India has always been vulnerable to natural disasters like floods, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes and landslides. Its geo-climatic conditions render about sixty per cent of the landmass prone to earthquakes of various intensities, over forty million hectares susceptible to floods, about eight per cent of the total area vulnerable to cyclones and sixty-eight per cent susceptible to drought. So natural disasters are a bitter reality for us. If anything, this reality is becoming more bitter by the day, as the nature, intensity and frequency of disasters rises, aided by overpopulation, haphazard development, changing socio-economic conditions and climate changes among other factors, and we become more and more vulnerable to its effects.