TY - JOUR
AU - Das,, Arpita
AB - Abstract Disasters caused by natural phenomena are ubiquitous world over in terms of their occurrence. Myths and folklore are testament to this. The transition of natural phenomena into ‘natural’ disasters occurs only when humans are introduced. ‘Natural’ disasters have a social gradient to them, which differs vastly across societies. Epistemologically, disasters have been the forte of technocrats with social workers at best remaining at the fringes. This article is based on an empirical study undertaken with two communities who live in the flood affected Brahmaputra valley. It reveals a gap in the knowledge of the local realities—social, political, geographical resulting in grand and ineffective policy making. The current policies have a large imprint of the colonial with little being done in terms of developing alternate, localised and participatory methods of flood management. It demonstrates how the community’s efforts transcend a spectrum of stages moving from prevention and adaption to mitigation. For the Brahmaputra floods, the reality is extremely tenuous. Hence, it is not feasible for one knowledge system to understand the whole reality. Rather it needs to be acknowledged that multiple knowledge systems exist, and social workers need to be stakeholders in this process of knowledge creation and building of resilient communities. Brahmaputra, communities, disaster, resilience, social work ‘Natural disasters are like snowflakes – while there are often many similarities between them, no two are alike’ (Brookings Institution 2012: 1). Introduction Natural disasters are ubiquitous. While natural disasters impact the developing world, the developed world is not completely immune to them. It was in 1989 that the United Nations had declared the decades of the 1990s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. According to the Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2017 Leave No one behind (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific, 2017), Asia and the Pacific are the region most affected by natural disasters. Since 1970, the number of people killed has fluctuated considerably from year to year, while from the same year a person living in the Asia–Pacific region has been five times more likely to be affected by natural disasters than a person living outside the region. The report further goes on to highlight how with warming climate the number of weather-related hazards globally has tripled, and the number of people living in flood-prone areas and cyclone-exposed coastlines has doubled, a trend only likely to increase. Natural disasters have disastrous consequences for human beings. As a social challenge faced by the global community, the framing of natural disasters much like climate change necessitates cutting across disciplines (Overland and Sovacool, 2020) has begun to be studied by social scientists only recently. There exists a reasonable body of literature that looks at disasters as a one-off event. But there is a dearth of literature that addresses the sociocultural and political nature of disasters. For the purpose of this article, riverine floods were chosen as the context in which this dialectic was examined. Floods as a natural phenomenon Of all the physical, geological and natural phenomena that affect the earth, floods are the most widespread. There is no place in the world that has never experienced a single event of flooding (Das, 2013). Floods are so intertwined with human history that myths about floods abound in all civilisations. An examination of the mythologies shows these to express and be grounded in definite psycho-social contexts and predicaments. They are an important evidence of the way knowledge is a social construct. Myths reflect the views and problems of articular classes or activities. Mythologies are generally grounded in a cosmic or genesis type of myth that supposedly gives the others overall coherence (Hewitt, 1983). Such myths serve a dual purpose: they enable people to make meanings of things and happenings around them and help them in dealing with less understood processes. Different religious scriptures around the world abound with myths about floods. Possibly, the most famous of these are that of Noah’s Ark as mentioned in the Bible. In this myth, a great flood is marked as the beginning of civilisation. Almost all religions and regions have their own version of a Noah around an event of flood, which marks a changing point in the history of civilisation. The existence of myths around floods is proof enough that throughout human existence floods have always existed and been adapted to. Universally, flood myths repeat the common themes of arks, mountains and godly retribution. They are often couched in terms of a new beginning rather than of the end of the world. These myths may have diffused from a relatively small number of source areas. In the light of being an omnipresent hydrological reality and the matter of mythologies across cultural boundaries, floods can be established as a ubiquitous reality. Floods are a fact of natural and human reality. Floods in social research Contemporary natural disaster research is rich in the results of scientific enquiries and is based largely on numbers that are read as the facts. These numbers dominate the understanding of natural disasters aided by funding patterns, which leads to more researchers resulting in greater numbers of publications, increased visibility and acknowledgment of the findings. This ‘factual’ view resonates