Extreme weather, monsoon and forecasting

Prelims and Mains

Whether a hazard is on the notified list decides how a State may pay for it, because a notified natural calamity is one for which a State may draw on its State Disaster Response Fund for relief and reconstruction.

• Heatwaves and lightning became notified natural calamities on 27 August 2026, taking the list to 14, on a Sixteenth Finance Commission recommendation announced in the Lok Sabha on 4 August 2026.
• A hazard outside the list can be notified by a State itself as a local disaster, but funded only from a capped slice of the same money, 10 per cent of the annual allocation.
• Heat was earlier only a local disaster, so a State may now spend its full response fund on it.
• The response fund pays for relief after a disaster; the State Disaster Mitigation Fund pays for work that reduces risk before one.
• A Finance Commission is constituted under Article 280 of the Constitution and recommends how central taxes and grants are shared with the States.
• The Sixteenth Finance Commission recommended ₹2.04 lakh crore for State disaster funds for 2026-31, split between the two funds.
• An assessment cited with the notification puts over 57 per cent of districts at high to very high heat risk, and those districts are home to about three quarters of Indians.
• Disaster finance was built for sudden events such as floods and cyclones, and heat is a slow hazard.

See also: Heat Action Plans