and it is simply the only market that wants what Raisen produces. Europe and the US do not import the same varieties. There is no quick pivot.
Before the war, approximately 500 tonnes of Balaghat’s non-basmati boiled rice — which carries its own district GI tag — were exported daily. That flow has now nearly stopped. Rice exports to East African countries have virtually ceased. Container freight rates that tracked at $2,500 before the crisis have spiked to between $7,000 and $9,000. Small millers in Balaghat, Warasivani, and Katangi say those on a smaller scale have come to a complete standstill.
Basmati rice is only one thread of a wider unravelling. Iran accounts for roughly 23 percent of India’s apple imports and 39 percent of its almond imports. Both flows have stopped. Indian banana exports to the Gulf are sitting in refrigerated containers at ports like Kandla, because no shipping company willing to enter the war zone is available to carry them.
Tea tells another quiet story. Iran historically absorbed 15 to 20 percent of India’s tea exports through the Rial-Rupee barter mechanism — a bilateral payment system built precisely to circumvent dollar-based sanctions. That mechanism is now frozen. Tea stocks are accumulating in warehouses in Kolkata and Kochi, while small planters in Assam’s Sivasagar district and the Darjeeling gardens absorb storage costs with no clear end date.
Plastics, too, face a reckoning. With roughly 55 percent of India’s natural gas imports now under “force majeure” declarations, analysts forecast plastic product price increases of 50 to 60 percent in coming months. Every plastic water pipe, irrigation drip-line, food-grade container, and two-wheeler body panel that India manufactures depends on petrochemical feedstock. A sustained 50 percent input price spike would compress margins across Indian manufacturing at a time when global demand is already slowing.
V. The Rupee, the Current Account, and the Goldman Warning
For India’s economists, the war has delivered “a more complex shock than previous oil disruptions” — arriving through at least four channels simultaneously: higher crude prices (Brent between $110 and $120 per barrel by mid-March, up from $78 before the war), a physical shortage of LNG and LPG, disrupted trade, and remittance uncertainty. The rupee crossed ₹92 per dollar — a level not seen since 2022 — adding 10 to 15 percent to the cost of all dollar-denominated imports.
Goldman Sachs warned that India’s “positive growth story” now faces a “new broadside” from higher energy costs, slower exports, and weaker remittance inflows. India’s stock markets fell approximately 10 percent in the month after the war started.
One buffer has emerged: on March 5, the US Treasury issued a 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to buy Russian crude already at sea. Approximately 70 percent of India’s crude is now sourced outside the Strait of Hormuz. It is the LPG and LNG markets — structurally harder to reroute — that remain most exposed.
VI. The Chabahar Silence
There is one thread in the India-Iran relationship that rarely makes headline summaries but sits at the heart of India’s long-term connectivity ambitions: the port of Chabahar on Iran’s southeastern coast, which India has spent two decades developing as its gateway to Central Asia — bypassing Pakistan’s hostile intermediary role entirely.
In May 2024, India signed a ten-year operational contract for Chabahar’s Shahid Beheshti terminal — a significant step toward activating the International North-South Transport Corridor linking Mumbai to Moscow via Tehran. The contract survived previous rounds of US sanctions because Washington granted India a specific exemption. Whether that exemption survives the current conflict is uncertain. The result is that India’s most significant strategic infrastructure investment in the region is effectively frozen at the moment.
VII. The Diplomatic Tightrope
India has 9.5 million people in the Gulf. It needs Iranian goodwill to move tankers through the Strait. It needs US goodwill for defence technology, semiconductor supply chains, and the Quad. It needs Israeli goodwill for precision defence systems and agricultural technology. What it needs, simultaneously and from all three, is diplomatically incompatible — and the contradictions are becoming harder to manage.
VIII. The Induction Cooker and the Long Reckoning
One data point from the crisis captures, more than any policy analysis, how ordinary Indians responded to the extraordinary. On Amazon India, sales of induction cooktops increased more than thirtyfold after the Hormuz closure. The image of a family unboxing an induction stove in a panic purchase — driven by a war in the Persian Gulf — is both absurd and entirely clarifying.
