Building Resilient Villages: India’s ₹500 Crore Initiative to Embed Disaster Risk Reduction in Gram Panchayat Planning

India has taken a decisive step toward strengthening disaster resilience at the grassroots with the approval of a first-of-its-kind national disaster mitigation programme worth approximately ₹500 crore (about USD 55 million). Approved by a High-Level Committee chaired by the Union Home Minister, the initiative aims to systematically integrate Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) into village-level development planning.

A Landmark Inter-Ministerial Initiative

This programme is notable for being the first inter-ministerial national disaster mitigation effort in the country. It will be jointly implemented by the National Disaster Management Authority and the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, with funding support from the National Disaster Mitigation Fund.

The initiative will cover 1,640 gram panchayats across 20 States, representing around 6 percent of India’s nearly 2.5 lakh gram panchayats. By working directly with local governments, the programme seeks to institutionalise risk-informed decision-making at the village level, where the impacts of disasters are felt most acutely.

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From Standalone Mitigation to Convergent Action

Until now, nearly ₹10,000 crore had been approved for State-level disaster mitigation projects, managed solely by NDMA. While these investments strengthened infrastructure and response systems, they often remained disconnected from broader rural development planning. This new programme signals a strategic shift toward convergence, encouraging formal collaboration with sectoral ministries and State departments so that disaster mitigation becomes an integral part of development, rather than a parallel exercise.

Five Pillars of the Programme

The programme is anchored in five interrelated objectives:

1. Strengthening community-based disaster risk management
   Building village-level capacities so communities are better equipped to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters through community-based disaster risk management approaches.

2. Mainstreaming DRR into Gram Panchayat Development Plans
   Integrating disaster risk considerations into GPDPs to guide local investments in infrastructure, livelihoods, housing, and basic services.

3. Enhancing institutional capacities
   Developing guidelines, protocols, and planning tools that enable State Disaster Management Authorities, District Disaster Management Authorities, and Panchayati Raj Departments to design multi-village and district-level mitigation projects, while promoting convergence of schemes and policies through a DRR framework.

4. Fostering collaboration and community engagement
   Strengthening coordination among local governments, line departments, civil society organisations, and communities to ensure collective ownership of resilience-building efforts.

5. Demonstrating scalable resilience models
   Establishing end-to-end mitigation and resilience models in selected hazard-specific model gram panchayats, creating replicable templates for scale-up across regions.

Why This Matters Beyond Disaster Management

Beyond reducing disaster losses, the programme has the potential to reshape rural governance. Risk-informed planning can influence where roads are built, how water systems are designed, and which livelihoods are promoted. When DRR is embedded in GPDPs, investments are more likely to be durable, inclusive, and cost-effective over the long term.

The initiative also creates an opportunity to align disaster mitigation with climate adaptation, given the increasing frequency and intensity of floods, cyclones, heatwaves, and droughts. By grounding resilience in local institutions and community participation, the programme moves India closer to a development pathway where villages are not just beneficiaries of relief, but active planners of their own resilience.

If the lessons from the 1,640 participating gram panchayats are effectively documented and scaled, this programme could serve as a national blueprint for integrating disaster risk reduction into everyday governance, ensuring that resilience becomes a foundational element of rural development in India.