15th Finance Commission: Beyond Disaster Response
India has suffered a huge loss as the average annual loss due to disaster is the US $9.8 billion in the last 20 years. Disaster Recovery in India is a big challenge. In the absence of resources in most of the disasters, long term recovery has not attempted. Super Cyclone Orissa 1999, Gujarat Earthquake 2001, Tsunami 2004, Kashmir earthquake 2005, Bihar flood 2008 are few exceptions. All these were supported by the World Bank and ADB. 15th Finance commission, for the first time, has allocated the budget for ex-ante risk reduction. It is certainly going to give new impetus in reducing disaster risk and economic losses but might not be very substantial.