National Disaster Management Authority (India)
National Disaster Management Authority, abbreviated as NDMA, is an apex Body of Government of India, with a mandate to lay down policies for disaster management. NDMA was established through the Disaster Management Act enacted by the Government of India on 23 December 2005. NDMA is responsible for framing policies, laying down guidelines and best-practices for coordinating with the State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) to ensure a holistic and distributed approach to disaster management. Background. The phrase disaster management is to be understood as a continuous and integrated process of planning, organising, coordinating and implementing  measures, which are necessary or expedient for the prevention of danger or threat of any disaster mitigation or reduction of risk of any disaster or severity of its consequences, capacity building, preparedness to deal with any disaster, prompt response, assessing the severity or magnitude of effects of any disaster, evacuation, rescue, relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction'. Members. It is headed by the Prime Minister of India and can have up to nine other members. Since 2020, there have been five other members. There is a provision to have a Vice Chair-person if needed. Vision. NDMA has a vision to "build  a safer and disaster resilient India by a holistic, pro-active, technology-driven and sustainable development strategy that involves all stakeholders and fosters a culture of prevention, preparedness and mitigation". Functions and responsibilities. NDMA, as the apex body, is mandated to lay down the policies, plans and guidelines for Disaster Management to ensure timely and effective response to disasters. Towards this, it has the following responsibilities: NDMA also equips and trains other Government officials, institutions and the community in mitigation for and response during a crisis situation or a disaster. It works closely with the National Institute of Disaster Management  for capacity building. It develops practices, delivers hands-on training and organizes drills for disaster management. It also equips and trains disaster management cells at the state and local levels. NDMA, under the Ministry of Home Affairs can also be assigned with the responsibility for protection of cyber critical infrastructure. As a result NDMA has overlapping responsibilities with CERT-IN of MeitY and NCIIPC of the NTRO when it comes to securing critical/non-critical infrastructure. Programs. NDMA ( National Disaster Management Authority) runs various programs for mitigation and responsiveness for specific situations. These include the National Cyclone Risk Management Project , School Safety Project, Decision Support System and others. India Disaster Response Summit held on 9 November 2017 held at New Delhi. This Summit was jointly organised by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and social networking site Facebook. India has become the first country to partner with Facebook on disaster response. NDMA guidelines. Following are the guidelines as per NDMA's official website: