An Approach for Building Resilience of Rural Settlements in Melghat Region, Maharashtra, India

Abstract

Rural areas today are confronted with a spectrum of changes, particularly in developing countries, which have multiple characters and vary from changes in geographic location. The settlements in and around the protected areas are exposed to additional issues as man-animal conflicts, lack of tenure, poor accessibility, policy gaps, etc. The settlements at remote locations are further poorly accessible during the case of disasters and this leaves the residing population on themselves. The adaptive capacities of the settlements play a key role in curbing the threatening impacts of the frequent disasters. This study aims to understand the concept of resilience in context of remote rural settlements in India. It explores various conceptual models and indicators used around the world, for determining disaster resilience in rural areas and the methods of evaluating them. A location-specific indicator set and a common rating scale to identify the core vulnerabilities, in and around forest areas of Melghat region,Maharashtra is prepared so as to relate the indicator scores to the prioritisation of settlements for relocation. The recommendations are based on the identified inter-linkages between the development sectors.