The first responder to a disaster is often the community itself – and the first source of resilience may already be living there. India’s next leap in disaster management should be to connect knowledge better, strengthen institutions and act earlier.
By Dr. Rakesh Kumar Bhatt
As late-September 2026 heavy rains and storms triggered floods and landslides that killed at least 56–81 people in Uttar Pradesh alone (with additional deaths and damage reported across parts of India and neighbouring Nepal), and as joint NDRF/SDRF teams evacuated roughly 1,500 pilgrims stranded by a landslide on the Kedarnath trek route, the limits of even improved national early-warning and response systems were once again on display.
These recent events come amid parallel grassroots efforts – such as NDRF-supported training of local volunteers and the mobilisation of around 300 youth as community first responders across Wayanad and Kozhikode in Kerala – and against the backdrop of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs’ August 2026 report on disaster management. That report flagged the need to revise the National Policy on Disaster Management (2009) and National Disaster Management Plan to address climate-driven risks, last-mile connectivity gaps, hyper-local warnings, and stronger integration of community-level capacity.
Together, the monsoon deaths, the mountain rescue, the community training initiatives, and the parliamentary recommendations underscore a central unfinished task in India’s disaster-management journey: systematically linking sophisticated institutional forecasting, response forces and funding mechanisms with the lived knowledge of the communities that are almost always the first on the scene.
Formal Institutional Architecture
India has made remarkable progress in disaster management. From cyclone forecasting and satellite-based monitoring to multi-hazard early-warning systems, evacuation protocols and specialised response forces, the country has steadily moved beyond a predominantly relief-centric approach towards preparedness, mitigation and resilience. The Disaster Management Act, 2005 established a formal institutional architecture, while the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), State and District Disaster Management Authorities, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State response mechanisms have progressively strengthened India’s capacity to prepare for and respond to disasters.
The scale of this transformation is visible in India’s early-warning capabilities. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) now provides district-level impact-based forecasts and risk-based warnings for multiple hazards, while its indigenous Multi-Hazard Early Warning Decision Support System has been operational since 2023. District-wise heavy-rainfall and cyclone warnings are updated four times a day, with forecasts extending up to seven days. Government data also show a substantial decline in cyclone-related fatalities in recent years, attributed in large part to improved forecasting, timely warnings and evacuation.
Yet a critical link remains underdeveloped: the systematic connection between modern institutional systems and the knowledge accumulated by communities that have lived with environmental hazards for generations.
This matters because disasters do not occur on maps alone. They unfold in villages, forests, mountains, river valleys, coastal settlements, informal urban colonies and remote tribal habitations. The people living in these landscapes often possess an intimate understanding of local rivers, slopes, water sources, weather patterns, traditional construction practices, evacuation routes and ecological changes. Much of this knowledge may never enter an official database, despite its potential value for risk assessment and preparedness.
Not a Substitute for Scientific Forecasting
The answer is not to romanticise traditional knowledge or to treat it as a substitute for scientific forecasting. Some traditional practices may no longer be adequate under changing climatic conditions, rapid urbanisation, population growth and altered land-use patterns. But dismissing community knowledge simply because it is not expressed in scientific terminology would also be a mistake. The objective should be to document, validate and integrate relevant traditional knowledge with meteorological, geological, hydrological, geospatial and administrative information, converting it into what may be called community risk intelligence.
India’s changing climate makes this integration increasingly important. According to IMD, 2024 was India’s warmest year since nationwide records began in 1901, with the annual mean land-surface air temperature 0.65°C above the 1991–2020 long-term average. The year 2025 was the eighth warmest, with temperatures 0.28°C above the long-term average. Such changes are occurring alongside episodes of extreme rainfall, flooding, landslides, heatwaves and other hazards. In this environment, historical community experience remains valuable – but it must be continuously tested against new scientific evidence and changing risk conditions.
The institutional framework for doing this is already emerging. In December 2025, the Government approved a ₹507.37-crore National Project for Strengthening Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction Initiatives in Panchayati Raj Institutions, covering 81 disaster-prone districts across 20 States and developing model Gram Panchayats for hazard-specific risk reduction. The project explicitly seeks to integrate disaster-risk reduction into local governance through a bottom-up approach, strengthen Panchayati Raj Institutions and build the capacity of elected representatives, officials and community volunteers.