with the technocracy and bureaucracy, lending it even more legitimacy. From the sociocultural perspective, the dominant discourse on natural hazards is a phenomenon that requires investigation as a part of the social construction of knowledge (Hewitt, 1983). The dominant macro-perspective in the case of floods is no different. It resonates with what Hewitt characterises as the features of such a dominant system. The bulk of social science research in natural hazards in general and floods in particular reinforces the reductionism of the dominant or macro-view. In that sense, the natural science technological approach is a sociocultural construct that is state and institution centric and considers people as victims. Studies, carried out, in this perspective are unable to include people’s perceptions primarily because people do not appear important in the larger scheme of things. It would be incorrect to say that there exists a gap in knowledge on people’s discourses on floods. The fact remains that there is almost total neglect of the ethno discourses on floods; over a more technical approach to floods. This results in a knowledge base, which is lopsided, highly skewed towards structural interventions and macro-level solutions, and hence, found wanting in multiple ways. Ethno discourses of people living in flood-prone areas for generations have hardly been considered while addressing the issue of floods. It is people and communities who have lived with flood. With the introduction of the state’s role in disasters, people began to lose control over their modes of adaptation. They began to live with floods, flood control and flood policies, the latter of which were top down. A complete understanding of floods remained incomplete because ethno discourses or people’s voices never found their way into flood studies. Flood studies and social sciences in India Social science in India has maintained a safe distance from environment, which was considered unimportant to human existence. Nothing could be further away from the truth. Indian civilisation had been its sensitive to the management and utilisation of natural ecosystems and resources. According to well-defined social norms that respected the known ecological processes, the indigenous modes of natural resources utilisation were sensitive to the limits to which these resources could be used (Bandyopadhyay and Shiva, 1988). In the pre-colonial times, given the absence of massive industrialisation and localised consumption, the requirements of natural resources rarely outstripped demands. Social and religious codes played a part in ensuring the adherence of natural resource utilisation across the political hierarchy. This pattern of consumption changed with the advent of colonial rule. With extensive demands for Indian raw materials, the imperial traders led by the British, but including the French, Portuguese, Dutch and Danish, began to vie for control of natural resources. When the British achieved political supremacy over the Indian sub-continent, a major overhaul of the resource management system was undertaken. The control of the commons was wrested from the locals leading to a conflict with the local people’s age-old rights and practices related to natural resource utilisation. Post-1947, this institutional arrangement remained unchanged with many of the acts, policies and organisations remaining in practice till date. The goal was now that of development and human prosperity using the same mechanisms that had once been used to extract and exploit for colonial capitalism (Bandyopadhyay and Shiva, 1988). The Indian ethos of promoting sustainable development did not find space either in academic discourse or in public policy making. As a result, concern for the environment and its issues began to be viewed as an elitist pursuit in India. This is probably one of the reasons why the study of the environment received little attention. There is a dearth of flood studies overall in the Indian context. This is surprising if one considers the rich tradition of local flood adaptive mechanisms that exist in a country, which faces perennial floods. Despite anthropocentric concerns, an extensive review on research articles and papers in India related to disasters showed that the section of floods hardly seemed to interest sociologists, anthropologists, social workers or political scientists (Kapur, 2009). The near absence of literature to document what and how people make meanings of floods results provides only a partial picture of floods. There are a few exceptions to this trend. Dinesh Mishra (1997) of Barh Mukti Abhiyan (Freedom from Floods Campaign) has been the pioneer in the field of flood studies in social sciences. An engineer by training, he has been at the forefront of challenging top-down and resource-intensive flood policies. His writings based on his work on the rivers in Bihar primarily the Kosi set the trend for an alternative thinking in flood management. Rohan D. Souza looks at floods in the Mahanadi historically and is instrumental in linking economic furthering of the British to control of rivers. Dulal C. Goswami, a geomorphologist from Assam, has worked extensively on the Brahmaputra. While the bulk of his work remains on fluvial aspects, he concentrates on building linkages between understanding the nature of the river in its entirety with people at its core. But for a country that experiences floods annually, very little has been done to include people’s experiences of living with floods. Brahmaputra and floods