On 15 August 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unusually direct observation: India’s older civil-defence arrangements had become outdated. He called for a modern volunteer network able to respond to contemporary risks, including threats to refineries, banking systems, data centres and other critical infrastructure.
That was more than a passing line. It acknowledged both progress and vulnerability. India has expanded disaster institutions, but rising urban density, digital dependence, extreme weather and cascading infrastructure risks have made civilian protection more complex.
The central question is therefore not whether India possesses more institutions than it did in 2014. It plainly does. The real question is whether those institutions form a reliable chain from national warning to local action.
The evidence supports a balanced conclusion. India’s national architecture is stronger, early warning has improved and specialist response capacity is broader. Yet statutory civil-defence staffing remains well below its stated target, urban fire capability is uneven, volunteer programmes are not one interchangeable pool, and public reporting still concentrates more on inputs than tested outcomes.
What readiness should mean
Civil defence is sometimes used as a loose synonym for disaster management. The statutory purposes overlap, but the organisations are not interchangeable. Section 2(a) of the Civil Defence Act, 1968 covers non-combat protection against hostile attack and measures to reduce its effects. Since the Civil Defence (Amendment) Act, 2009 (Act 3 of 2010), it also includes disaster-management measures before, during, at or after a disaster. Disaster management institutions, fire services, health systems, local authorities, police, the armed forces and community volunteers overlap with that structure, but they do not all belong to the same cadre or chain of command.
That distinction matters because India’s statutory network is still limited. The Directorate General Fire Services, Civil Defence and Home Guards website describes Civil Defence activity as restricted to 259 categorised towns. The Ministry of Home Affairs’ Annual Report 2024–25 separately records 295 notified Civil Defence districts/towns. These are different published coverage descriptions, and neither count establishes operational readiness in every locality. The same annual report records a national target of about 14.11 lakh volunteers, with roughly 5.38 lakh raised. The directorate’s stated ambition is to build a presence across all districts and reach one crore volunteers over seven years.
Sources: the Directorate General’s “Civil Defence” page, coverage paragraph and “Organisation” section; and Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report 2024–25, paragraphs 9.75 and 9.78, printed page 224 (PDF page 230). The website’s 259 categorised towns and the annual report’s 295 notified districts/towns are retained with their respective source labels. Volunteers “raised” are not a verified count of currently deployable, recently trained personnel.
Numbers alone will not create readiness. A credible expansion needs mapped roles, recurring training, equipment, insurance, local command arrangements and public reporting on who completed training, who remains available and when units last exercised. The centrally approved training programme for Civil Defence volunteers is a necessary step; its value should be judged through transparent completion and refresher-training data rather than the announcement of an allocation.
A stronger national architecture
Compared with 2014, India now has a more mature institutional base. The National Disaster Management Authority sets national policy and guidance. State and district authorities translate that framework into plans. The National Disaster Response Force provides specialist response capacity. The National Disaster Management Plan has widened the emphasis from relief after an event to prevention, mitigation, preparedness and recovery.
The Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025 further formalised parts of this architecture. Section 41A permits state governments to constitute urban disaster-management authorities for their state capitals and municipal-corporation cities, with Delhi and Chandigarh expressly excluded from that provision. This is an enabling legal framework, not proof that every eligible city has established an authority. That can improve responsibility in dense urban areas, but statutory architecture is not the same as field capability. The practical test is whether municipal fire, health, engineering, transport and communications teams train together, share a common operating picture and can function when normal systems fail.
Legal source: Disaster Management Act, 2005, as amended by Act 10 of 2025, section 41A(1), inserted by amendment section 23 and effective from 9 April 2025; consolidated Act page 27. The provision allows a state notification and expressly excludes the National Capital Territory of Delhi and the Union territory of Chandigarh.
India has also moved toward all-hazard warning. The SACHET platform disseminates official alerts from authorised agencies across locations and languages. Mission Mausam is intended to strengthen observations, forecasting and weather services. These are important public goods. Their success, however, depends on the last mile: whether an alert reaches the right person, in a form that can be understood, with enough time and a realistic action to take.
More money—and a clearer financing framework
Disaster finance has become more structured since 2014. The Fifteenth Finance Commission period created separate windows for response, mitigation and capacity building. India’s current relief framework also recognises hazards beyond the older list of cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, fires, floods, tsunamis, hailstorms, landslides, avalanches, cloudbursts, pest attacks, frost and cold waves. Heatwaves and lightning are among the hazards now covered for notified relief assistance through the State Disaster Response Fund framework.