It clarifies how concentrated India’s structural energy vulnerability actually is: 1.4 billion people, 310 million cooking-gas connections, all flowing through a 34-kilometre maritime chokepoint. It clarifies how thin India’s strategic LPG reserves were at the war’s start — roughly five days of domestic demand, well below the internationally recommended 90-day buffer. It clarifies how the Ujjwala welfare programme, for all its genuine achievements in reducing kerosene dependence, was built on an import chain that no one had stress-tested against a Hormuz closure.
The government has moved quickly: domestic LPG production rose an estimated 30 percent after emergency directives, the Essential Commodities Act was invoked, a rationing system was created, and the Navy deployed escorts for merchant vessels in high-risk zones. These are crisis responses, and they are working — for now. But they are not structural fixes. India still has no strategic LPG reserve of any meaningful scale. It still lacks import-source diversification sufficient to blunt a repeat of this crisis.
Back on Nungambakkam High Road in Chennai, Meenakshi Subramaniam received her LPG cylinder on March 19 — later than expected, earlier than feared. Her son’s restaurant reopened on a reduced menu. The induction cooktop she had ordered was still in the box when she last spoke with a reporter. “Insurance,” she said. “For next time.”
In India, this kind of insurance is not pessimism. It is memory. And increasingly, it is policy.
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- Mainstreaming of Disaster Risk Reduction in Developmental Strategy-Prevention and mitigation contribute to lasting improvement in safety and should beintegrated in the disaster management. The Government of India has adopted mitigation and prevention as essential components of their development strategy.
- Mainstreaming of National Plan and its Sub-Plan
- National Disaster Mitigation Fund
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for prevention/control of outbreaks/epidemics of malaria, dengue, chikungunya etc., vaccines administered to reduce the morbidity and mortality due to diseases like measles, diphtheria, pertussis, poliomyelitis etc. Two key measures to prevent/control epidemics of water-borne diseases like cholera, viral hepatitis etc. include making available safe water and ensuring personal and domestic hygienic practices are adopted. - Training
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.
Heat wave is a condition of air temperature which becomes fatal to human body when exposed. Often times, it is defined based on the temperature thresholds over a region in terms of actual temperature or its departure from normal.
Heat wave is considered if maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 400C or more for Plains and at least 300C or more for Hilly regions.
a) Based on Departure from Normal
Heat Wave: Departure from normal is 4.50C to 6.40C
Severe Heat Wave: Departure from normal is >6.40C
b) Based on Actual Maximum Temperature
Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥ 450C
Severe Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥470C
If above criteria met at least in 2 stations in a Meteorological sub-division for at least two consecutive days and it declared on the second day
It is occurring mainly during March to June and in some rare cases even in July. The peak month of the heat wave over India is May.
Heat wave generally occurs over plains of northwest India, Central, East & north Peninsular India during March to June.
It covers Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, parts of Maharashtra & Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana.
Sometimes it occurs over Tamilnadu & Kerala also.
Heat waves adversely affect human and animal lives.
However, maximum temperatures more than 45°C observed mainly over Rajasthan and Vidarbha region in month of May.
a. Transportation / Prevalence of hot dry air over a region (There should be a region of warm dry air and appropriate flow pattern for transporting hot air over the region).
b. Absence of moisture in the upper atmosphere (As the presence of moisture restricts the temperature rise).
c. The sky should be practically cloudless (To allow maximum insulation over the region).
d. Large amplitude anti-cyclonic flow over the area.
Heat waves generally develop over Northwest India and spread gradually eastwards & southwards but not westwards (since the prevailing winds during the season are westerly to northwesterly).
The health impacts of Heat Waves typically involve dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and/or heat stroke. The signs and symptoms are as follows:
1. Heat Cramps: Ederna (swelling) and Syncope (Fainting) generally accompanied by fever below 39*C i.e.102*F.
2. Heat Exhaustion: Fatigue, weakness, dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps and sweating.
3. Heat Stoke: Body temperatures of 40*C i.e. 104*F or more along with delirium, seizures or coma. This is a potential fatal condition.
Norman Borlaug and MS Swaminathan in a wheat field in north India in March 1964
Political independence does not have much meaning without economic independence.
One of the important indicators of economic independence is self-sufficiency in food grain production.
