Consultation on Gender & Disaster Risk Resilience — Gujarat
PRAN Foundation's Role: Amarjeet Singh, Advocate, Supreme Court of India & Founder, PRAN (Policy Research Action Network) Foundation, New Delhi, coordinated the organisation of this consultation end-to-end — from agenda design and speaker mobilisation to session facilitation — and additionally delivered the legal and policy address in Technical Session II.
On 18 April 2026, a landmark state-level consultation on Gender and Disaster Risk Resilience was held at the Conference Hall of the Government Circuit House (Old), Shahibaug, Ahmedabad. Organised by Shivi Development Society, New Delhi jointly with Rajkot Saher Jilla Grahak Suraksha Mandal, Rajkot, the consultation was coordinated end-to-end by Amarjeet Singh, Advocate & Founder, PRAN Foundation, New Delhi — who designed the agenda, mobilised speakers across government, civil society, and international organisations, and facilitated the day's proceedings. The full-day event brought together senior IAS officers, public health experts, civil society leaders, UNICEF representatives, and legal policy advocates to examine — and act upon — the deeply gendered dimensions of disaster preparedness and response in Gujarat.
A full house at the Conference Hall — civil society leaders, government officers, public health experts, and UNICEF representatives gathered around the roundtable for a day-long dialogue on gender-responsive disaster governance in Gujarat.
Gujarat's multi-hazard geography — 1,600 km of coastline, Seismic Zone V in Kutch, recurring floods, and escalating heat waves — makes it both India's most disaster-exposed and most institutionally advanced state in disaster management. Yet, as speaker after speaker underscored, the state's disaster governance architecture remains structurally gender-blind: no sex-disaggregated disaster data, no GBV response protocol in its SDMP, and no legal mandate for women's representation in a single DDMA.
Inaugural Session
10:00 – 10:10 hrs
The consultation was formally inaugurated by Shri Alok Kumar Pandey, IAS, Hon'ble Relief Commissioner, State Emergency Operation Centre (SEOC), Gandhinagar. In his inaugural remarks, Shri Pandey acknowledged the institutional gap between Gujarat's world-class disaster response infrastructure and its limited gender-mainstreaming in the same. He emphasised that the post-Biparjoy 2023 response — while operationally commendable — revealed critical gaps in gendered shelter, maternal health pre-positioning, and women's participation in relief decision-making.
The consultation was formally inaugurated with the traditional lamp-lighting ceremony. From left: participants and dignitaries at the inaugural session, Conference Hall, Govt. Circuit House (Old), Shahibaug, Ahmedabad — 18 April 2026.
Welcome & Introductory Session — Setting the Gender-DRR Landscape
10:10 – 10:40 hrs
Ms. Anindita Mehta
Chief Executive Officer, Consumer Education and Research Centre (CERC), Ahmedabad
Ms. Mehta brought CERC's decades of consumer rights and civic advocacy experience to the gender-DRR landscape, highlighting how women — as primary household consumers and caregivers — bear the sharpest brunt of supply chain collapse during disasters. She underscored the intersection of consumer protection and disaster rights, and the need to centre women's voices in both relief planning and post-disaster market recovery.
Sisters from Brahma Kumaris
Brahma Kumaris, Ahmedabad
The Brahma Kumaris representatives offered a perspective on the psycho-spiritual dimension of disaster resilience — emphasising that women's inner strength, community solidarity, and moral leadership have historically been the invisible backbone of disaster recovery in Indian society. They called for formal recognition of community spiritual networks as first-responder support systems in state DM frameworks.
Shri Narendra Kumar
Executive Director, Shivi Development Society, New Delhi
Shri Narendra Kumar, who convened the consultation, articulated its strategic intent: to move beyond awareness and produce concrete, actionable policy recommendations to the Government of Gujarat. He outlined the three-tier mandate of the day — understanding the gender-DRR nexus, identifying systemic gaps in health and livelihoods, and drafting a civil society charter of recommendations for the state.
Technical Session I — Women as First Responders & Barriers
10:40 – 11:10 hrs
Dr. Bina Vadaliya
Regional Deputy Director, Health Department, Govt. of Gujarat, Gandhinagar
Dr. Vadaliya presented an insider's account of the public health system's response to Cyclone Biparjoy 2023, including the emergency relocation of over 1,200 pregnant women and the state's ambulance pre-positioning strategy. She candidly identified structural gaps: emergency obstetric care was reactive rather than protocol-driven; ASHA workers — themselves potential disaster victims — had no formal deployment SOP in the state's disaster health framework; and the continuation of ante-natal services in non-coastal affected villages remained an unaddressed blind spot.
