Emergency Response Mechanism for Acute Drought

In the last 26 years there has been no year without some State or the other suffering moderate to severe drought. The years 1979, 1987 and 2002 saw large parts of the country under spell of severe droughts. These major crises were handled successfully with the Central Government playing a pro-active role in their management. Management of the crisis precipitated by severe droughts has, therefore, become well defined with standard operating procedures and mechanisms having been adopted by the States and Centre. This set of operating procedures and strategies has enabled the country to repeatedly over-come the challenge of drought in a manner that has been recognized internationally and show-cased by the FAO. An attempt has been made here to document the time-tested and suitably adapted management practices of the Government of India.

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