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Odisha is, by immoderate measure, 1 of India’s astir disaster-prone States. Its 574.7-kilometre coastline has absorbed immoderate of the astir almighty cyclones to marque landfall connected the subcontinent. Over 2 decades, done concern successful aboriginal informing systems, cyclone shelters, and wide evacuations, the State has reduced cyclone mortality to adjacent zero. It is, therefore, not simply paradoxical but troubling that the 16th Finance Commission has awarded Odisha the azygous largest simplification successful catastrophe backing stock among each 28 States, a diminution of 1.57 percent points comparative to the 15th Finance Commission’s allocation.
How does a State with the highest hazard people successful the country, and the deepest investments successful preparedness, extremity up losing the most? The reply lies successful a structural occupation successful the Finance Commission’s allocation formula.
The revised look and its rationale
The 16th Finance Commission has allocated ₹2,04,401 crore to State Disaster Response Funds (SDRF), a 59.5% summation implicit its predecessor. The Commission adopted a multiplicative Disaster Risk Index (DRI = Hazard X Exposure X Vulnerability), drafting connected the theoretical framework. This is simply a departure from the additive attack of the 15th Finance Commission, which treated hazard and vulnerability arsenic substitutes alternatively than complements. Risk arises lone erstwhile hazard intersects with exposed and susceptible populations. A almighty cyclone striking an uninhabited coastline is simply a earthy event, not a disaster. The logic is correct. The operationalisation is not.
The archetypal occupation lies successful the measurement of ‘Exposure’. The Commission uses the full colonisation of each State, scaled linearly betwixt 1 and 25, arsenic its vulnerability metric. Uttar Pradesh receives 25 and Sikkim receives 1. This is administratively convenient but scientifically indefensible. Exposure, per the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel connected Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report, is the beingness of radical successful places that could beryllium adversely affected by hazards, not simply the fig of radical wrong a governmental boundary. A State with 10 crore radical connected a hazard-safe inland plateau has little vulnerability than a State with 3 crore radical settled wholly on a cyclone-prone coastline. Total colonisation and hazard-zone colonisation are not the aforesaid variable.
The applicable consequences are stark. Odisha’s hazard people of 12 is the highest successful the country. But due to the fact that its colonisation people is lone 5, its computed DRI of 79.8 is overshadowed by Bihar’s 224.2 and Uttar Pradesh’s 413.2, 2 States with little hazard scores. The multiplicative formula, successful practice, rewards demographic size. A State tin look the astir aggravated hazard successful India and inactive suffer backing due to the fact that it is not populous. This is precisely the result that a risk-based allocation model was designed to prevent.
The 2nd occupation compounds the first. Vulnerability is measured done each State’s mean per capita Net State Domestic Product (NSDP), inverted truthful that poorer States people higher. The intuition is wide — poorer States person less fiscal resources to sorb catastrophe shocks. But the NSDP measures fiscal capacity, not catastrophe vulnerability. Vulnerability is multidimensional, encompassing lodging quality, wellness infrastructure successful hazard zones, aboriginal informing reach, and the stock of colonisation successful structurally unsafe dwellings. Average per capita income conceals tremendous intra-state inequality.
In 2018, Kerala suffered its worst flooding successful a century, causing estimated damages of ₹31,000 crore. Yet, the look assigns Kerala a vulnerability people of conscionable 1.073, adjacent the minimum, due to the fact that its per capita income is comparatively high. Combined with a colonisation people of 4, Kerala’s DRI, of 34.5, is little than galore States with negligible catastrophe history. Jharkhand, with the second-highest vulnerability people reflecting genuine poorness and tribal fragility, inactive loses 0.78 percent points of backing stock due to the fact that its colonisation people cannot compensate successful the multiplicative framework. Twenty States successful full person mislaid comparative share. The communal thread is not that they are safer; it is that they are smaller, wealthier connected average, oregon both.
What needs to change
Exposure should beryllium measured arsenic the fig of radical surviving wrong defined hazard zones, flood plains, cyclone-prone coastal belts, earthquake-susceptible zones, utilizing the Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC) Vulnerability Atlas cross-referenced with Census enumeration artifact data. Vulnerability should beryllium reconstituted arsenic a composite scale incorporating the stock of kutcha housing, cultivation labour dependence, wellness infrastructure density successful high-hazard districts, harvest security penetration, and aboriginal informing effectiveness. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) database, National Health Mission (NHM) installation surveys, and India Meteorological Department (IMD) monitoring records collectively supply that information. The Finance Commission should mandate the National Disaster Management Authority to people an yearly State Disaster Vulnerability Index arsenic the authoritative input for each consequent grant period, institutionalising the methodology and ending contested metrics astatine each Commission.
India cannot spend to get catastrophe concern wrong. Climate projections bespeak intensifying cyclone frequencies on some coastlines, expanding drought belts crossed peninsular and cardinal India, and escalating utmost rainfall successful already-stretched States. The States astir apt to look the sharpest summation successful catastrophe frequence — Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Assam — are precisely those the existent look underserves. A look that measures full colonisation alternatively than the exposed colonisation is not a hazard index. It is simply a headcount.
Aswathy Rachel Varughese is Assistant Professor, Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
