Natural Hazards and Disasters in India
The national hazard profile
India's profile is taught as national statistics plus regional patterns:
- Earthquakes: roughly 59% of the landmass is at moderate to severe seismic risk. The zoning map (IS 1893) runs from Zone II to Zone V. Zone V covers Kashmir, Kutch, north Bihar, the north-east and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Zone IV includes Delhi, parts of the Himalayan foothills and the Indo-Gangetic belt.
- Floods: about 40 million hectares, close to 12% of the geographical area, is flood-prone. The Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna plains dominate; Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal face recurring floods.
- Cyclones: nearly 5,700 km of coastline; the Bay of Bengal records roughly four times as many cyclones as the Arabian Sea.
- Drought: around 68% of the sown area is drought-prone - Rajasthan, Marathwada, Bundelkhand, Telangana.
- Landslides: the Himalaya, the north-east, the Nilgiris and the Western Ghats.
- Others: cloudbursts (Kedarnath, 2013), heat and cold waves, lightning, forest fires, avalanches, and tsunamis - the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami led to the INCOIS Tsunami Early Warning Centre at Hyderabad.
The risk equation applies throughout: an earthquake of identical magnitude kills far more where mud houses and unengineered concrete frames are common.
Worked example
Why was the 2001 Bhuj earthquake so destructive? Structure the answer as hazard (about M 7.7, shallow focus, Zone V), exposure (dense town), vulnerability (unreinforced masonry, no code enforcement) and capacity (limited rescue equipment at the time). Add that post-2001 India strengthened NDMA and raised NDRF - that link earns a mark.
Traps
Confusing magnitude with intensity; declaring all of India equally flood-prone; mixing up cyclone-prone Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu with Gujarat; forgetting that tsunamis are earthquake-generated and that India's tsunami warning comes from INCOIS, not IMD.