Disaster preparedness in India has traditionally been response-centric rather than risk-informed. Critically evaluate this observation in the context of recent Himalayan disaster events.

The Disaster Management Act, 2005 created an architecture meant to privilege mitigation over relief. Yet Himalayan events since the October 2023 South Lhonak Lake GLOF suggest India still funds recovery far more readily than it funds prevention — making the observation largely valid, though no longer wholly so.

Evidence supporting the response-centric charge

• Fiscal asymmetry: central resources move decisively only after impact — Rs. 555.70 crore was approved for Sikkim's Teesta basin recovery following the 2023 GLOF [1], and Rs. 2,006.40 crore for Himachal Pradesh's 2023 flood-landslide-cloudburst recovery [2]. Both are reconstruction windows, not pre-event mitigation.
• Implementation lag: the GLOF mitigation project sanctioned in 2024 required a Union Home Secretary review in 2026 to be "expedited" — prevention slips in a way relief never does.
• Institutional fragmentation: MHA, NDMA, CWC, IMD and DGRE each hold fragments of Himalayan risk knowledge, but are convened together mainly around events.
• Development blindness: hydropower and road expansion in moraine-dammed valleys advanced without binding GLOF risk-zoning.

Evidence of a genuine risk-informed turn

• NDMA's Guidelines on Management of GLOFs make glacial lake inventorying, monitoring and mitigation standing obligations rather than emergency improvisations [3].
• The National GLOF Risk Mitigation Programme (Phase-1) is built on four preventive components — hazard and risk assessment, early warning systems, mitigation measures, and capacity building for awareness and preparedness [4].
• DGRE (DRDO) sustains a Himalayan network of snow meteorological observatories and automated weather stations feeding avalanche forecasting.
• Policy emphasis across the five Himalayan States/UTs has explicitly moved toward risk-informed planning and community-level preparedness.

The critique therefore holds against delivery, not design: India's frameworks are risk-informed while its urgency and expenditure remain response-led. Time-bound execution of the NGRMP, mandatory GLOF risk-zoning for Himalayan infrastructure, and empowered SDMAs with dedicated mitigation funds can convert intent into resilience — realising the Sendai Framework's core promise of preventing new risk rather than only paying for old damage.