K Srinivasan
ON March 28, Myanmar was struck by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake. Within hours, India launched ‘Operation Brahma’, perhaps the first country to arrive at the devastation zone within hours of the incident. An NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) team with specialised equipment and personnel for search and rescue operations was the key element of this largescale humanitarian effort providing search and rescue, disaster relief, and medical assistance to the traumatised locals.
Apart from the search and rescue (SAR) operations, humanitarian aid, relief material and medical support and medicines, Operation Brahma or an NDRF mission has one core value: move at one of the first responders, travel with doctors, medicines and equipment for a makeshift hospital. Apart from all this, this is what India did for Myanmar: w Multiple tranches of relief material, including tents, blankets, essential medicines, food, and other supplies via aircraft and naval ships. w The Indian Army established a field hospital in Mandalay, with a 200-bed capacity, offering surgical and in-patient care.
w Indian Navy ships, including INS Satpura, INS Savitri, INS Karmuk, and LCU 52, sailed to Yangon to deliver relief material and medical supplies. w Indian Air Force C-130J and C-17 aircraft were used to transport relief material, NDRF personnel, and medical teams. The entire Indian effort was a Government initiative that involved the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Headquarters of the Integrated Defence Staff, Indian Army, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, and NDRF. Interestingly, India never quantifies the aid it despatches or the support it provides at times of such crisis, unlike most other countries.
No quantification
While China has quantified the aid it has despatched to Myanmar, India has maintained that it does not believe in putting a monetary value to the humanitarian aid it extends to countries in times of crisis. It was the same copybook that India followed when Turkey and Syria faced a calamitous earthquake in 2023.
The same year, the Government increased the NDRF strength from 12 to 16 battalions. As a Ministry of Home Affairs explained in a news release at that time, ’these battalions are strategically located as per vulnerability profile of the country to provide immediate response during disasters or threatening disaster situations.’’ Earlier in 2018, an NDRF Academy was set up in Nagpur for both refresher courses and continuous upgradation of skills. The total budget of the SDRFs (State Disaster Relief Fund) and NDRF for disaster relief has increased Rs 2 lakh crore in 10 years (2014 to 2024) from the earlier Rs 66,000 crore.
What one needs to add here is that disaster relief is not just limited to catastrophic events that occur overseas. The coordination between the states and the NDRF has improved phenomenally over the years in that multiple units stationed across the country move at lightning speed for relief and rescue operations within hours of an incident. The protocols are cast in iron, the SOPs are constantly revised and it would be easy for us to claim that the Indian NDRF is one of the best in the world today.
One reason for the high standards of its relief operations has been the conscientious effort to absorb best practices from around the world and consistently review their work. Another reason has been the close coordination between the NDRF and the NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority).
NDRF-NDMA alliance
As Home Minister Amit Shah said at an NDRF event in June last year, “The work of creating a winning alliance of NDRF and NDMA through training, raising the morale of the force, forming the force, providing adequate numbers of the force, ensuring the availability of the force’s personnel everywhere in such a large country and advance information for disaster assessment has been done. We should create a force in India that is first in the field of disaster management.”