This correction is significant. Heat stress and lightning produce recurring mortality, yet they are often treated as seasonal inevitabilities rather than manageable risks. Financing eligibility should now be matched by measurable prevention: ward-level heat plans, cool-roof and shade programmes, drinking-water continuity, occupational protections, lightning-safe shelters and public warnings that reach outdoor workers.
Fire services remain a major urban weakness. The scheme for expansion and modernisation of fire services in the states was announced at the 13 June 2023 meeting of disaster-management ministers and formally launched on 4 July 2023. The chronology matters because announcement and launch are different milestones. More important is delivery: vehicles, breathing apparatus, communications, training, staffing, access to high-rise buildings and safe water supply must be measured city by city.
Response forces are stronger, but capacity must be described precisely
The NDRF’s footprint has expanded. An official January 2025 account listed 16 battalions, 28 Regional Response Centres, 24 Tactical Pre-positioning Locations and a sanctioned strength of 18,556. A March 2026 parliamentary committee report used a slightly different authorised strength of 18,581 and recorded 14,837 personnel in position—a gap of 3,744.
These figures should not be merged as though “sanctioned”, “authorised” and “posted” mean the same thing. The first two describe approved establishment under different official reporting frames; the third describes personnel actually in place. For readiness, all three matter. A national force can have an impressive geographic footprint and still face stress if specialist teams, logistics or regional units are below establishment.
NDRF is also only one layer. Most emergencies are first handled by local fire personnel, police, health workers, municipal teams and nearby volunteers. National surge capacity is essential, but it cannot compensate for weak local response during the first critical minutes.
Warning systems show real outcome gains
One of the clearest areas of progress is cyclone warning and evacuation. The India Meteorological Department reports that fatalities for any landfalling cyclone have remained below 100 since 2010, and recent official assessments cite zero deaths from Cyclone Biparjoy in Gujarat and Cyclone Dana in Odisha, alongside low but non-zero tolls in other cyclones. Better forecasts, earlier warnings, evacuation and pre-positioning have helped reduce loss of life.
This is meaningful outcome evidence, not merely an inventory of satellites or control rooms. But the claim must remain narrow. Cyclone performance does not prove equivalent readiness for earthquakes, industrial accidents, heatwaves, urban fires or cyber-physical disruption. Each hazard has different warning times, responsibilities and failure modes.
The next step is consistent public reporting across hazards: warning lead time, population reached, evacuation compliance, response time, continuity of essential services, injuries, deaths and lessons closed after exercises or real events. Without comparable outcome data, it is too easy to mistake activity for preparedness.
Volunteer programmes must remain distinct
India is building several volunteer pathways, but their names and legal identities should not be collapsed.
- Statutory Civil Defence volunteers are raised within the Civil Defence framework and organised for civil-protection duties under that system.
- Aapda Mitra is an NDMA community first-responder programme. The upscaled scheme trained one lakh volunteers across 350 multi-hazard-prone districts.
- Yuva Aapda Mitra is a separate youth-focused scheme drawing from organisations including the NCC, NSS, Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan and Bharat Scouts and Guides. It was designed to train about 2.37 lakh volunteers in 315 districts; an official parliamentary reply recorded 40,739 trained by March 2026.
All three can strengthen community resilience, but they need interoperable protocols rather than a blurred identity. A district incident commander should know who is trained for first aid, light search and rescue, shelter management, communications, traffic support or civil-defence duties; which credentials are current; and how volunteers are insured, equipped and mobilised.
Critical infrastructure now requires physical and cyber continuity
Modern civil defence cannot stop at shelters, sirens and rescue equipment. Banking, power, telecoms, transport, hospitals, water systems, refineries and data centres depend on digital systems. A physical incident can cause a cyber failure, and a cyber incident can disable physical services.
India already divides national cyber responsibilities. CERT-In is the national agency for cyber-incident response under section 70B of the Information Technology Act, issuing alerts and advisories and coordinating response and recovery. The National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre operates under section 70A with responsibility for protecting critical information infrastructure and coordinating with relevant agencies, including CERT-In.
The practical implication is a recommendation: exercises for essential services should test physical and cyber continuity together. A hospital drill should include loss of networked records; a power exercise should include communications failure; a refinery exercise should test both site evacuation and compromised control systems. Separate technical mandates should converge in a common continuity scenario without confusing institutional responsibilities.
Exercises are becoming broader; evaluation must become deeper
Large exercises are useful because they expose coordination problems before a real emergency. Operation Abhyaas in May 2025 tested civil-defence preparedness across hundreds of districts. PIB’s August 2025 explainer records Exercise Suraksha Chakra from 1 August 2025 at 55 locations across 18 districts in Delhi-NCR: 11 in Delhi, five in Haryana and two in Uttar Pradesh.
