India's New Era of Disaster Management: Progress and Pitfalls

India has faced the numerous devastating natural and man - made catastrophes during the last four decades which was resulting in significant loss of life, resources, property, and trauma. Until 2005, India had no system or policy for disaster management, and there was no structure for prevention of disaster. After the Tsunami in 2004, the Policymakers recognized the need for a formalized disaster management strategy. In the wake of these persuasions, Indian Parliament had enacted the Disaster Management Act in 2005 to provide for the legal framework in related to management of disasters in order to make the country disaster free. The Act does not appear to put enough emphasis on proactive steps to reduce disaster risk but making it seem Reactive. Besides, there are no clear accountability procedures in place and also the Climate Change which may result an urgent revision of the Act which is imperative to establish a more robust and effective disaster management in India is need of an hour. Recently, the Government of India, introduced The Disaster Management (Amendment) Bill 2024 in the Parliament. The Major concerns in disaster management Amendment bill is, the newly climate Induced Disasters like heatwave are not added in the definition of the disaster. The amendment bill, made changes in the usage of the National Response Fund and delay in allocating them to the states which makes the excess of centralization even though the Disaster management is not directly present in the Schedule 7 of concurrent list in the Indian Constitution. The new approach of Government of India proceeds from the conviction that development cannot be sustainable unless disaster management is built in to the development process from ground level like district and State level. This research paper discusses about the disaster management act in India vis - ? - vis the change in approach over the Disaster Management (Amendment) Bill, 2024.