A thorough infrastructure review is a must for climate disaster readiness

livemint.com:

₹1.6 trillion for the state disaster fund which states can routinely access (roughly one-quarter contributed by them); and ₹0.68 trillion for the national fund set aside to supplement the state fund for exceptional disasters. The Sixteenth Finance Commission will cover the five fiscal years 2026-27 to 2030-31. The types of ‘mitigation’ currently covered by the disaster funding provision pertain to the small or local end, such as improvement of storm-water drainage or construction of flood shelters.

These are more usually classified as adaptation measures. So statutory funding to states is for mitigation of impact, rather than mitigation of occurrence. The latter, calling as it does for national decisions on transitioning away from fossil fuels, falls within the jurisdiction of the central government.

An important contribution of the Fifteenth FC was the scoring of each state on a disaster risk index, based on susceptibility to each of four types of hazard: floods; drought; cyclones and earthquakes. Using that prior work, the Sixteenth FC will have to call for a physical audit of the present state of publicly funded infrastructure in hazard prone areas. Without a benchmark of that kind, it is not possible to assess the need for fortification of presently existing infrastructure against hazard risk.