The overall food grain scenario in India has undergone a drastic transformation in the last 75 years.
India was a food-deficit country on the eve of Independence. It had to import foodgrains to feed its people.
The situation became more acute during the 1960s. The imported food had to be sent to households within the shortest possible time.
The situation was referred to as ‘ship to mouth’.
Presently, Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns are overflowing with food grain stocks and the Union government is unable to ensure remunerative price to the farmers for their produce.
This transformation, however, was not smooth.
In the 1960s, it was disgraceful, but unavoidable for the Prime Minister of India to go to foreign countries with a begging bowl.
To avoid such situations, the government motivated agricultural scientists to make India self-sufficient in food grain production.
As a result, high-yield varieties (HYV) were developed. The combination of seeds, water and fertiliser gave a boost to food grain production in the country which is generally referred to as the Green Revolution.
The impact of the Green Revolution, however, was confined to a few areas like Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh in the north and (unified) Andhra Pradesh in the south.
Most of the remaining areas were deficit in food grain production.
Therefore the Union government had to procure food grain from surplus states to distribute it among deficit ones.
At the time, farmers in the surplus states viewed procurement as a tax as they were prevented from selling their surplus foodgrains at high prices in the deficit states.
As production of food grains increased, there was decentralisation of procurement. State governments were permitted to procure grain to meet their requirement.
The distribution of food grains was left to the concerned state governments.
Kerala, for instance, was totally a deficit state and had to adopt a distribution policy which was almost universal in nature.
Some states adopted a vigorous public distribution system (PDS) policy.
It is not out of place to narrate an interesting incident regarding food grain distribution in Andhra Pradesh. The Government of Andhra Pradesh in the early 1980s implemented a highly subsidised rice scheme under which poor households were given five kilograms of rice per person per month, subject to a ceiling of 25 kilograms at Rs 2 per kg. The state government required two million tonnes of rice to implement the scheme. But it received only on one million tonne from the Union government.
The state government had to purchase another million tonne of rice from rice millers in the state at a negotiated price, which was higher than the procurement price offered by the Centre, but lower than the open market price.
A large number of studies have revealed that many poor households have been excluded from the PDS network, while many undeserving households have managed to get benefits from it.
Various policy measures have been implemented to streamline PDS. A revamped PDS was introduced in 1992 to make food grain easily accessible to people in tribal and hilly areas, by providing relatively higher subsidies.
Targeted PDS was launched in 1997 to focus on households below the poverty line (BPL).
Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) was introduced to cover the poorest of the poor.
Annapoorna Scheme was introduced in 2001 to distribute 10 kg of food grains free of cost to destitutes above the age of 65 years.
In 2013, the National Food Security Act (NFSA) was passed by Parliament to expand and legalise the entitlement.
Conventionally, a card holder has to go to a particular fair price shop (FPS) and that particular shop has to be open when s/he visits it. Stock must be available in the shop. The card holder should also have sufficient time to stand in the queue to purchase his quota. The card holder has to put with rough treatment at the hands of a FPS dealer.
These problems do not exist once ration cards become smart cards. A card holder can go to any shop which is open and has available stocks. In short, the scheme has become card holder-friendly and curbed the monopoly power of the FPS dealer. Some states other than Chhattisgarh are also trying to introduce such a scheme on an experimental basis.
More recently, the Government of India has introduced a scheme called ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ which enables migrant labourers to purchase rations from the place where they reside. In August 2021, it was operational in 34 states and Union territories.
The intentions of the scheme are good but there are some hurdles in its implementation which need to be addressed. These problems arise on account of variation in:
It is not clear whether a migrant labourer gets items provided in his/her native state or those in the state s/he has migrated to and what prices will s/he be able to purchase them.
The Centre must learn lessons from the experiences of different countries in order to make PDS sustainable in the long-run.
For instance, Sri Lanka recently shifted to organic manure from chemical fertiliser without required planning. Consequently, it had to face an acute food shortage due to a shortage of organic manure.
Some analysts have cautioned against excessive dependence on chemical fertiliser.
Phosphorus is an important input in the production of chemical fertiliser and about 70-80 per cent of known resources of phosphorus are available only in Morocco.
There is possibility that Morocco may manipulate the price of phosphorus.
