The document summarizes India's legal and institutional framework for drought management as well as its policies and programs. The central government facilitates while state governments are primarily responsible for drought management. The National Disaster Management Authority was established in 2005 as the apex body. Subordinate authorities were also formed at the state and district levels. Key policies and programs introduced include the 2009 National Policy on Disaster Management, employment guarantees, disaster relief funds, a shift to prevention and preparedness, and drought-proofing measures.

2. Legal and Institutional Framework
While the central government plays the role of a facilitator, the primary
responsibility of managing drought (or any other natural calamity) is
that of the respective State government. With the enactment of the
Disaster Management Act in 2005, the National Disaster
Management Authority (NDMA) was set up as the apex body for
Disaster Management in India, with the Prime Minister as its
Chairman. Further, Disaster Management Authorities at the State and
District Levels are headed by the Chief Ministers and
Collectors/Zilla Parishad Chairmen respectively.

3. Policies and Programmes
In 2009, India launched its National
Policy on Disaster Management.

4. To mitigate the adverse impacts of
drought and build resilience of people
by encouraging efficient water
management practices, ensuring
livelihoods, ensuring economic
access to food and supplying fodder.

5. Very important buffer is the National
Rural Employment Guarantee
(NREG) Act, which provides 100
days of employment for at least one
member in each household.

6. The National Disaster Response Fund
(NDRF) and State Disaster Response
Fund (SDRF),constituted under 2005
Disaster Management Act, provide
immediate drought relief to the
affected people.

7. Since 2005, there has been a paradigm
shift from the erstwhile relief-centric
response to a proactive prevention,
mitigation and preparedness-driven
approach for conserving developmental
gains and also to minimise loss of life,
livelihood and property (GoI 2010).

8. Drought adaptation measures that have expanded
farmers' traditional focus on the 'kharif' (summer
crop), which relied on the monsoon rains, to
include the 'rabi', or the winter crop, as well.

10. According to Aditi Mukherji, an IWMI
scientist and co-author of “Revitalizing
Asia’s Irrigation,” the adverse impact of
drought is felt mostly in areas that are not
irrigated, followed by those that depend
exclusively on public canal irrigation
systems, and the least in areas using
groundwater irrigated systems, “because
groundwater isn’t immediately affected by
low rainfall.”

11. But there’s a paradoxical problem in
what Mukherji calls “the mismatch of
groundwater resource conditions and
groundwater policies.”

12. Regardless of budgets, there
seem to be no quick or easy
fixes.
Some subsidies are
counterproductive.

13. Agricultural production has grown, so have
costs. Today the cost of cultivating (sowing to
harvesting) a single hectare of…rain-fed land
is 30,000 rupees (600 dollars) and up to 42,000
rupees (840 dollars) for a hectare of irrigated
land," Saroj Mohanty, core committee member
of the Farmers' Federation of Western Odisha,

14. The state government's disaster
compensation remains ludicrously
low – 2,000 rupees (40 dollars)
for a rain-fed hectare and 4,000
rupees (80 dollars) for an irrigated
one.

15. What is still more unjust is that a
farmer may own more farmland but
compensation is paid for no more
than a hectare per farmer. And while
the individual farmer pays the
insurance premium, the compensation
is calculated on total land damaged in
a panchayat.

16. Tenant farmers are not eligible for
insurance compensation because land
tenancy is not legal in Odisha. Thus
most landless rural peasants and
marginal farmers are the worst hit by
drought.

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