Methodology The theoretical framework of the study focused on the subjective meaning of reality (in this case the experience of flood) and the articulation of this meaning by people. The emphasis for the study was on the social and people’s construction of reality and order and was predominantly rooted in a constructivist paradigm. The study site was Dhemaji district in the north-east Indian state of Assam. The study was conducted over a period of eighteen months to ensure that people’s experiences in the monsoon season during the floods and also the lean dry season. The participants were people from the communities and activists. In-depth interviews, semi-structured interviews and focused conversations along with non-participant observation were used. A historical overview of floods The river Brahmaputra and its tributaries (some of which are much larger than major Indian rivers) have always overflowed their banks. People have lived in the Brahmaputra valley and experienced the annual floods for long. The first written record of floods dates back to 1570 when the floods throughout Assam were so severe that almost all the crops were damaged causing something like a famine. In 1642 also there was a heavy flood. According to records, embankments did exist and were in use even in those times. Bank erosion and sediment transportation have been mentioned in a copper plate of Indrapal in 1058 AD (Kar, 2012). Embankments were constructed along the Dikhou, Disang, Jhanji, Disai, Kakodonga and the Dhansiri (on the south bank of the Brahmaputra) by the Ahom rulers even as far back as in 1840 but were subsequently neglected. In undivided Lakhimpur district (which includes the present-day Dhemaji district), the Brahmaputra and its tributaries have changed their course over the years. When the British colonised Assam, they constructed new embankments and repaired the older ones. In 1852, an amount of 1080 INR was spent to construct and maintain embankments. The embankments were along the Ranganadi, the Dikrong and their tributaries (Kar, 2012). Hence, floods and embankments were present before the British came in as they did when the British annexed Assam. The network of embankments was obviously nothing like those that exist today. The floods in those times were also different from the floods of today. The present-day nature of floods can be attributed to the massive earthquake that struck Assam on 15 August 1950. The changing face of the Brahmaputra—the 1950 earthquake The 1950 earthquake caused widespread devastation throughout upper Assam in the Mishmis and Adi Hills of Arunachal Pradesh and parts of undivided Lakhimpur and Sibasagar districts (Kar, 2012). Landslides occurred on a very large scale on the hill slopes of the Dihang, Dibang and Subansiri valleys extending upto 100 km into the hills. As a result, of these landslides, big blocks had occurred in many tributaries of the Brahmaputra, which burst after a few days, creating sudden floods, which brought down huge quantities of debris. Extensive siltation of the river beds resulted in the shifting of the river courses. For the Brahmaputra river basin, the topographical features and meteorological situations were enough to create floods even in normal conditions. Large-scale seismic disturbances from time to time upsetting the rivers of the entire region kept the drainage system in a perpetual state of flux. The 1950 earthquake destabilised the drainage system thereby increasing the degree of erosion. The river started to erode its banks and take away large chunks of cultivable land with it. Floods and riverbank erosion coupled with landslides become widespread due to the ongoing ecological degradation resulting in the loss of life, assets and forced displacement (Hussain, 2008). The people saw and experienced the changes but could do little in the face of a government, which did not provide either the space or the platform to include people’s knowledge or their experience in the changing face of the Brahmaputra and its floods. Failure to include people in decision making has resulted in faulty policies, and led to poor human development, deprivation and eventually displacement. Multiple deprivations led to marginalisation many times over. Multiple displacements due to a variety of reasons and multiple displacements due to the same cause are common in the north-east. Internal displacements are caused due to various socio-political, environmental and security-related issues. As Hussain (2008) describes, an individual or community affected by riverine floods or erosion in Assam is forced to migrate across the state often to another part only to be displaced due to a conflict. The displaced status then does not remain a temporary or transitory status, but becomes permanent with and vulnerability. Although the Assam government is reluctant to give numbers, floods and erosion are cited as one of the largest causes for displacement of people. Twenty-seven out of the twenty-nine districts in the state experience floods every year. The study of the Brahmaputra floods—communities living with floods This section describes the experiences of the communities in two flood-prone villages in Dhemaji. These experiences were captured in the form of narratives. It also strives to look at floods as a lived and an everyday experience. These narratives, in a way, explain varied and diverse meanings of floods. The in-depth interviews helped in eliciting a variety of answers to emerge, which added several dimensions—capacities, resilience and