ABSTRACT
Resilient cities have the physical, social, institutional, and economic capacity to withstand and absorb the impacts of disasters and climate change. Cities in India, despite evolving as the engines of economic growth for the nation, are still grappling with urban issues like inadequacy of basic services like electricity, infrastructure deficit, futile urban planning process and unchecked organic growth of the cities. In India, the policies guiding the urban development generally do not take into account the ideology to make cities resilient to disaster risks, since the prime focus of the development is still on meeting basic physical infrastructure requirements like transport, housing, services and health infrastructure amidst the rapid urbanization. India accounts for 24 per cent of the deaths due to disasters in Asia, on account of its size of the vulnerable population and the developmental planning with negligence on the resilience front (Ministry of Finance, n.d.). This paper presents the existing institutional structure in place at different levels of administration and the status of key emergency infrastructure linked the disaster management in India. It identifies the key areas of concerns associated with the existing framework in the country and put forth suggestions to improve upon the present state of concerned disaster management mechanism.