Dr. Jayeshbhai Katira
Retired Director, Epidemic Cell, Department of Health, Government of Gujarat, Gandhinagar
Drawing on four decades of field experience including post-Bhuj earthquake health response, Dr. Katira emphasised the persistent neglect of women's mental health as a post-disaster emergency. He recalled that only 500 trained counsellors were mobilised for the entire Bhuj earthquake emergency — serving approximately 45,000 individuals — and that women's PTSD, reproductive trauma, and psychosomatic stress in temporary shelters went almost entirely unaddressed in official health protocols. He called for mandatory psychosocial first response teams with gender-specific capacity in every district DM health plan.
Technical Session II — Systemic Gaps: Health Safety & Socio-Economic Impact
11:20 – 12:20 hrs
The most substantive technical session of the day examined the specific, compounding disadvantages that Gujarat's women face in health safety and economic recovery during and after disasters. Four speakers approached the issue from distinct but convergent vantage points.
Ms. Vandana Chauhan
Consultant, Disaster Management, Govt. of Gujarat, Ahmedabad
Ms. Chauhan presented an assessment of Gujarat's current SDMP and district DM plans through a gender lens. She identified the core institutional problem: while GSDMA itself acknowledges on its website that "women always get excluded from Disaster Risk Reduction programmes," this acknowledgment has not translated into mandatory provisions in plans, SOPs, shelter standards, or relief criteria. She recommended that gender mainstreaming be made a legally enforceable requirement in all DDMA plans at the next revision cycle.
Ms. Pragya Sharma
Government Consultant, Ahmedabad
Ms. Sharma focused on the socio-economic recovery deficit for women post-disaster. She presented data demonstrating that relief compensation flows almost exclusively to male household heads; that women without land or asset title are systematically excluded from property-based reconstruction assistance; and that Gujarat's SHG savings — a primary asset for millions of rural women — are destroyed with no revolving fund mechanism to restore them. She anchored her recommendations in the DAY-NRLM model as a proven template for women-first relief disbursement.
Ms. Bijal Brahmbhatt
Executive Director, Mahila Housing Seva Trust
Ms. Brahmbhatt brought the perspective of urban poor women — the most invisible constituency in Gujarat's disaster response. Drawing on her organisation's extensive field work in informal settlements across Ahmedabad and Surat, she highlighted that women's refusal to use emergency shelters — due to absence of separate toilets, lighting, and safe space — is not a cultural problem but a governance failure. She presented the Sphere Handbook minimum standards as a ready-made, internationally validated framework that Gujarat has simply not adopted.
Amarjeet Singh
Advocate, Supreme Court of India | Legal & Public Policy Consultant, PRAN Foundation, New Delhi
Shri Amarjeet Singh addressed the session from a constitutional and rights-based legal framework — a perspective largely absent from disaster policy discourse. He argued that gender-blind disaster relief is not merely poor governance; it is a constitutional violation. When identically situated women and men receive differentially accessible relief due to asset-title requirements, the State is in breach of the right to equality under Article 14. The failure to provide minimum gendered shelter standards — safe toilets, lighting, women's police — is a violation of the right to life and dignity under Article 21.
He further analysed India's CEDAW obligations — binding in international law — which require gender-disaggregated disaster data and gender-responsive relief as a State obligation, not an administrative preference. He offered a critical reading of the Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025: while it expands NDMA powers and mandates annual DM plans, it introduces no justiciable gender mandate — a significant missed legislative opportunity.
Shri Singh also proposed a novel consumer rights lens for disaster relief denial: women survivors denied reconstruction compensation due to lack of asset title are being denied a legal entitlement — and this denial is actionable. He announced PRAN Foundation's offer to provide pro-bono legal policy support for drafting a Gujarat Gender & DRR Action Plan, and to anchor a Legal Aid Network node in Gujarat specifically for disaster-affected women's rights.
Roundtable Session — Developing Policy Recommendations for the State
12:20 – 12:50 hrs
The roundtable was chaired by two senior voices with direct institutional experience in Gujarat's disaster management architecture.
Ms. Shivani Mehta
Master Chef & Food Entrepreneur, Ahmedabad
Ms. Shivani Mehta offered a ground-level perspective on food security and nutrition as a gendered disaster issue. She spoke about how women's role as primary food providers — already challenging under normal conditions — becomes acutely precarious when supply chains break and community kitchens collapse. She advocated for women-led community kitchen networks to be formally integrated into district DM relief protocols as a structured, dignified alternative to chaotic ration distribution.
Shri Parshoptam Vaghela
NGO Representative, Gujarat
Shri Vaghela brought the grassroots NGO sector's perspective, speaking to the systematic exclusion of civil society — particularly women-led community organisations — from GSDMA's formal disaster planning and response coordination. He endorsed the call for a Gender & Disaster Technical Committee at GSDMA with mandatory civil society representation, and highlighted the critical last-mile role that local NGOs play in reaching women survivors that government machinery cannot.