vulnerabilities to the flood issue. Both villages comprised of an overwhelming tribal population but Kamalapur had the indigenous Mising population. The Misings are an Indo-Mongoloid tribe, the second most numerous tribal group in Assam, spread across the districts of Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Jorhat, Sonitpur and Tinsukia (Bora, 2014). The Misings have historically lived close to rivers in Assam, while Hajongs, tribes from the erstwhile East Bengal, had settled in the other village Narayanpur from the 1960s. The issue of indigenousness is being a sensitive and divisive issue in Assam that irrespective of their ethnic similarities, groups perceive and proclaim themselves as very different from one other. These two villages offered me the opportunity to explore the notion of the social gradient of floods drawing from the notion of differential vulnerability (Swift, 1989) within the same community or between similar community groups facing the same phenomena of floods. This was a departure from dominant discourse in social science literature that emphasises the similarities between communities to such an extent that differences are eclipsed. It is important to note that this does not mean the differences that culminate in a violent struggle for power, which are relatively easier to identify and probe. It is the subtle and more insidious differences that define everyday relations, and it is in this respect that vulnerabilities have to be located. This was evident in the context of Narayanapur and Kamalapur, where vulnerabilities appeared to be multi-layered. Income, gender, political affiliations, ethnicity, age, level of education and empowerment, previous losses, kinds of hazards (sandcasting, water logging, erosion) and family types (joint or nuclear) were all determinants of the level of vulnerabilities. A single widely accepted definition of vulnerability was found wanting, and the vulnerability analysis matrix that included components of vulnerability and variables affecting these developed by Cannon (2000) proved useful. On observation and interaction with members of both the communities, it was discovered that the vulnerabilities differ considerably despite the geographical proximity to the river and near-homogeneous socio-political realities. This discovery was similar to thinking of the poor not as a fixed category or in a freeze frame snapshot but as a moving picture, which is more truthful and more productive for analysis (Krishna et al., 2008). Vulnerability in this case is linked to larger issues of structural deprivation and political marginalisation, and direct action to correct this is deeply contested. Powerlessness is crucial to understanding vulnerability and yet has failed to be central in either analysis or policy (Chambers, 1989). Vulnerability is deeply rooted, distinct from income poverty, and needs to be addressed by altering the political system, challenging the prevailing economic order and reworking public policy to ensure sustainable development (Blaikie et al., 1994). Hence, the exclusion, insecurity, diminished resilience that leads to vulnerability of these communities is far more serious than the obvious income poverty. Income poverty interventions cannot correct the vulnerabilities which are deeply rooted. In fact, sometimes they might actually do the opposite and affirm that the poor remain poor and vulnerable. Floods as a social disaster This section draws from Blaikie’s idea of the futility of a distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘social’ in a disaster situation (Blaikie et al., 1994). Though academics and researchers have tried to isolate these phenomena, such distinctions are often meaningless and misleading. Disaster must be recognised as a social phenomenon. The historical background to floods and the subsequent policy analysis proved that floods are not mere hydrological events. While floods in the Brahmaputra have assumed disastrous proportions in certain years, it is important to realise that while floods are a hydrological event, they are in equal measure a historical, social and political phenomena. Floods are understood as natural disasters because they disrupt the notion of a social order. Floods are a part of the normal, becoming apparent and obvious to some only with the impact of a hazard, which affect individuals and their social organisations. Hence, there exists a social gradient to floods, which makes it as much a social disaster. The social lens takes into account people’s vulnerability, which is not simply based on the fact that they reside in the river valley or the banks of the river. In Assam, this vulnerability is enhanced manifold by linked factors that make floods much more than a hydrological disaster. Riverine floods cause fatalities and significant damage to assets and property, and it is equally telling in its socio-economic and political origins. This account highlights the impact of a natural disaster in the social sphere. Ratna aged 80 years Earlier the water used to come, stay for a few hours and then recede. Then it started bringing sand with it and later would not recede for days. Then what happened was something I can never forget.. (I had to take a break at this point because she was in tears. The next portion of the conversation was amidst tears. I gave her the option to discontinue. But she continued)…One night as we were sleeping, we felt a jerk. Soon, there was a crash. The chang (house on stilts) collapsed at one end. We woke up the children and rushed