Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book presents a national-level analysis of disasters in the backdrop of the vulnerability of the Indian population. Offering an interdisciplinary perspective, it highlights that while conventional wisdom has persistently maligned ‘nature’ for disasters, majority of disasters in India are not due to ‘natural’ causes.
Vulnerable India: A Geographical Study of Disasters reconceptualizes the discourse on disaster and argues persuasively for the necessity of examining socio-economic vulnerability in relation to geography. With the aid of exhaustive research, comparative statistical analyses and data presented in the form tables and maps, it provides an incisive insight into 16 different disasters across 594 districts of the country. The author introduces new terms such as ‘disasterscape’, ‘disaster index’ and ‘vulnerability cluster’ for better understanding. Not only does she review traditional and modern perceptions of disasters in India, she also examines the representation of disasters in popular Indian cinema and provides a historical understanding of Indian perception of natural disasters and India's continuing failure to adequately contain damage to life and property.
This book will be extremely valuable to disaster research institutes and centers of disaster management studies. It is an ideal reference material for students of disaster management, environment science, environmental sociology, geography, development studies and social work.
Traditional: Absorb and Appeal
Traditional: Absorb and Appeal
A disaster is not about the dead. Ironically, it is about the living. The dead are no more. The ones left behind have to take on more, so much more. While there have been investments to invent instruments that can clock to precision, the onset of a cyclone, the nano-second of an earth shake and the minutes of a landslide, there is no tool or machine to measure the tragedy that afflicts the human mind. While uprooted trees, damaged houses and deranged infrastructure scar the physical landscape, it is grief and its cousins anguish, suffering and despair that scar the map of the heart. There are many schemes to repair material loss, but there is precious little to ...
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