(a) In past two decades India's public policy on Disaster Management has shifted its focus from rescue, relief and rehabilitation…

(a) From relief to holistic disaster management

Disaster administration once rested on colonial Famine Codes and post-calamity relief financed through the Calamity Relief Fund, treating hazards as episodic events. The Odisha super cyclone (1999), the Gujarat earthquake (2001) and the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004), together with the J.C. Pant High Powered Committee (1999), drove a shift to a proactive, multi-hazard cycle of prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and 'build-back-better' recovery.

The Disaster Management Act, 2005 was the pivot. It created the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) under the Prime Minister, State Disaster Management Authorities and District Disaster Management Authorities headed by Collectors. The National Disaster Response Force (raised from 2006) provides specialised response and the National Institute of Disaster Management builds capacity. India aligned policy with the Sendai Framework (2015-30) through the National Disaster Management Plan (2016, revised 2019), the 15th Finance Commission's separate mitigation funds alongside response funds, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (2019) and the Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025, which added disaster databases and urban disaster management authorities. Early-warning-led evacuations in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh have sharply cut cyclone deaths.

Friction remains: weak capacity at district level and uneven Centre-State financing often push planning back towards relief.

(b) The 'well-entrenched state' and the post-reform promise

The 1991 reforms promised market efficiency, deregulation and an administrative retreat. Their realisation was conditioned by a 'well-entrenched state', which, as Rob Jenkins (1999) argued, led governments to pursue 'reform by stealth', since the inherited apparatus of licensing, inspection and procedural control, and a large redistributive mandate, resisted change.

Reforms thus yielded partial liberalisation. State dominance persisted in banking, energy and transport, and regulatory bodies were prone to capture. Reforms did expand fiscal capacity for safety nets and infrastructure, but administrative centralism and procedural rigidity continue to impose high transaction costs on private enterprise. Lant Pritchett's description of India as a 'flailing state' (2009), with a capable head but weak limbs, captures how reform intent is diluted at the cutting edge. Later steps such as GST, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (2016), the four labour codes (in force from November 2025) and decriminalisation under the Jan Vishwas Act (2023) show that the entrenched state can be reformed, though slowly.

(c) Neutrality and anonymity of the civil service

I agree in part: the two traits are under strain but not lost. Neutrality is strained by arbitrary transfers, political clientelism, attractive post-retirement appointments and pressure for a 'committed bureaucracy', a debate reopened when the Centre in July 2024 lifted its 1966 bar on government employees joining RSS activities. Anonymity is eroded by officers' official social-media self-branding, which substitutes personal profiling for institutional accountability.

Safeguards persist: Article 311 protects tenure, and in T.S.R. Subramanian v. Union of India (2013) the Supreme Court directed Civil Services Boards and fixed tenures and required written recording of oral instructions. The Hota Committee (2004) and the Second ARC's tenth report (2008) urged statutory ethics codes and independent appointment mechanisms. Most officers still serve governments of different parties professionally, so the safeguards need to be strengthened and enforced.