ABSTRACT
The frequent disasters create unprecedented challenges on tribal communities around the world. Different from any other community, Tribal people have inherent unique characteristics concerning their socio, economic, cultural, political as well as the institutional realm Their habitats are usually with well-demarcated geographical territory predominantly in forest land or hilly areas. They have their own traditional knowledge which is based on their lifestyle, community belief, skills etc. Additionally, their territories are physically isolated or detached from the mainstream community. By virtue of these inherent characteristics the tribal are found to be highly vulnerable, especially to the vagaries during natural disaster such as landslide and flooding. The case is similar to tribal community across India where 8.6 % of population are Tribal.
Enhancing “community resilience” is considered as a key to preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters. Global literature acknowledge that community resilience relies on effective and collective action of local organization and people, before a crisis develops. Hence there is a need to understand the community resilience in the context of tribal community and the compounding factors. A major share of population of Kerala, also belong to tribal community. They have been severely affected during different natural hazards over the years, especially during the land slide and flooding in 2018 and 2019. The consequences of the recent disasters have emphasized the importance of building the community resilience of tribal people of Kerala. Given this, aim of the study is to consolidate and prioritize the specific set of factors attributed to the resilience of tribal community enhancing sustainable recovery from natural disaster impacts. This is achieved by 1) Critical analysis of generic frameworks for community resilience during disaster 2) Review of vulnerability of tribal community to various natural disasters 3) To enlist the critical domains of community resilience and the various dimensions associated with those domains.
The current study intends to achieve the defined aim mainly through critical review and analysis of relevant secondary literature pertaining to various objectives. The research also relies on bibliometric analysis of published research on frameworks for community resilience. A deductive reasoning on factors of vulnerability vis-a-vis the indicators of resilience would help to derive the primary as well as secondary factors of community resilience appropriate to tribal society.
By prioritizing the factors of resilience through case studies and this study attempts to arrive at some suggestion to enhance capacity of the tribal community to cope better with, and recover faster from, natural disasters. Additionally establishing these pertinent factors of community resilience would help the policy makers to give direction on the development planning process of tribal community.