out. It was difficult to believe what we saw. Our coconut trees were gone and the land beneath one of the chang was also gone. The river which was far away was all around us. With the new stream coming in, we had lost everything. There was no land left. We could never regain what we had lost. Floods have changed the past, present and futures for many communities that have lived with the river for generations. In this case, the Assam government with an over emphasis on archaic relief measures have worsened the problem. Floods can no longer be looked upon as just riverine floods, which occur during the monsoons. Coupled with erosions, floods result in the loss of land, livelihood and identities. The displacement caused by erosions has a bearing on the migration patterns. The revival of ethnic consciousness means that land is seen as a source of identity, which is contested and closely guarded. The displaced person (s) and communities have to adjust to the politics of living with identity groups other than their own. In the absence of a state-specified rehabilitation programme, the ramification of such movements on the politics of the state is a matter of concern. It remains to be seen whether these losses and changing patterns will lead to a violent agitation. At any rate, the possibility cannot be ruled out. Floods have to be understood as a governance issue with ramifications on the ecology, and the socio-economic and political lives of the people. People’s responses to floods are based on experiences and indigenous knowledge systems. In the case of a perennial or seasonal disaster like floods, these measure range sequentially in stages of prevention, mitigation, adaptation and finally forced migration. There is, therefore, a need for people’s knowledge, capacity and agency to be adequately complemented by accessible flood warning systems and a disaster management rescue, relief and rehabilitation support network (Paul and Routray, 2010). A research participant recounted her experience of living through one such episode highlighting the phases of adaptation Kusum says, ‘We have to manage to live somehow, huddling together on the second floor or just hanging on to the beam pole of the house, seeing roaring and ferocious water rush below, often experiencing the deep fear that the land beneath our house is slipping away and our possessions are gone. We drink the same flood water by boiling it and often go without food for several days till either the water recedes, and we can start cooking or till some one remembers us and comes to rescue us’. For perennial flood-prone areas, it is equally important to acknowledge and incorporate displacement and rehabilitation into a disaster management framework proactively. Unfortunately, technological interventions have made policy making and democracy rather exclusionary to masses who suffer on account of geographic and socio-political exclusion. It is argued that rather than treating science as an unquestionable authority, it must take into account lived experiences and knowledge of those who are the most affected by natural disasters (Pieck, 2013). Science is not immune from the politics of knowledge production such as willingness of political bodies and research councils to address certain research questions and methodologies rather than others (Smith and Pangsapa, 2008). Rapid modernisation or the advent of development driven by science and technology has not necessarily served as the panacea for challenges of subsistence crises or vulnerability to environmental threats (Watts, 1983). An application of these to the areas without taking into consideration the local realities, history and socio-economic structures has actually aggravated the hazards and the vulnerability thereof. Natural disasters occur in a political space. They are not driven by politics, nor are they immune from politics (Cohen and Werker, 2008, p. 795). Hence, disasters are neither natural nor are they apolitical. The role of social work As social workers trained in social action, it seems logical for the profession to be represented at all levels of inclusive disaster management policies. The involvement of social workers, emerging and established in post-disaster situations has enhanced the comprehension of social structures and power dynamics in communities. The presence and engagement of social work professionals is also critical in ensuring equity for the most vulnerable in the aftermath of a disaster and long-term rehabilitation (Jha, 2015). However, there is a gap in as far as the role of social work in capturing the ethno nature of disasters. Throughout the study, it became evidently clear that social work training had not provided the methods to capture people’s knowledge prior to the making of the disaster situation or post the active relief phase. Based on the analysis in her review of social work research on natural disasters, Maglajlic’s (2018) iterates that the majority of the emerging social work scholarship remains concentrated on the big picture events rather than the everydayness of disasters. In the context of this study, traditional social work methods were found to be severely wanting because these were culturally incompatible to the context, dated or completely hierarchical. Social work practices, on the other hand, were limited in their actual ability to comprehend the complexities of identity, gender, political realities and policy nuances. Pursuing an interdisciplinary research, in a field seemingly, the domain of development studies rather than