Jayant K. Routray

Rural poverty alleviation through NGO interventions in Bangladesh: how far is the achievement?

Purpose - This paper seeks to analyse the current poverty situation and poverty alleviation efforts of the NGOs in Bangladesh with emphasis on the impacts of two NGO programmes in two villages of Barisal district. Design/methodology/approach - This research has employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The research has primarily used first-hand empirical data. In order to substantiate primary data, relevant secondary information has also been used. Data were collected through household survey by applying both open- and closed-ended questionnaires. With a view to analysing data, inferential as well as descriptive statistics have been applied. Findings - The findings revealed that the economic condition of the poor in the study areas has not improved much when judged against some selected indicators, namely, income, food and non-food expenditure, productive and non-productive asset, food security, and employment creation. The Foster Greer Thorbecke index shows that the majority of the NGO beneficiaries remained below the poverty line in terms of income and the overwhelming majority of them remained below the underemployment line (less than 260 days of work in a year). The regression analysis shows that the income of the households is determined by landholding size, family labour, days suffered from morbidities and employment opportunity. The qualitative data on the perception of beneficiaries on the causes of poverty endorse this finding. Originality/value - Controversies over the issue of widespread poverty in Bangladesh have been revolving among the government, NGOs and the donor agencies as well. NGOs have been claiming the entire success of the economic wellbeing made to the rural poor. However, this study has directly challenged their claims by casting an empirical lens on the impact of their interventions. This study has detected the paucities of the NGO interventions and gaps between their objectives and their achievement.

Earthquake hazards and community resilience in Baluchistan

Resilience is widely used from a variety of research perspectives; however, community resilience in particular is applied to a number of natural hazards and disasters-related studies, programs, and activities. It is also acknowledged that its measurement is cumbersome but not impossible. The prime objective of this paper is to measure the community resilience of an earthquake-prone area in Baluchistan. The article presents the concept of resilience, its approaches, selection of indicators, formulation of subjective assessment method for weighting the indicators, and finally, developing the community resilience index. For the community resilience measurement, a survey was conducted among 200 households in two earthquake risk zones of Quetta city, using simple random sampling method. The overall composite community resilience index revealed that the resilience is low in both the zones—A and B. However, it is revealed that there is a significant difference between the zones when compared against the components and indicators. Community resilience components such as economic, institutional, and physical have received higher index values in Zone B as compared to Zone A. Based on the findings, it is recommended to improve the socioeconomic, institutional, and structural (housing) conditions of the community by raising the community awareness and preparedness, implementing building codes, and providing income-generating activities in order to enhance the community resilience to cope up with earthquake hazards in the future.

Impacts of climatic disasters in coastal Bangladesh: why does private adaptive capacity differ?

This paper quantitatively assesses the influences of various demographic and socio-economic factors, past adaptive behavioral factors, access to weather/climate information, and spatial/locational factors on coastal populations’ perceived adaptive capacity against major impacts of hydro-meteorological disasters on their livelihood. A total of 285 respondents from three coastal villages in Bangladesh were randomly interviewed between January and April 2009. Respondents rated their perceived adaptive capacity against 25 anticipated impacts of sea-level rise (SLR)-induced events on their livelihood. By employing the principal component analysis (PCA), perceived adaptive capacity was grouped into five major categories. Then, an adaptive capacity index for each of five major impacts, namely, “infrastructure damage and disrupted mobility,” “food and nutritional insecurity,” “low earning and higher cost of maintenance,” “loss of employment in offshore activities,” and “crisis of potable water and public health risk,” was prepared. How adaptive capacity against each of these major five categories of impacts differs due to the influence of various factors was assessed by employing the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) technique. The MANOVAs show that age, sex, level of education, type of occupation, farmland holdings, past adaptive behavior against rainfall, salinity intrusion, freshwater crises, use of radio for weather information, and the distance of the homestead from the shoreline have varying levels of influence on respondents’ perceived adaptive capacity against each of the five major categories of impacts. Others factors have moderate to limited influences. The policy implication is that specific programs, rather than a generic one-size fits all program, must be initiated for enhancement of adaptive capacity against specific impacts.

An Analysis of the Causes of Non-Responses to Cyclone Warnings and the Use of Indigenous Knowledge for Cyclone Forecasting in Bangladesh

This paper explores the causes of non-response to cyclone warning and unwillingness to seek refuge and identifies natural methods for predicting cyclones and storm surge through local knowledge, which could be integrated into a modern cyclone forecasting system in coastal Bangladesh. Despite significant progress in cyclone forecasting in Bangladesh, still it lacks in clear communication of warning information to people at risk at the local level, and also in terms of accuracy in the prediction of landfall timing as well as intensity factor. The study reveals that coastal inhabitants are frequently familiar with cyclones and aware of the potential risks; however, they do not respond to cyclone warnings proactively because of poor road networks, long distances between home and cyclone shelters, low capacity of cyclone shelters, fear of burglary and stealing of household assets and goods, disbelief and misinterpretation of warning information, etc. There is also a higher degree of fatalism among the people. There are other reasons why people do not respond to official warnings, such as poor understanding of cyclone warnings, past experience of the failure of warnings, no or limited income-earning opportunities during and after the cyclone if people decide to evacuate, pressure from employers to go fishing, etc. This study also explores the fact that coastal inhabitants can predict the onset of cyclones based on local indigenous knowledge gained through everyday life on the coast. This method of indigenous cyclone prediction is based on a combination of different factors, such as unusual animal behaviour, water and weather conditions, etc. The present study advocates building awareness of proactive responses to official cyclone early warnings while integrating local knowledge systems in order to improve the proactive response rate and establish reliable forecasting that would help in disaster mitigation and lessen the emergency management activities.

