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The people’s newsroom

PolicyInternal security

Army to train 600 civil defence master trainers in 12 states by mid-November

The Home Ministry's first joint pilot with the Army will cover drones, air raids and chemical threats, and is meant to reach 60,000 civil defence volunteers through a cascade of training.

From the editorial desk · New DelhiPublished
Disaster response personnel at a rescue site in India (file photo)
Disaster response personnel at a rescue site in India (file photo)Photo: Raka / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Key points

  1. The Army will train 600 civil defence master trainers, 50 from each of 12 states and Union Territories.
  2. Each trainer is to pass the course on to 100 volunteers, a potential reach of 60,000 people.
  3. Training covers drone awareness, air-raid threats and CBRN emergencies among other areas.

India’s civil defence volunteers are to be trained by the Army for the first time, under a pilot the Union Home Ministry announced on Friday afternoon.

In the first phase, 600 civil defence master trainers, 50 from each of 12 states and Union Territories, are to go through a three-day course at designated Army training establishments by the second week of November. Each of them is then expected to train 100 civil defence volunteers back home. If that cascade works as planned, about 60,000 volunteers in the 12 regions would pick up the new skills. The ministry called this multiplier effect, built on a structured master trainer model, the key feature of the scheme, since a small group trained by the Army can carry the course much further than the Army could on its own.

The states and UTs in the first round are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Delhi, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

From the Red Fort to the training ground

The programme follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech on 15 August, in which he called for a vibrant civil defence network with modern systems, technology and preparedness for new security challenges.

It is being run by the Directorate General of Fire Services, Civil Defence and Home Guards, which sits in the Home Ministry, together with the Army. The ministry described it as a first-of-its-kind pilot that brings the Army’s operational experience to a volunteer network.

What the volunteers will learn

The course is built around three areas. The first is threat awareness, which covers modern and hybrid warfare, drones and air-raid threats. The second is protection and emergency response: guarding critical infrastructure, fire safety, awareness of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) hazards, handling casualties, and search and rescue.

The third deals with communication and coordination. Trainees will be taught emergency communication, cyber hygiene and digital resilience, how civilians and the military work together, and how incident command operates.

The ministry said the aim is to prepare civil defence personnel to respond to contemporary security threats, hostile situations and emergencies, and to protect critical infrastructure in a coordinated way.

What happens next

The first trainers are due to finish their courses within about three weeks. The ministry said the scheme would be widened to the remaining states and Union Territories in phases, depending on how the pilot goes. It has not yet said when the second phase would start or what it would cost.

The documents