Vulnerability Context of Marginal & Small Farmers in Raipur District of India

Select Volume / Issue:

• Volume 1,Issue 5, Sept. 2014

Year:

2014

Type of Publication:

Article

Keywords:

Vulnerability, Climate Change, Environmental Pollution, Hazard, Drought, Livelihood, Welfare, Marginal, Small Farmers

Authors:

Gelaneh, Abayneh Ayalew

Journal:

IJRAS

Volume:

1

Number:

5

Pages:

305-310

Month:

September

Note:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Abstract:

Vulnerability has been defined in several terms and concepts by different scholars, multilateral and bilateral organizations and international and UN agencies. The vulnerability context can be stated as the extent of feebleness of people to external shock and hazards in the environment in which people exist. The vulnerability context encompasses shocks such as illnesses, disasters, conflict, floods, droughts, storms, and crop and livestock pests and diseases and stresses such as long-term trends that undermine livelihood potential: population, declining natural resource base, climate change, pollution, inflation, currency devaluation, structural unemployment, and poor governance and others such as seasonality’s. All these describe the characteristics of marginal and small farmers in several developing countries including India. Though, India is accounting for bigger economy in the globe, it seems that the rural poor are not testing the sugar. Farmers in the Indian sub-continent are suffering for water stress and it is a principal social contention in the rural India. Therefore, this study conducted with the objective to analyse the vulnerability context of the Indian small and marginal farmers. In the this study, the extent of vulnerability was ascertain in terms of vulnerability index based on socio-economic status, living standard, food and fodder availability and various disasters (flood during crop maturity, erratic rainfall, draught at various stages of crops, social content, diseases and pest outbreak and environmental pollution) faced by respondents during last ten years. The result of vulnerability context portrayed that majority of the marginal and small farmers majority of the respondents, in the survey area perceived that their living standard was the same as it was during last ten years and faced environmental pollution, disease outbreak, drought and erratic rainfall nonetheless, they used savings; took loan from various sources, migration, government relief and aid etc. as coping mechanisms. This implies that the government has to develop livelihood improvement and vulnerability reducing projects for the rural poor.

Full text: IJRAS_785-01_Final.pdf [Bibtex]