Status and factors of food security in Pakistan

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to determine the level of food self-sufficiency, un-accessed portions of food, and food gap between the national food security line of the country and consumption by its people. It also aims to scrutinize the major physical and economic factors inducing food insecurity in the country. Design/methodology/approach - The paper applies descriptive statistics using mainly secondary data with the support of some primary information. Findings - Pakistan is almost self-sufficient in food production even if only 30 percent of its production potential has been achieved. In spite of such a situation, the average food consumption of its people is still significantly below the standards set up for the national food security line. The study also established that the food gap in the country is 30 percent, while a 35 percent portion of available food is un-accessed due to various constraints spawned by physical, economic and sometimes natural factors. Out of the seven administrative units of Pakistan, Punjab and Sindh are the main food producing units while the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are the most highly food deficit unit. Irrespective of the level of local food production, food gap still exists in all administrative units due to inefficient food procurement and distribution system, illegal movement of food commodities, poor monitoring of marketing systems, lower purchasing power and natural disasters. Research limitations/implications - The paper elaborates on the average situation of the country, and establishes the baseline for future research to investigate the issues of food security deeply, providing some key recommendations. Originality/value - The paper investigates the concept of food security through the important indicators, i.e. food gap and un-accessed portion of food, and tries to sort out the factors inducing such gaps.

Institutional framework, key stakeholders and community preparedness for earthquake induced disaster management in Balochistan

Purpose – Balochistan is one of the earthquake disaster prone areas in Pakistan. Earthquakes adversely affect people and their economy, therefore disaster preparedness especially at the community level is imperative to avoid future damages. The purpose of this paper is to examine the issues associated with community preparedness in earthquake prone areas and recommend upgrading the community preparedness, and improving coordination between provincial and national agencies during disasters and seismic emergencies.Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on field visits. Observations, key informant interviews and group discussions were conducted to analyze the preparedness, both at community and organizational levels.Findings – Disaster impacts are still handled by provincial level organizations in Balochistan. Disaster management authorities do not implement any activities related to preparedness at local levels, and focus more on reactive and top‐down approaches. On the other hand, community is vu...

Determinants of farmers’ choice of coping and adaptation measures to the drought hazard in northwest Balochistan, Pakistan

This study identifies the coping and adaptation behavior of the farm households and also examines the factors that influence farmers’ choice for drought-induced adaptation strategies. The study employs a multivariate probit model on 215 farm households’ survey data from northwest Balochistan, Pakistan. The findings reveal that the farmers have shown considerable fortitude in coping with the impacts of drought on their agro-based practices and employed several adaptation initiatives both at on-farm and off-farm levels. These include crop management, water management, adjustment in agricultural inputs, income diversification, economization of expenditure and consumption smoothing, migrating to other places to seek alternative sources of income, assets depletion, and borrowing. Empirically, it is depicted that landholding, annual income, livestock ownership, credit access, farmer-to-farmer extension, GOs/NGOs support increase the probability of farmers’ decision to cope and adapt better with drought hazard. This study implies for specific policy and practice-oriented solutions in order to cope with and adapt in drought situation.

Technological Change and Women's Participation in Crop Production in Bangladesh

There is a dearth of information on the employment effects of modern agricultural tech nology on rural women in Bangladesh. The present study1looks at womens participation in crop production activities, examines their influence in the diffusion of modern technol ogy and their participation in the hired labor market. Data for this study comes from two intensive surveys conducted in the crop years 1989 and 1996 in three agro-ecological regions of Bangladesh.Findings suggest that the prevailing claim-that women are involved only in post- harvest processing of crops-underestimates their contribution to agricultural production. Womens share of total labor is 10-18 percent in foodgrain production and 6-48 percent in non-cereal crop production. Increased demand for labor owing to technological change is almost entirely being met by hiring male labor. The few women who are hired are paid significantly lower wages than men, revealing unequal opportunities and a lack of bar gaining power for women in the hired la...

In situ adaptation against sea level rise (SLR) in Bangladesh: does awareness matter?

Purpose – The paper aims to identify and assess quantitatively the influences of a few dimensions of climate awareness on peoples preference for adaptation against sea level rise (SLR).Design/methodology/approach – From the literature survey “familiarity with”, “perception about” and “intuitive knowledge about” climate change‐sea level rise (CC‐SLR) have been identified as dimensions of “climate awareness”. Empirical research was done through administering questionnaires among 285 respondents selected randomly from three coastal villages in Bangladesh. After principal component analysis, data sufficiency and colinearity test, a total of 18 variables were entered into a multinomial logistic regression model. The reference category “evacuation” was compared with other two choices, i.e. in situ adaptation with “same occupation” and “changed occupation”.Findings – For the SLR scenario of 2050‐2075 occupational engagement, use of radio for climate information, exposure to rainfall, salinity and perception abo...

Vulnerability to flood-induced public health risks in Sudan

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze flood vulnerability vis-a-vis flood-induced health risks, and understand the relationship between them to suggest measures to reduce health risks in Sudan. Design/methodology/approach – This study compares the vulnerability to flood and health consequences in two communities in Aroma. This study compares the vulnerability of Aroma semi-urban vicinity and Tendellei rural village, in Sudan, to flood and health consequences. A set of socioeconomic and health indicators were studied in 251 households. Households were classified according to their calculated vulnerability composite index. The index was validated through comparing the vulnerability values with the level of impact in each household. Findings – About 30 percent of households are highly/very highly vulnerable to flood risk. On the other hand, 41 percent of the rural households and 25 percent of the semi-urban houses are highly/very highly vulnerable to health risks. The main determinants of flood v...