Providing excessive subsidies and unemployment relief may make people dependent, as in the case of Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
It is better to teach a person how to catch a fish rather than give free fish to him / her.
Hence, the government should give the right amount of subsidy to deserving people.
The government has to increase livestock as in the case of Uruguay to make the food basket broad-based and nutritious. It has to see to it that the organic content in the soil is adequate, in order to make cultivation environmentally-friendly and sustainable in the long-run.
In short, India has transformed from a food-deficit state to a food-surplus one 75 years after independence. However, the government must adopt environmental-friendly measures to sustain this achievement.
Agroforestry is an intentional integration of trees on farmland.
Globally, it is practised by 1.2 billion people on 10 per cent area of total agricultural lands (over 1 billion hectares).
It is widely popular as ‘a low hanging fruit’ due to its multifarious tangible and intangible benefits.
The net carbon sequestered in agroforestry is 11.35 tonnes of carbon per ha
A panacea for global issues such as climate change, land degradation, pollution and food security, agroforestry is highlighted as a key strategy to fulfil several targets:
In 2017, a New York Times bestseller Project Drawdown published by 200 scientists around the world with a goal of reversing climate change, came up with the most plausible 100 solutions to slash–down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Out of these 100 solutions, 11 strategies were highlighted under the umbrella of agroforestry such as:-
Nowadays, tree-based farming in India is considered a silver bullet to cure all issues.
It was promoted under the Green India mission of 2001, six out of eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) and National Agroforestry and Bamboo Mission (NABM), 2017 to bring a third of the geographical area under tree cover and offsetting GHG emissions.
These long-term attempts by the Government of India have helped enhance the agroforestry area to 13.75 million hectares.
The net carbon sequestered in agroforestry is 11.35 tonnes of carbon per ha and carbon sequestration potential is 0.35 tonnes of carbon per ha per year at the country level, according to the Central Agroforestry Research Institute, Jhansi.
India will reduce an additional 2.5-3 billion tonnes of CO2 by increasing tree cover. This extra tree cover could be achieved through agroforestry systems because of their ability to withstand minimum inputs under extreme situations.
Here are some examples which portray the role of agroforestry in achieving at least nine out of the 17 SDGs through sustainable food production, ecosystem services and economic benefits:
SDG 1 — No Poverty: Almost 736 million people still live in extreme poverty. Diversification through integrating trees in agriculture unlocks the treasure to provide multifunctional benefits.
Studies carried out in 2003 in the arid regions of India reported a 10-15 per cent increase in crop yield with Prosopis cineraria (khejari). Adoption of agroforestry increases income & production by reducing the cost of input & production.
SDG 2 — Zero hunger: Tree-based systems provide food and monetary returns. Traditional agroforestry systems like Prosopis cineraria and Madhuca longifolia (Mahua) provide edible returns during drought years known as “lifeline to the poor people”.
Studies showed that 26-50 per cent of households involved in tree products collection and selling act as a coping strategy to deal with hunger.
SDG 3 — Good health and well-being: Human wellbeing and health are depicted through the extent of healthy ecosystems and services they provide.
Agroforestry contributes increased access to diverse nutritious food, supply of medicine, clean air and reduces heat stress.
Vegetative buffers can filter airstreams of particulates by removing dust, gas, microbial constituents and heavy metals.
SDG 5 — Gender equality: Throughout the world around 3 billion people depend on firewood for cooking.
In this, women are the main collectors and it brings drudgery and health issues.
A study from India stated that almost 374 hours per year are spent by women for collection of firewood. Growing trees nearby provides easy access to firewood and diverts time to productive purposes.
SDG 6 — Clean Water and Sanitation: Water is probably the most vital resource for our survival. The inherent capacity of trees offers hydrological regulation as evapotranspiration recharges atmospheric moisture for rainfall; enhanced soil infiltration recharges groundwater; obstructs sediment flow; rainwater filtration by accumulation of heavy metals.
An extensive study in 35 nations published in 2017 concluded that 30 per cent of tree cover in watersheds resulted in improved sanitisation and reduced diarrheal disease.
SDG 7 — Affordable & Clean Energy: Wood fuels are the only source of energy to billions of poverty-stricken people.
