IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/nathaz/v28y2003i1p199-210.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economics of Flood Protection in India

Author

Listed:
  • Sujata Gupta
  • Akram Javed
  • Divya Datt

Abstract

The peculiar rainfall pattern in Indiarenders the country highly vulnerable to floods. Forty million hectares of land, roughlyone-eighth of the country's geographical area, is prone to floods. Each year, floods cause extensive damage to life and property, losses being exacerbated by rapid population growth, unplanned development and unchecked environmental degradation. The country has been tackling the problem through structural and non-structural measures. While non-structural measures like flood forecasting aim at improving the preparedness to floods by seeking to keep people away from floodwaters, structural measures involve the construction of physical structures like embankments, dams, drainage channels, and reservoirs that prevent floodwaters from reaching potential damage centres. Almost 48% of the vulnerable area has been provided with reasonable protection, though floods continue to cause widespread losses year after year. This paper examines the incidence of floods and the trends in consequent losses in the eastern region of the country – one of the most vulnerable – with the objective of studying the efficacy of flood protection measures in the region. Based on a simple regression exercise for three highly vulnerable states in the region, the paper argues that flood protection measures have been inadequate in controlling losses and reducing vulnerability. Regressions for the three states over the period 1971 to 1996 indicate that the level of protection is an insignificant explanatory variable in explaining the number of people (adjusted for increases in density) affected by floods; while area affected, as an indicator of the intensity of floods remains the main loss-determining factor. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003

Suggested Citation

  • Sujata Gupta & Akram Javed & Divya Datt, 2003. "Economics of Flood Protection in India," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 28(1), pages 199-210, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:28:y:2003:i:1:p:199-210
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1021142404009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1021142404009
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1021142404009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ritzema, H.P., 2016. "Drain for Gain: Managing salinity in irrigated lands—A review," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 18-28.
    2. Pallavi Tomar & Suraj Kumar Singh & Shruti Kanga & Gowhar Meraj & Nikola Kranjčić & Bojan Đurin & Amitanshu Pattanaik, 2021. "GIS-Based Urban Flood Risk Assessment and Management—A Case Study of Delhi National Capital Territory (NCT), India," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-20, November.
    3. Phung Thanh Binh & Xueqin Zhu & Rolf Groeneveld & Ekko van Ierland, 2016. "Mediation Analysis of Factors that Influence Household Flood Mitigation Behavior in Developing Countries: Evidence from the Mekong Delta, Vietnam," EEPSEA Research Report rr20160311, Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA), revised Mar 2016.
    4. Omvir Singh & Hawa Singh, 2015. "The response of farmers to the flood hazard under rice–wheat ecosystem in Somb basin of Haryana, India: an empirical study," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 75(1), pages 795-811, January.
    5. Subhankar Chakraborty & Sutapa Mukhopadhyay, 2019. "Assessing flood risk using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and geographical information system (GIS): application in Coochbehar district of West Bengal, India," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 99(1), pages 247-274, October.
    6. Nizamud Din Essa & Muneeb Aamir, 2019. "Analysis of Flood Damage Assessment through WorldView-2, Quick Bird and Multispectral Satellite Imagery in Southern Punjab, Pakistan," International Journal of Innovations in Science & Technology, 50sea, vol. 1(3), pages 120-139, July.
    7. Bahram Saghafian & Saeed Golian & Mohammad Elmi & Ruhangiz Akhtari, 2013. "Monte Carlo analysis of the effect of spatial distribution of storms on prioritization of flood source areas," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 66(2), pages 1059-1071, March.
    8. Omvir Singh & Manish Kumar, 2013. "Flood events, fatalities and damages in India from 1978 to 2006," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 69(3), pages 1815-1834, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:28:y:2003:i:1:p:199-210. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.