social work (Maglajlic, 2018), was therefore not a matter choice but rather a necessity. Ever since the 1980s, research has evidenced how disparities, mediated by social, economic and political institutions, affect the vulnerability and perpetuate existing inequities in different population groups to climate change, environmental degradation and by extension, natural disasters (Stockholm Environment Institute, 2016). Social work needs to take into account people and their lived spaces while developing response to challenges faced by both in the Global North and South. As the Global Agenda (Jones and Truell, 2012) on Social Work highlights, it is becoming increasingly important to identify regional issues and link these to the global. The Asia-Pacific region identified the need for a region specific social work intervention to natural disasters that had ravaged this geography. This was evidenced by the outcomes of the regional conferences in Kuala Lumpur in 2007 and in Tokyo in June 2011 (Truell, 2011). Community social work emerges as a clear winner to incorporate people’s agency, social cohesion, resilience and knowledge while taking into account social structures, marginalisation and inequities. The role of community social work in Asia-Pacific is already recognised and embedded in practice with social work and social development being intertwined. Disaster community work promotes co-operation and enhances social well-being when there is a pooling together of resources, services and expertise in the community and information sharing (Araki, 2013), relevant in the times of normalcy and in the disaster phase. Community social work holds potential also to work with in tandem with the community in disaster mitigation in the unique set up of Autonomous Councils (ACs) as present in north-east India. AC had been created by the State Government in Assam to ensure welfare and development of a certain tribal community under self-rule in those areas that do not qualify under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. These are local democratic institutions meant to facilitate decentralized governance by people’s representatives dedicated to the welfare and development of particular communities. These councils are meant to take proactive action to address local problems like flood and erosion in a participatory manner and engage intensively in the development of the community and the area for which they had been given the mandate, power and funds. These ACs, whilst beset with their own organisational issues, do provide an existing pre-disaster partnership along with community groups, women’s associations and student organisations (Pyles, 2017). Disasters perpetuate inequality in communities that require external support (Dominelli, 2015) and run a real risk of inducing long-term dependencies especially for those marginalised communities who are unable to respond independently due to a paucity of local capacity. A focus on building capacities that enhance communities’ resilience holds significant lessons for disaster social work for to be cognizant of its bias of race and adhere to principles of anti-oppression (Maglajlic, 2018). This article examined the floods experienced by two communities in a specific context of their geography and socio-political realties taking it to the realm of a microdisaster. Studying microdisasters ( Willett, 2017) could develop a shared cooperative learning process. Communities, social workers could then develop these symbiotic learnings and work towards proper aid mechanisms systems that are able to enrich meaning of and amplify successes to support responses. As climate change and environmental degradation become the norm and climate refugees develop in the South Pacific, the silence in social work remains deafening. Social workers continue to remain ‘responders’ rather than become equals in an increasingly interdisciplinary action and result-oriented practitioners. In the Asia-Pacific (including Oceania), social work education and practice is marked by the lack of theory building and the rigour for it to be taken at the same value as the other social sciences. Unsurprisingly, the profession is severely hampered by a lack of pay equity, an overwhelmingly feminine workforce and a lack representation at the highest policy-making bodies. Social workers have to engage with the complex arguments and realities around climate change (Dominelli, 2011), globalisation, pandemics-deepening inequalities and conflicts to help build resilience in preventing and/or adapting to its consequences. Within a future marked by territorial tensions, individualism over multilateralism, conflict flashpoints, misinformation campaigns and armament, the roles of social work educators and practitioners range from advocacy to community mobilisation to take on what is unfolding. This article emphasises that natural disasters, climate change and a renewed focus on sustainable development are the absolute critical moments that social work has been waiting for. One hopes the Greta Thunberg of Social Work is being discovered a little too soon rather than a little too late. 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TI - Social Work, Disasters and Communities—Challenging the Boundaries of the Profession
JO - The British Journal of Social Work
DO - 10.1093/bjsw/bcaa214
DA - 2021-01-25
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/social-work-disasters-and-communities-challenging-the-boundaries-of-4v0KNRI0tR
SP - 2452
EP - 2465
VL - 50
IS - 8
DP - DeepDyve
ER -