NDRF to get global rescue force tag

New Delhi, Jan. 10: India could soon be a part of the United Nations (UN) mandated international disaster rescue operations as the country’s federal contingency force, NDRF, is expected to obtain a globally recognised standardisation later this year, a top ranking official has said.

The authorisation will be done by the Switzerland-headquartered INSARAG (or the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group) which is a network of more than 90 countries and organisations under the UN umbrella to deal with urban search and rescue related issues.

“Just like we have the Bureau of Indian Standards in the country, the UN agency INSARAG standardises disaster response teams across the world. It is an international gold standard,” NDRF director general S.N. Pradhan said. “We are very much in thick of it and hopefully we will get the standardisation in 2021.” He further explained the purpose of this categorisation that is possessed by some of India’s neighbours like China and Pakistan.

“If there is a call from the UN to respond to some disaster you will be called upon...you will be an international response force,” Pradhan said. “It is not that we have not been doing that (going for international rescue operations) but when NDRF went to Japan and Nepal in the past it was a bilateral decision between two countries but with this standardisation it will be a UN mandated task,” he said.

It will be a matter of great prestige for India that its force is known as an international response force, the DG said. He said an

INSARAG committee, comprising Australian and Singaporean experts, has conducted preliminary review of NDRF teams in September, 2019, but the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic put the process on a back burner for a while. “Hopefully, in 2021 you will see at least two heavy teams of the NDRF notified as INSARAG teams,” he said.