Synthesis, Way Forward & Vote of Thanks
12:50 – 13:00 hrs
The closing session was anchored by two distinguished parliamentarians from Rajkot — Smt. Ramaben R. Mavani (Ex-M.P., Lok Sabha; President, Rajkot Saher Jilla Grahak Suraksha Mandal) and Shri Ramjiibhai B. Mavani (Ex-M.P., Lok Sabha; Founder President, Rajkot Saher Jilla Grahak Suraksha Mandal). They offered a perspective rooted in electoral democracy: that gender-responsive disaster governance is ultimately a voter issue, and that women survivors who have been failed by relief systems exercise their franchise with memory. They committed to taking the consultation's recommendations forward through parliamentary and constituency channels.
Eight Policy Recommendations — Civil Society Charter to the Government of Gujarat
The consultation concluded with the adoption of the following eight recommendations as a civil society charter to be formally submitted to the Government of Gujarat and GSDMA:
| Area | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| 01 · Data | Mandate sex-disaggregated disaster data collection in all SDMP and DDMP cycles; GSDMA Gender & Disaster Data Dashboard within 72 hours of any Level-2 disaster declaration. |
| 02 · Governance | Government Resolution mandating minimum 33% women's representation in all DDMAs, Taluka DM Committees, and Village DM Committees; priority to Panchayat elected women, SHG leaders, and ASHA Sathis. |
| 03 · Health | GSDMA and NHM Gujarat to jointly develop a mandatory Gender-Responsive Disaster Health Protocol — covering emergency obstetric care, mental health, menstrual hygiene kits in all relief packages, GBV clinical pathway, and post-displacement ANC register continuity. |
| 04 · Shelter | Codify Sphere/UNFPA minimum standards for all GSDMA-recognised shelters: separate toilets (1:20 women), adequate lighting, women's police in shelters of 500+, and female-supervised registration desks. |
| 05 · GBV Response | Every District DM Plan to include a GBV annex: 1091 helpline continuity plan, mobile Sakhi centre deployment, SDRF–DWCD coordination protocol, and separate GBV reporting in post-disaster situation reports. |
| 06 · Livelihoods | Relief compensation paid to women household members by default (DAY-NRLM model); 25% additional package for women-headed households; 33% minimum women's employment in paid relief work; revolving fund for SHG savings lost in disasters. |
| 07 · Early Warning | Gender audit of all GSDMA last-mile warning systems; warnings via SHG WhatsApp networks, ASHA call trees, and pictographic/audio formats for low-literacy women; women-only transport options in evacuation protocols. |
| 08 · Legal Anchoring | Gujarat to enact a binding Government Resolution or statutory amendment legally mandating gender mainstreaming in all DM plans, sex-disaggregated reporting, minimum women's representation in DM governance, and gendered shelter/relief standards — as justiciable rights. |
Way Forward
The consultation called upon the Government of Gujarat to: (1) produce a time-bound State Gender & DRR Action Plan within 6 months; (2) incorporate the Eight Recommendations into the SDMP 2025–26; (3) establish a Gender & Disaster Technical Committee at GSDMA with mandatory civil society and women's organisation representation; and (4) pilot a Gender-Responsive Disaster Recovery Protocol in 3 high-risk districts within 12 months.
These recommendations will be formally submitted to GSDMA, the Department of Health & Family Welfare (Gujarat), the Gujarat Mahila Aayog, and the relevant Parliamentary Standing Committee on Disaster Management.
PRAN Foundation — Our Offer to Gujarat
PRAN (Policy Research Action Network) Foundation — Section 8 Non-Profit, 12A/80G Approved, NITI Aayog Listed — reaffirms its offer made at this consultation:
- Pro-bono legal policy support for drafting Gujarat's Gender & DRR Action Plan
- Legal aid network node in Gujarat for disaster-affected women's rights
- Research and documentation support in partnership with organisations like Shivi Development Society
- Constitutional and PIL strategy support for rights-based disaster relief enforcement
To engage with PRAN Foundation on these commitments, write to pranfoundationindia@gmail.com or call +91-89207-98501.
The Consultation on Gender & Disaster Risk Resilience, Ahmedabad, 18 April 2026, was organised by Shivi Development Society, New Delhi jointly with Rajkot Saher Jilla Grahak Suraksha Mandal, Rajkot. Event coordination was led by Amarjeet Singh, Founder, PRAN Foundation, New Delhi. This report has been prepared by PRAN Foundation based on session proceedings and speaker inputs.
Tags: Gender & Disaster Risk Reduction · GSDMA · Gujarat · Women's Rights · Public Health · Disaster Management · PRAN Foundation · Consumer Protection · PIL · Sendai Framework