GS Paper 3
Syllabus: Disaster Management
Source: TH
Context: The Indian Union government is reluctant to declare lightning a natural disaster, as it believes that deaths caused by lightning can be prevented through awareness of safety measures.
- India currently has an early warning system for lightning, providing forecasts from five days to up to three hours in advance.
Some states like Bihar and West Bengal have been urging the government to classify lightning deaths as natural disasters. If declared, victims would be eligible for compensation from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF), with the central government contributing 75% to the fund.
Status of death due to lightning: According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), lightning strikes caused 2,880 deaths in 2021, accounting for 40% of all accidental deaths caused by natural forces.
What is a Disaster?
A disaster is a result of natural or man-made causes that leads to sudden disruption of normal life, causing severe damage to life and property to an extent that available social and economic protection mechanisms are inadequate to cope.
In India, the criteria for declaring a disaster as a natural disaster are typically based on the guidelines provided by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
Criteria for Declaring a Natural Disaster in India:
| Description | |
| Non-Anthropogenic | The disaster should not be primarily caused by human activities or interventions and should result from natural phenomena beyond human control. |
| Impact | The disaster should cause significant damage, loss of life, or disruption to the environment, infrastructure, or socio-economic activities, requiring specialized response and recovery measures. |
| Verification | The occurrence and impact of the disaster should be verified and confirmed by relevant government authorities, scientific institutions, or disaster management agencies. |
| Recognition | The disaster should be recognized as a natural disaster by the concerned state or central government authorities responsible for disaster management. |
About Lightening:
- It is a very rapid and massive discharge of electricity into the atmosphere.It is the process of occurrence of a natural ‘electrical discharge of very short duration and high voltage between a cloud and the ground or within a cloud’, accompanied by a bright flash and sound, and sometimes thunderstorms.
| Impacts of Lightning | Description |
| Human Casualties | Between 1972 and 2019, around 90,632 people were killed due to lightning strikes.
Lightning is the biggest contributor to accidental deaths due to natural causes. |
| Agriculture Sector | Frequent lightning strikes adversely impact small and marginal farmers. Around 77 per cent of farmers are killed due to lightning as they work in agricultural fields during the Kharif cropping season in the monsoon period. |
| Rural Areas | Mainly, rural and forest areas are the most vulnerable due to lightning because of the presence of water bodies and tall trees, with almost 96 per cent of deaths occurring in rural areas compared to urban areas. Regarding deaths due to lightning, the population in rural areas is more vulnerable than in urban areas. |
| Tribal Population | The Annual Lightning Report 2020-2021 confirms that 60-70 per cent of deaths occurred in tribal populations due to lightning in Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, and other states. |
| Other Sectors | Lightning also adversely impacts the aviation, power, and communication sectors. |
Insta Links:
