A proactive approach

PM Narendra Modi initiated the National Disaster Management Plan last year

With reference to Vinayak Chaterjee’s article, “Making infrastructure disaster resilient” (July 25), it is a welcome decision by the United Nations to name the framework for disaster risk reduction after a Japanese city, Sendai. Japan has faced all types of natural disasters and because of the amazing resilience of the Japanese they have emerged out of those crises at the earliest.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated the National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP) last year. The efficiency of the National Disaster Management Authority, which has been in existence for the last 12 years, is nothing to write home about. With NDMP every disaster will be handled by a separate ministry. So, accountability would be taken care of. 

The article rightly says that proper maintenance, building the right infrastructure the first time and preparing first responders well are critical points. That the corpus would be created from infrastructure spending by both the government and private players and used as and when required are advantages. 

The whole approach sounds good as it is proactive rather than reactive where the focus is on minimising loss of life and property and it sometimes takes months to restore amenities. 

Bal Govind   Noida

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