🌪 Disasters, famines and resilience
The famines of colonial Bengal, the plague and influenza years, the great earthquakes, the 2004 tsunami and the cyclones of the east coast — and how India moved from famine to food self-sufficiency, from smallpox and polio to eradication, and from relief after a disaster to warning and preparing before it.
Maps show India’s boundaries as officially depicted by the Government of India. Pins mark approximate locations.
🛡 How India responds
From relief after the event to warning, preparing and building safer — the laws, forces and systems India has today.
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1898
India’s first seismological observatory
India’s earthquake monitoring began with the first seismological observatory at Alipore, Calcutta; today the National Seismological Network watches the whole country.
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1990–2000
A decade for disaster reduction
The UN took up disasters in 1989 and declared 1990–2000 the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction; the Yokohama conference of May 1994 set out a strategy for a safer world.
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2005
The Disaster Management Act and NDMA
The Disaster Management Act (23 December 2005) created the National Disaster Management Authority, headed by the Prime Minister, with a State authority in every State led by the Chief Minister. It covers what to do before, during and after a disaster.
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2006
The National Disaster Response Force
Set up under the 2005 Act for specialised response to natural and man-made disasters: 8 battalions in 2006, 16 today.
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2016
The first National Disaster Management Plan
Released in 2016, in line with the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction.
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2019
Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure
Proposed by India at the UN Climate Summit in New York on 23 September 2019 and headquartered in India, the coalition helps countries build infrastructure that survives disasters.
🌾 Famines
Colonial revenue demands turned crop failures into catastrophes; after Independence the Green Revolution made India self-sufficient in food grains.
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1770–1772
The great Bengal famine
After two years of crop failure, the East India Company’s harsh cash-revenue targets — collected regardless of the harvest — caused a famine that killed nearly one-third of Bengal’s people, an estimated 10 million. Bankim Chandra’s Anandamath is set in this famine.
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19th century
Famines under the Raj
Heavy land taxes resulted in several severe famines and widespread discontent among peasants and tribals; with few roads reaching villages, rural people suffered most in calamities and famines.
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1918–1921
Crop failure and the influenza epidemic
Crops failed in 1918–19 and 1920–21, along with an influenza epidemic; the 1921 census counted 12 to 13 million deaths from the famines and the epidemic.
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1943
The Bengal famine of 1943
During the Second World War, with much Indian grain sent abroad to the war front on the orders of Winston Churchill, a famine struck Bengal and millions perished.
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Late 1960s
The Green Revolution
High-yielding seeds of wheat and rice, with fertiliser and irrigation, broke the stagnation of colonial agriculture; by the late 1960s India was self-sufficient in food grains and no longer at the mercy of other nations for food.
🦠 Epidemics and their defeat
Plague and influenza in the colonial era; vaccination that ended smallpox and polio; and vaccines for the world during COVID-19.
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Before modern vaccines
Variolation and the teekedaars
Long before modern vaccines, India protected people from smallpox by variolation — a mild infection from smallpox material to build immunity — performed by practitioners called teekedaars.
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1896
Bubonic plague in western Maharashtra
A severe famine was followed by bubonic plague; the authorities’ harsh measures were resented, and the next year the Chapekar brothers shot the British Plague Commissioner of Poona.
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1918
Plague and the Kheda satyagraha
Hit by crop failure and a plague epidemic, the peasants of Kheda in Gujarat could not pay the revenue; Gandhiji organised a satyagraha for its relaxation.
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1977
Smallpox eradicated
Vaccination eradicated smallpox, the first step in India’s immunisation journey.
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2014
India certified polio-free
When the programme began in 1995, polio crippled more than 50,000 children a year. India’s last case was reported in Howrah on 13 January 2011, and WHO certified India polio-free on 27 March 2014 — the work of over a million ASHAs and ANMs and 2.3 million volunteers.
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2020–2022
COVID-19 and the vaccine drive
India, one of the world’s largest vaccine producers, supplied vaccines to many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and gave 200 crore doses at home.
🌍 Earthquakes and the tsunami
The Himalaya and Kachchh are India’s highest-risk zones; the 2004 tsunami changed how India warns its coasts.
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1905
The Kangra earthquake
A magnitude 8.0 earthquake in Himachal Pradesh that claimed 19,800 lives — among the most catastrophic in India’s history.
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1967 and 1993
Earthquakes on the ‘stable’ Peninsula
Maharashtra had severe earthquakes in 1967 and 1993 — a puzzle in one of the oldest, most stable landmasses; some scientists see a fault line along the Bhima (Krishna) near Latur and Osmanabad.
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2001
The Bhuj earthquake
A magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Kachchh, Gujarat, that claimed 12,932 lives. Kachchh lies in India’s Very High Damage Risk Zone.
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26 December 2004
The Indian Ocean tsunami
The tsunami killed more than 300,000 people; afterwards India volunteered to join the International Tsunami Warning System.
🌀 Cyclones and floods
Better forecasts, shelters and evacuation have cut the toll of east-coast cyclones; floods in the hills and the south still test the response.
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1999 and 2019
From the Odisha super cyclone to Fani
In the Rajya Sabha, the Home Minister said that about 10,000 people died in the 1999 Odisha super cyclone but only one in Cyclone Fani (2019), and none in Cyclone Biparjoy in Gujarat (2023) — the result of a shift to warning, preparation and evacuation.
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2013
Cyclone Phailin and the shelters
Phailin struck Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in October 2013; the experience shaped the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project’s extra multipurpose cyclone shelters, roads and bridges.
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2013
The Uttarakhand floods
After the natural calamity of 2013, the Centre sent technical teams and planned to rebuild about 10,000 devastated houses in Uttarakhand.
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2018
The Kerala floods
In one of the largest rescue operations, 40 helicopters, 31 aircraft, 182 rescue teams, 58 NDRF teams and over 500 boats saved over 60,000 people from marooned areas.
🏭 Human-made disaster
Disasters are also caused by human activity — the worst industrial tragedy in the world struck Bhopal.
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2–3 December 1984
The Bhopal gas tragedy
Around midnight on 2 December 1984, poisonous methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal — the world’s worst industrial tragedy. Union Carbide was held liable and, in a Supreme Court settlement, paid $470 million to the victims.
How we check: every entry is from an NCERT textbook or a Government of India (PIB) release; our build fails unless its key phrases are found in the source itself. Death tolls are the source’s own figures. Where a figure comes from a minister’s statement, we say so. For how earthquakes, cyclones, floods and droughts happen, and the hazard zones of India, see Natural hazards.