It is an honour for me to deliver the ISET annual lecture this year at Roorkee. Indeed Roorkee has nurtured the discipline of earthquake engineering and has made a name for itself on the international scene. We in atomic energy,just as many others in other areas, have benefited by the knowledge, advise and consultancy support provided by the Roorkee school. So in some way this lecture provides me an oppurtunity to pay my respeet to pioneers in this field. During the last few years, we have seen some damaging earthquakes in our country such as the ones at Uttarkashi and Latur. These earthquakes have not only resulted in heavy loss of life and damage to property, but have also created a psychological fear in the minds of people. The damage has been mostly for non-engineered constructions. Such buildings make use of locally available materials and they are based on simple structural systems developed from age old practices of building construction in the region. Such buildings will continue to be constructed as they are percieved to be economical. The number of such buildings is naturally very large and this warrants the development of simple and cost effective backfits and incremental modifications to ensure their safety from collapse during earthquakes.