Punjab's formal disaster response runs through the state disaster management authority, the district administrations and the National Disaster Response Force.
Its actual first response, repeatedly, is the gurdwaras. In the 2023 floods, in the 2019 floods, during the pandemic, and at every road accident on a highway near a village, the langar and the volunteers arrive before anything official does.
That capacity is real, is very large, and is entirely unplanned. Sikh organisations have deployed to earthquakes and floods across India and abroad on the same basis.
The weakness is the same as the strength: it is voluntary, unaccountable and impossible to direct, and it covers relief rather than prevention.
Prevention in Punjab means embankment maintenance, drainage clearance, dam operating rules and building standards, and all of those are underfunded departmental functions with no constituency.
A state that can feed fifty thousand flood victims within a day cannot get its drains cleared before the monsoon.
The state has a disaster management authority on paper. What actually responds to a flood, a fire or a collapse is the district administration, the police, the army if it is large enough, and the gurdwara langars.
The langar response is fast and large and entirely voluntary. It has fed people in the Punjab floods, in Delhi, in Kerala and abroad.
What is missing is the part after the response: the assessment, the compensation and the rebuilding, which run through revenue procedures designed for a different scale.