State Disaster Management Plan for State of Maharashtra by Lakshya Tiwari

Executive Summary

This policy paper addresses the urgent need to strengthen disaster preparedness and hospital emergency management in Maharashtra. With rising climate risks, rapid urbanization, and increasing hazard exposure—from floods and heatwaves to industrial accidents and cyber threats—the state faces complex vulnerabilities.

The report assesses Maharashtra’s current disaster management system and identifies critical gaps in governance, infrastructure, early warning systems, and community preparedness. It introduces district-level readiness scorecards, predictive climate models, and the need for resilient health systems.

Key solutions include enhancing multilingual alerts, integrating digital literacy in rural CBDM programs, ensuring cyber readiness for hospitals, and strengthening evacuation protocols. Operational recommendations such as mobile unit pre-positioning, inter-state coordination, and logistics mapping are proposed for effective response.

Drawing from global best practices—Japan’s drills, Bangladesh’s community warnings, Germany’s dashboards, and Chile’s public-private infrastructure recovery—the paper outlines how Maharashtra can adopt scalable, inclusive, and proactive risk reduction strategies. This roadmap shifts the state’s disaster approach from reactive relief to systemic resilience, offering actionable reforms across planning, mitigation, and emergency response.

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