Suraksha Chakra brought together NDMA, the Indian Army, district and state authorities, NDRF, fire, police, health, transport and other responders around earthquake and chemical-hazard scenarios. Its value lies less in scale than in what followed: whether observations became assigned corrective actions, whether those actions were closed and whether a later no-notice exercise confirmed improvement.
An international comparison can sharpen that question without claiming equivalence. Taiwan’s 2025 Urban Resilience Exercise integrated air-defence, mobilisation and critical-infrastructure protection drills. It used live personnel and materials, public-transport and commercial settings, relief and first-aid stations, and central-local as well as public-private coordination. India’s legal framework, population and risk profile are different, but the useful lesson is methodological: exercises should validate continuity of daily life and essential services, not merely display participating agencies.
A practical capability scorecard
| Capability | Progress since 2014 | Remaining test |
|---|---|---|
| National institutions | Broader statutory and planning architecture | Clear urban accountability and centre-state-local coordination |
| Specialist response | Wider NDRF footprint and pre-positioning | Close posted-strength and specialist-capability gaps |
| Warnings | Better cyclone forecasting and multi-agency alerting | Prove last-mile reach and action across hazards |
| Disaster finance | Separate response, mitigation and capacity-building windows | Publish city- and district-level delivery and outcomes |
| Community capacity | Expanded volunteer programmes | Distinct credentials, recurrent training and interoperable mobilisation |
| Critical infrastructure | Defined cyber-response and CII-protection institutions | Joint physical-cyber continuity exercises with closed findings |
| Exercises | Larger multi-agency and multi-state scenarios | Independent evaluation, action owners and retesting |
Six priorities for the next phase
1. Build a verified national volunteer register
India should be able to see trained capacity district by district without erasing programme identity. A secure register should show role, last training date, language, equipment, insurance and availability for statutory Civil Defence, Aapda Mitra and Yuva Aapda Mitra volunteers.
2. Publish outcome indicators, not only expenditure
Annual reporting should connect funding to readiness: fire-response time, alert delivery, volunteer recertification, exercise findings closed, essential-service restoration and mortality or injury trends by hazard.
3. Make urban continuity a municipal responsibility
Every large city should maintain an integrated plan for hospitals, water, power, transport, shelters, fire cover, public communications and continuity of government, with named alternates when primary facilities fail.
4. Exercise cyber and physical failure together
Critical-infrastructure exercises should include concurrent disruption of communications, operational technology, public information and logistics. CERT-In and NCIIPC roles should remain legally distinct while their relevant stakeholders test a shared scenario.
5. Retest after every major exercise
A drill is complete only when findings have owners, deadlines and evidence of closure. A later unannounced or minimally announced exercise should verify that the correction works under pressure.
6. Treat citizens as participants, not spectators
Preparedness improves when households know their nearest safe location, emergency contacts, basic first aid, safe evacuation route and how to recognise an authentic alert. Public education should be accessible to children, older people and persons with disabilities.
From national capacity to neighbourhood readiness
The strongest conclusion from the post-2014 record is that India has moved beyond a relief-only model. It has more specialised institutions, better forecasting, larger exercises, stronger financing tools and a broader volunteer base. Those gains are real.
The unfinished work is also clear. Statutory Civil Defence remains below its target strength and limited in geographic reach. Local fire and municipal capacity are uneven. Volunteer systems require recurrent training and distinct credentials. Cyber and physical continuity are still too often planned in separate rooms. Exercise scale is easier to publicise than corrective-action closure.
This is where Project SURAKSHA fits. It is my policy proposal—not a Government of India programme—for a common readiness framework that connects national standards with local capability mapping, interoperable volunteer credentials, accessible public guidance and transparent outcome reporting.
India does not need to choose between strong national institutions and empowered local communities. Civil defence works only when both reinforce each other. The real measure of preparedness is not how many bodies exist on paper, but whether a warning becomes action, whether essential services continue and whether help reaches people before a crisis becomes a catastrophe.
Revision note: This article was substantially updated on 29 September 2026 to incorporate official Civil Defence figures, distinguish volunteer programmes, correct fire-scheme and exercise details, clarify NDRF strength measures, expand critical-infrastructure and cyber coverage, and add outcome and comparative evidence. Correction on 7 October 2026: The statutory-scope paragraph was corrected to include disaster-management measures under section 2(a), as expanded by Act 3 of 2010. Further corrections on 7 October 2026 distinguish the Directorate General’s categorised towns from MHA’s notified districts/towns, clarify the enabling scope of section 41A, and correct the Suraksha Chakra drill’s 55-location Delhi-NCR coverage. Exact primary-source locators were added for the coverage and legal provisions.
