Occupational resilience to floods across the urban–rural domain in Greater Ahmedabad, India

Abstract

Identifying and acting on the consequences of smaller hazards can strengthen the communities to face the greater events of the future. These hazards disrupt the everyday lives of the majority of the population who rely on daily wages or are engaged in informal economic opportunities. This paper explores the potential the post-disaster employment opportunities have in recovery from disasters across urban, peri-urban and rural areas of Greater Ahmedabad in India through a household survey conducted in flood hit areas in February–March 2013. It adopts an approach where occupations vulnerable to a disaster are identified and their related characteristics are established. Through the combination of descriptive and explanatory statistical analyses of quantitative data the paper concludes that for the surveyed segment of population: (i) there is insignificant help from within the communities or community based organizations for economic recovery of affected population, and government is seen as the primary stakeholder for recovery (ii) for a low income household the concepts of disaster and unemployment are interchangeably used (iii) the rural areas have been traditionally dependent on the urban areas post-disaster, but in this case the urban population also rely on their assets and social network in the rural areas in case of both unemployment and disasters.