This is an important institutional opportunity. Every disaster-prone district could progressively develop a Community Risk Knowledge Register, recording historical disaster events, local flood levels, traditional water-management practices, landslide-prone locations, locally known evacuation routes, vulnerable households, critical community assets and available local response capacities. Such information should not become another report resting on a government shelf. It should feed directly into District Disaster Management Plans, village and ward disaster-management plans, Gram Panchayat Development Plans, land-use planning, infrastructure decisions and climate-adaptation programmes.
Local Risk Intelligence and Response Decisions
The importance of the last mile cannot be overstated. A hydrological model may indicate rising flood risk; a satellite may identify inundation; an automated gauge may record increasing water levels. But a local resident may know which road becomes inaccessible first, where an old embankment is vulnerable, which settlement is isolated during heavy rainfall or which traditional route remains usable for evacuation. These are different forms of knowledge. The objective should not be to decide which is superior, but to ensure that relevant information reaches the decision-maker in time.
India’s SACHET Common Alerting Protocol-based integrated warning system provides a useful technological foundation. It integrates alerts from agencies including IMD, Central Water Commission, Geological Survey of India, INCOIS, Forest Survey of India and other specialised institutions for geo-targeted dissemination. The next logical step is to create structured channels through which validated community observations can also inform local risk intelligence and response decisions.
Women, youth, Panchayats, schools, health centres, self-help groups and community organisations must therefore become active components of local disaster governance. Community participation cannot mean participation only after a disaster. It must begin before risks become disasters – with local hazard mapping, preparedness, drills, early-warning dissemination, identification of vulnerable households and maintenance of evacuation routes and emergency resources.
A Knowledge and Lessons Report
Capacity building is already taking place at scale. During 2025, NDRF reported 716 disaster-management training courses benefiting 25,857 personnel and volunteers, including specialised modules for rural and hilly areas and training related to landslide and Glacial Lake Outburst Flood risks. The opportunity now is to ensure that such capacity building also captures local knowledge and community-specific risk profiles.
Technology can strengthen this bridge. The district disaster dashboard of the future should ideally integrate hazard data, exposure, vulnerability, critical infrastructure, community observations and response capacity rather than displaying isolated weather or hazard information. GIS, satellite imagery, mobile reporting, sensors and artificial intelligence can help verify and analyse community observations. But technology must remain an enabler, not a replacement for human judgement and local experience.
Equally important is institutional memory. Every major disaster should produce not only a damage assessment but also a Knowledge and Lessons Report documenting what communities observed, what warnings reached the ground, what worked, where systems failed and what should change. Every disaster should leave behind stronger institutions, better knowledge and lower future vulnerability.
Connect Knowledge Better
India is already moving from response capacity towards resilience capacity. The Central Government’s disaster-risk financing and mitigation architecture, together with state-level mechanisms, is increasingly supporting preparedness and mitigation alongside response. During 2025–26, for example, the Centre reported releases of ₹16,118 crore to 28 States under the State Disaster Response Fund and ₹2,854.18 crore to 18 states under the National Disaster Response Fund, alongside substantial allocations under state and National Disaster Mitigation Funds.
The next challenge is therefore not simply to invest more in technology or emergency response, but to invest intelligently in knowledge integration and local institutional capacity.
India’s aspiration for a disaster-resilient nation cannot be achieved solely through stronger embankments, better sensors, sophisticated forecasting models or larger response forces. These are essential, but resilience ultimately depends on how effectively knowledge is converted into preparedness and preparedness into timely action.
The most effective disaster-management system will be one in which the satellite and the village volunteer, the meteorologist and the farmer, the geologist and the mountain community, the district administration and the Panchayat are no longer operating in separate knowledge ecosystems.
The bridge between ethnic and traditional knowledge, modern science and institutional capacity must become an integral part of India’s disaster-risk-reduction architecture.
Because the first responder to a disaster is often the community itself – and the first source of resilience may already be living there.
India’s next leap in disaster management should not simply be to predict disasters better. It should be to connect knowledge better, strengthen institutions and act earlier.
Rakesh Kumar Bhatt is a WASH & Disaster Management Professional.