Though trees are substitutes of natural forests, modern technologies in the form of biofuels, ethanol, electricity generation and dendro-biomass sources are truly affordable and clean.
Ideal agroforestry models possess fast-growing, high coppicing, higher calorific value and short rotation (2-3 years) characteristics and provide biomass of 200-400 tonnes per ha.
SDG 12 — Responsible consumption and production: The production of agricultural and wood-based commodities on a sustainable basis without depleting natural resources and as low as external inputs (chemical fertilisers and pesticides) to reduce the ecological footprints.
SDG 13 — Climate action: Globally, agricultural production accounts for up to 24 per cent of GHG emissions from around 22.2 million square km of agricultural area, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
A 2016 study depicted that conversion of agricultural land to agroforestry sequesters about 27.2± 13.5 tonnes CO2 equivalent per ha per year after establishment of systems.
Trees on farmland mitigate 109.34 million tonnes CO2 equivalent annually from 15.31 million ha, according to a 2017 report. This may offset a third of the total GHG emissions from the agriculture sector of India.
SDG 15 — Life on Land: Agroforestry ‘mimics the forest ecosystem’ to contribute conservation of flora and faunas, creating corridors, buffers to existing reserves and multi-functional landscapes.
Delivery of ecosystem services of trees regulates life on land. A one-hectare area of homegardens in Kerala was found to have 992 trees from 66 species belonging to 31 families, a recent study showed.
The report of the World Agroforestry Centre highlighted those 22 countries that have registered agroforestry as a key strategy in achieving their unconditional national contributions.
Recently, the Government of India has allocated significant financial support for promotion of agroforestry at grassroot level to make the Indian economy as carbon neutral. This makes agroforestry a low-hanging fruit to achieve the global goals.
A disaster is a result of natural or man-made causes that leads to sudden disruption of normal life, causing severe damage to life and property to an extent that available social and economic protection mechanisms are inadequate to cope.
The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) of the United Nations (U.N.) defines a hazard as “a potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon or human activity that may cause the loss of life or injury, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation.”
Disasters are classified as per origin, into natural and man-made disasters. As per severity, disasters are classified as minor or major (in impact). However, such classifications are more academic than real.
High Powered Committee (HPC) was constituted in August 1999 under the chairmanship of J.C.Pant. The mandate of the HPC was to prepare comprehensive model plans for disaster management at the national, state and district levels.
This was the first attempt in India towards a systematic comprehensive and holistic look at all disasters.
Thirty odd disasters have been identified by the HPC, which were grouped into the following five categories, based on generic considerations:-
Water and Climate Related:-
Geological:-
Biological:-
Chemical, industrial and nuclear:-
Accidental:-
India’s Key Vulnerabilities as articulated in the Tenth Plan, (2002-07) are as follows:
Vulnerability is defined as:-
“the extent to which a community, structure, service, or geographic area is likely to be damaged or disrupted by the impact of particular hazard, on account of their nature, construction and proximity to hazardous terrain or a disaster prone area”.
The concept of vulnerability therefore implies a measure of risk combined with the level of social and economic ability to cope with the resulting event in order to resist major disruption or loss.
Example:- The 1993 Marathwada earthquake in India left over 10,000 dead and destroyed houses and other properties of 200,000 households. However, the technically much more powerful Los Angeles earthquake of 1971 (taken as a benchmark in America in any debate on the much-apprehended seismic vulnerability of California) left over 55 dead.
Physical Vulnerability:-
Physical vulnerability relates to the physical location of people, their proximity to the hazard zone and standards of safety maintained to counter the effects.
The Indian subcontinent can be primarily divided into three geophysical regions with regard to vulnerability, broadly, as, the Himalayas, the Plains and the Coastal areas.
Socio-economic Vulnerability:-
The degree to which a population is affected by a calamity will not purely lie in the physical components of vulnerability but in contextual, relating to the prevailing social and economic conditions and its consequential effects on human activities within a given society.
Global Warming & Climate Change:-
Global warming is going to make other small local environmental issues seemingly insignificant, because it has the capacity to completely change the face of the Earth. Global warming is leading to shrinking glaciers and rising sea levels. Along with floods, India also suffers acute water shortages.
