Reducing Underlying Risk Factors
India
Village Dahimal in Bolangir (Orissa) has no river or water reservoir, neither do they
practice any form of water harvesting thus they face water scarcity for drinking water
and daily use and face droughts of various degrees annually. Their livelihood depends
on daily wage labour and seasonal cultivation. Since no labour work is available in
the village, they migrate to Hyderabad and Gujarat in search of work. Every year 60
families or so would migrate from this village.
As a part of this project, training programs were conducted for the DMC on disaster
preparedness and mitigation, government schemes and plans, as well as awareness
campaign on how to harvest and utilise water. This motivated the community to dig
20 wells in their respective fields and they started to cultivate cash crops like brinjal
(egg plant), moong (green gram), cabbage and other vegetables. They had a good
yield and could sell their surplus vegetable and earn an income. In addition, the DMC
successfully advocated for job creation in the area through a Government scheme.
Now some of the community people are engaged in their field as they have water and
others are engaged in work provided through the NREGA. This has reduced migration
from 60 families to 3 families. The people say “Now that we can work in our fields
and can get government schemes which we did not know of before, we will not have
to go out for food again.”