Tal and Diara regions of Malda district are extremely prone to floods, still, report higher population density than the state's average density. This indicates that the local population has learned to live with floods by developing resilience to the flood threat through better preparedness, coping, and adaptive strategies. Such micro-level strategies developed by the local people can be useful to policymakers and social scientists alike in terms of better mitigating the flood menace and associated vulnerability. This paper attempts to measure and compare the level of flood resilience of the local people living in Tal and Diara at the household level. Furthermore, the article aims to analyse whether the distance from the major flood-causing rivers, viz. Fulhar in Tal and Ganga in Diara play a role in the degree of resilience of the population to floods. The paper is empirical, where information has been collected from sample households and focus group discussion with village elders in two sets of villages, i.e., Maniknagar and Ratua in Tal and Gopalpur and Nurpur in Diara. The UNDP technique has been used to compute the composite Resilience Index (RI) consisting of Preparedness Index (PI), Immediate Coping Index (ICI), and Adaptive Index (AI). The findings suggest that the villages located in and around the levees of major flood-causing rivers, viz. Maniknagar in Tal and Gopalpur in Diara records a higher level of resilience to floods in comparison to the interior villages, viz. Ratua in Tal and Nurpur in Diara. The paper concludes that in both Tal and Diara, people have learned to cope and adapt to floods and that the closer the distance from the major flood-causing rivers, the higher the villagers' resilience to flood hazards.
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Malda district of West Bengal is extremely vulnerable to floods. Yet this district reports high density of population suggesting that the people here must have adopted coping and adaptive strategies to meet the flood menace which is almost an annual affair. This paper addresses and compares the preparedness, coping and adaptive strategies of the local people at household level living in two distinct physiographic units viz. Tal and Diara of Malda. Further, an attempt is made whether the distance from the river plays any role in the coping and adaptive strategy of the villagers. This paper is empirical in nature, primary data has been generated through field investigation in two sets of villages of Tal and Diara, conducted in the month of September and October 2018. Field data has been quantified and measured to assess the level of resilience of the people to flood hazard/disaster. UNDP technique has been used for developing preparedness, coping and adaptive indexes. The score ranges between 0 and 1, where higher the score higher is the level of resilience.
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