The steady shrinking of the Himalayan glaciers means the entire water system is being disrupted; global warming will cause even greater extremes. Impacts of El Nino and La Nina have increasingly led to disastrous impacts across the globe.
Scientifically, it is proven that the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, and in the next fifty to sixty years they would virtually run out of producing the water levels that we are seeing now.
This will cut down drastically the water available downstream, and in agricultural economies like the plains of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, which are poor places to begin with. That, as one may realise, would cause tremendous social upheaval.
Urban Risks:-
India is experiencing massive and rapid urbanisation. The population of cities in India is doubling in a period ranging just two decades according to the trends in the recent past.
It is estimated that by 2025, the urban component, which was only 25.7 per cent (1991) will be more than 50 per cent.
Urbanisation is increasing the risks at unprecedented levels; communities are becoming increasingly vulnerable, since high-density areas with poorly built and maintained infrastructure are subjected to natural hazards, environmental degradation, fires, flooding and earthquake.
Urbanisation dramatically increases vulnerability, whereby communities are forced to squat on environmentally unstable areas such as steep hillsides prone to landslide, by the side of rivers that regularly flood, or on poor quality ground, causing building collapse.
Most prominent amongst the disasters striking urban settlements frequently are, floods and fire, with incidences of earthquakes, landslides, droughts and cyclones. Of these, floods are more devastating due to their widespread and periodic impact.
Example: The 2005 floods of Maharashtra bear testimony to this. Heavy flooding caused the sewage system to overflow, which contaminated water lines. On August 11, the state government declared an epidemic of leptospirosis in Mumbai and its outskirts.
Developmental activities:-
Developmental activities compound the damaging effects of natural calamities. The floods in Rohtak (Haryana) in 1995 are an appropriate example of this. Even months after the floodwaters had receded; large parts of the town were still submerged.
Damage had not accrued due to floods, but due to water-logging which had resulted due to peculiar topography and poor land use planning.
Disasters have come to stay in the forms of recurring droughts in Orissa, the desertification of swaths of Gujarat and Rajasthan, where economic depredations continuously impact on already fragile ecologies and environmental degradation in the upstream areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Floods in the plains are taking an increasing toll of life, environment, and property, amplified by a huge population pressure.
The unrestricted felling of forests, serious damage to mountain ecology, overuse of groundwater and changing patterns of cultivation precipitate recurring floods and droughts.
When forests are destroyed, rainwater runs off causing floods and diminishing the recharging of groundwater.
The spate of landslides in the Himalayas in recent years can be directly traced to the rampant deforestation and network of roads that have been indiscriminately laid in the name of development.
Destruction of mangroves and coral reefs has increased the vulnerability of coastal areas to hazards, such as storm surges and cyclones.
Commercialisation of coastal areas, particularly for tourism has increased unplanned development in these areas, which has increased disaster potential, as was demonstrated during the Tsunami in December 2004.
Environmental Stresses:- " Delhi-Case Study"
Every ninth student in Delhi’s schools suffers from Asthma. Delhi is the world’s fourth most polluted city.
Each year, poor environmental conditions in the city’s informal areas lead to epidemics.
Delhi has one of the highest road accident fatality ratios in the world. In many ways, Delhi reflects the sad state of urban centers within India that are exposed to risks, which are misconstrued and almost never taken into consideration for urban governance.
The main difference between modernism and postmodernism is that modernism is characterized by the radical break from the traditional forms of urban architecture whereas postmodernism is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions.
Illustration of Disaster Cycle through Case Study:-
The processes covered by the disaster cycle can be illustrated through the case of the Gujarat Earthquake of 26 January 2001. The devastating earthquake killed thousands of people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of houses and other buildings.
The State Government as well as the National Government immediately mounted a largescale relief operation. The help of the Armed Forces was also taken.
Hundreds of NGOs from within the region and other parts of the country as well as from other countries of the world came to Gujarat with relief materials and personnel to help in the relief operations.
Relief camps were set up, food was distributed, mobile hospitals worked round the clock to help the injured; clothing, beddings, tents, and other commodities were distributed to the affected people over the next few weeks.
By the summer of 2001, work started on long-term recovery. House reconstruction programmes were launched, community buildings were reconstructed, and damaged infrastructure was repaired and reconstructed.
