Aathira Perinchery 
Bengaluru: On Tuesday (March 25), the Rajya Sabha passed the controversial Disaster Management Amendment Bill, 2024. Several sections of society had raised numerous concerns regarding the amendment, including the fear that it gives more power to the Union government in tackling disasters while taking away the power of states.
The Bill also gives more powers to a new authority, the Urban Disaster Management Authority, over the already existing District Disaster Management Authority.
Many members of the house reiterated these concerns during the discussion on the Bill in parliament today, calling it “anti-federal” and asking that it be referred to a joint parliamentary committee before being passed.
However, the question of state governments being stripped of power does not arise at all, claimed Union home minister Amit Shah while responding to concerns in parliament just before the Rajya Sabha passed the amendment, clause by clause.
Activists called the clearing of the Bill by the Rajya Sabha a “terrible development”, as it also ignores issues that citizens have raised about the Bill during these times of changing climate and extreme weather events such as cloudbursts, droughts and floods.
‘Anti-federal’ and more concerns
Shah presented the Bill for consideration in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
Responding to the Bill, Neeraj Dangi, Congress MP for Rajasthan, said that it had several drawbacks. It is an attempt to weaken federalism, local communities and to adapt to climate change, he said.
Its proposed high-level committee comes at the expense of the state government and local bodies, and the huge powers it gives to the National Crisis Management Committee is a “top-down approach” that could delay responses to disasters, he said.
Apart from the Bill leading to one system or authority overlapping with another and shifting blame on each other, it is also an attack on constitutional duties, as it gives undue powers to the Union government over states. It is another effort by the Union government to strip states of their independent and federal powers, Dangi added.
It will also result in BJP-led states getting a bigger share of relief funds for disasters, he said. “Tamil Nadu and Karnataka had to knock on the doors of the Supreme Court for disbursal of relief funds.”
Moreover, under the new Bill, the National Executive Committee will be decided solely by the National Democratic Alliance that is in power now, he added.
Several MPs including Brij Lal (MP for Uttar Pradesh) belonging to the BJP, however, stressed that managing disasters was primarily the responsibility of the Union government, and lauded the Union home minister for developing the Bill.
“This Bill should have undergone pre-legislative consultation and thorough committee scrutiny as it affects the lives, livelihood and security of 1.4 billion of our countrymen,” said the Trinamool Congress’s Ritabrata Banerjee, MP for West Bengal.
Remarking on how a fewer number of Bills are now going for scrutiny and many Bills being hurried through, he also commented on how the Bill fails to learn from the implementation of the Disaster Management Act of 2005 despite 20 years having passed.
As an example, Banerjee said that while the Disaster Management Act establishes several authorities at the Union, state and district levels, the Amendment Bill “seeks to provide statutory status to pre-existing organisations such as the National Crisis Management Committee and the High Level Committee”.
“Additionally, multiple corporations would come under the jurisdiction of the UDMA, the Urban Disaster Management Authority, instead of the District Disaster Management Authority,” he said.
Calling it “anti-federal”, he also pointed out that “excessive centralisation” is one of the major concerns of the Amendment Bill. He raised concerns of the state of West Bengal having received only a fraction of the funds it had asked for after floods that resulted in loss of lives, livestock and property in the state over the past few years.
“In 2022, 25 lakh people were displaced due to climate-induced disasters,” he said, adding that the state received no aid after Cyclone Vyas. “This is a calculated decision to penalise the states run by non-BJP parties.”
Several MPs from Kerala, including A.A. Rahim, also echoed similar sentiments, noting that despite eight months having passed since the landslides that occurred in Chooralmala and nearby areas in Wayanad in Kerala, the Union government had not offered any financial assistance to the state government to rehabilitate people affected by the disaster.
The landslides, which occurred on July 30 last year, claimed the lives of nearly 300 people and left many injured and homeless.
Coordination among the new authorities proposed by the Bill and resource allocation among the various levels of the government would be challenges, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP from Tamil Nadu R. Girirajan said, adding that the Bill does nothing to “revitalise” local urban bodies and destroys the concept of cooperative federalism.
“The legislation is continuously untenable as it lacks clarity on various pertinent issues,” he said, calling for disaster relief to be a legal right. “It will only weaken the executive committees related to disaster management.”
He called for the withdrawal of the Bill.
Several MPs, including Banerjee, asked that the Bill be examined by a joint parliamentary committee for reasons including that this would allow for more public consultation.
‘Proactive’ vs ‘reactive’
Responding to the concerns, Shah said that the federal structure will not be affected in any way by the proposed Bill.
“The question of centralising state powers doesn’t even arise,” he said, on the floor of the house.
The aim of the Bill is to connect not just the Union and state governments, but every citizen and panchayat too, Shah said; the fight is against disasters and against a “reactive” approach to disasters, and the Bills aims at adopting not just a “proactive approach” but an innovative and participatory approach.
The government wants to move from manual monitoring to AI-driven real-time monitoring; from radio alerts to alerts via social media, apps and mobiles; and move from a government-led response to a multi-dimensional response that also includes citizens, Shah said. States need to be empowered but also made responsible in the fight against disasters, Shah claimed.
“We have done both in this Bill,” he said. “We have to protect water, air and the environment and think about global warming.”
The Bill he has proposed is an example of adopting the latest “best practices” and technology into the system, Shah said. Many have asked why there was a need to bring in such an amendment at all, but with changing times, laws need to be changed too as experiences of new disasters also come up, he said.
Due to climate change, the “size and scale” of disasters is also changing, Shah added, and therefore, to tackle these, we will need new systems. Moreover, over the last decade, India has become a big power that needs to take into account the latest developments in technology when it comes to disasters, he said.
Shah claimed that the Union government has already approached all stakeholders as well as departments under the Union government, state governments and Union territories and even taken the advice of international organisations; the Bill reflects all this, he added.
Following Shah’s address in parliament, deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha Harivansh went through the Bill clause-by-clause and finally passed the Bill in the house.
An ‘eyewash’ and a disaster
The passage of the Bill in the Rajya Sabha is “a terrible development”, commented advocate Lara Jesani, national secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, who has also campaigned against the Bill.
Several environmental activists, civil society organisations and groups representing disaster-affected communities had opposed the Bill, and clearly the citizens’ objections have been overlooked, she told The Wire.
“The Bill is completely flawed, it required a thorough review and consultation with stakeholders. Why have those who have been facing the brunt of disasters had no say in the framing of the policy, at a time when our country is literally in the eye of the storm?” she asked.
“This is an opportunity lost to decentralise powers, funds and control over provisions to deal with disasters, which was desperately needed at the state and local level where these disasters take place,” Jesani told The Wire.
“From the impact of killer heat waves to loss of livelihoods due to slow-onset events, there are urgent issues that are affecting people that needed to be addressed in the policy. Loan relief and recognition of the right to compensation have been diluted at a time when people need it the most. It is unfortunate that such a problematic amendment was allowed to pass and instead an eyewash was presented in the parliament today.”
A statement by several citizens and environmental and civil society groups had raised alarm over several changes brought about by the Bill, including the deletion of a clause in the existing Disaster Management Act of 2005 that empowered the National Disaster Management Authority to grant loan relief to disaster-affected people, and the replacement of the word “compensation” with “relief”, which would ensure that affected individuals would not receive financial aid after experiencing disasters.