4 min readFeb 28, 2026 06:11 AM IST
First published on: Feb 28, 2026 at 06:11 AM IST
Can you recall when you last sent a cheque to organisations for disaster relief? If this question were put up 20 years ago, many readers might have responded positively. Unfortunately, since then, we have been witnessing “disaster fatigue” in the country. This is not surprising, yet it is alarming. Just when disasters have become concurrent and continuous throughout the year, people are withdrawing their generosity.
At my philanthropic foundation, we recently released a report, commissioned with Dalberg, titled ‘Resilience — Moving beyond surviving climate disasters to supporting communities to thrive’. We hope it will help shift the mental model in India towards anticipatory action and funding. Climate change has arrived in all our lives, affecting vulnerable communities in particular.
In 2023, 85 per cent of districts experienced floods, droughts, or cyclones. From the Himalayas to the coastline, every region is at risk. Extreme weather events, including severe heat, occurred on 86 per cent of days that year. If the trend lines and modelling we have showcased are any indication, we must be prepared for much worse. The economic toll of these events is severe. The nationwide annual losses were $12 billion, and for poor households, it can be up to 85 per cent of their annual income from just one disaster. We argue in the report that there is no choice left but to build better community-level resilience. India has made remarkable progress in saving lives during cyclones and floods. But that is no longer enough. People want to thrive, not just survive.
To build resilience, we need to reimagine development, such as rethinking dam design, and building trust and capacity at a local level to enable the needed response in the samaaj before and after a disaster strikes. Sarkaar at the local level has to be financially empowered; the bazaar can step in meaningfully. Global evidence shows such investments are sound. Every $1 invested in risk reduction and adaptation can save up to $15 in post-disaster response and recovery.
There is much innovation on the ground waiting to be scaled. SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) has pioneered a heat insurance scheme that triggers automatic payouts when extreme heat beyond 40°C persists for two consecutive days. It operates in three states with 50,000 women members. The Council on Energy, Environment and Water has created a climate and heat risk atlas for the country and works closely with governments to build implementable action plans. ASAR and Equinoct have helped communities in Ernakulam, Kerala document tidal flooding that impacts lakhs of people. SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society) has innovated an AI-enabled e-disaster wallet that allows communities to authenticate their potential asset losses before an event, so that government and philanthropy aid can flow more seamlessly post any event.
Whether in education, healthcare, skill building, agriculture or any other sector, there are climate adjacencies that will have to be addressed urgently. Philanthropy can provide both the high-risk capital and the patient capital needed to rethink the future.
So far, we have responded to disasters with a top-down, standardised approach. Governments work for communities, not enough with them. This must change — people can be agents of their own resilience.
This is the right time to shift to a nationwide effort to build community resilience and strengthen physical, financial, human, social, and natural capital at the ground level. Most of all, we need to reignite the empathy we all showed ourselves capable of during the pandemic. If we do, there is great hope that India will be ready for the future shock.
The writer is chairperson, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, and author of Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar: A citizen-first approach