Livelihood programmes were launched for economic rehabilitation of the affected people.
In about two year’s time the state had bounced back and many of the reconstruction projects had taken the form of developmental programmes aiming to deliver even better infrastructure than what existed before the earthquake.
Good road networks, water distribution networks, communication networks, new schools, community buildings, health and education programmes, all worked towards developing the region.
The government as well as the NGOs laid significant emphasis on safe development practices. The buildings being constructed were of earthquake resistant designs.
Older buildings that had survived the earthquake were retrofitted in large numbers to strengthen them and to make them resistant to future earthquakes. Mason and engineer training programmes were carried out at a large scale to ensure that all future construction in the State is disaster resistant.
This case study shows how there was a disaster event during the earthquake, followed by immediate response and relief, then by recovery including rehabilitation and retrofitting, then by developmental processes.
The development phase included mitigation activities, and finally preparedness actions to face future disasters.
Then disaster struck again, but the impact was less than what it could have been, primarily due to better mitigation and preparedness efforts.
Looking at the relationship between disasters and development one can identify ‘four’ different dimensions to this relation:
1) Disasters can set back development
2) Disasters can provide development opportunities
3) Development can increase vulnerability and
4) Development can reduce vulnerability
The whole relationship between disaster and development depends on the development choice made by the individual, community and the nation who implement the development programmes.
The tendency till now has been mostly to associate disasters with negativities. We need to broaden our vision and work on the positive aspects associated with disasters as reflected below:
1)Evolution of Disaster Management in India
Disaster management in India has evolved from an activity-based reactive setup to a proactive institutionalized structure; from single faculty domain to a multi-stakeholder setup; and from a relief-based approach to a ‘multi-dimensional pro-active holistic approach for reducing risk’.
Over the past century, the disaster management in India has undergone substantive changes in its composition, nature and policy.
2)Emergence of Institutional Arrangement in India-
A permanent and institutionalised setup began in the decade of 1990s with set up of a disaster management cell under the Ministry of Agriculture, following the declaration of the decade of 1990 as the ‘International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction’ (IDNDR) by the UN General Assembly.
Consequently, the disaster management division was shifted under the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2002
3)Disaster Management Framework:-
Shifting from relief and response mode, disaster management in India started to address the
issues of early warning systems, forecasting and monitoring setup for various weather related
hazards.
National Level Institutions:-National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA):-
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was initially constituted on May 30, 2005 under the Chairmanship of Prime Minister vide an executive order.
SDMA (State Level, DDMA(District Level) also present.
National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC)
Legal Framework For Disaster Management :-
DMD- Disaster management Dept.
NIDM- National Institute of Disaster Management
NDRF – National Disaster Response Fund
Cabinet Committee on Disaster Management-
Location of NDRF Battallions(National Disaster Response Force):-
CBRN- Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear
Policy and response to Climate Change :-
1)National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC)-
National Action Plan on Climate Change identified Eight missions.
• National Solar Mission
• National Mission on Sustainable Habitat
• National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency
• National Mission for Sustaining The Himalayan Ecosystem
• National Water Mission
• National Mission for Green India
• National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture
• National Mission for Strategic Knowledge on Climate Change
2)National Policy on Disaster Management (NPDM),2009-
The policy envisages a safe and disaster resilient India by developing a holistic, proactive, multi-disaster oriented and technologydriven strategy through a culture of prevention, mitigation, preparedness and response. The policy covers all aspects of disaster management including institutional and legal arrangements,financial arrangements, disaster prevention, mitigation and preparedness, techno-legal regime, response, relief and rehabilitation, reconstruction and recovery, capacity development, knowledge management, research and development. It focuses on the areas where action is needed and the institutional mechanism through which such action can be channelised.
Prevention and Mitigation Projects:-
Early Warning Nodal Agencies:-
Post Disaster Management :-Post disaster management responses are created according to the disaster and location. The principles being – Faster Recovery, Resilient Reconstruction and proper Rehabilitation.
Capacity Development:-
Components of capacity development includes :-
National Institute for Capacity Development being – National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM)
International Cooperation-
Way Forward:-
Principles and Steps:-