Drought-Induced Human Mobility in Purulia District of West Bengal
Significant attention has focused on the possibility that climate change will displace large populations worldwide, but only a few multivariate studies analyzed drought-induced migration. When people in a particular region face serious environmental disas
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Drought-Induced Human Mobility in Purulia District of West Bengal Shrinwantu Raha and Shasanka Kumar Gayen
15.1 Introduction Drought is considered one of the most adverse, harsh, and damaging natural disasters in terms of socioeconomic implication, social mobility, migration, conflicts, and ecological impacts (Gill 2008; Fan 2009) which are detrimental to the society and life. Drought is commonly defined as the water availability below normal (Fan 2009). For agriculture and other natural resource-dependent households in the developing world, drought is an important negative shock that can undermine livelihoods and well-being without the use of various coping strategies (Gray and Mueller 2012). Historical, qualitative, and ancestral documents indicate that population and mobility have a common response to drought as falling agricultural production pushes households and individuals to seek new opportunities elsewhere. Despite a high level of interest in environment-induced migration, a small number of studies have been successfully done in this arena. Migration is a demographic process which can be associated with environmental hazards in several ways, and it is considered as the primary responses to a natural disaster (Paul 2005) and environmental hazards (Adamo 2010). Munshi (2003) found migration as an adaptive strategy in drought-prone regions of Africa. There is increasing evidence that climate change will affect West Bengal, and especially drought will affect Purulia, and this will be one of the most challenging issues for future development particularly in drier portions or blocks (Khan et al. 2011). According to (Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003) drought affects the agricultural production and natural resource utilization. This phenomena leads to poverty especially for the Bankura which extensively depends on the rainfed agricultural
S. Raha (*) · S. K. Gayen Department of Geography, Coochbehar Panchanan Barma University, Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 Rukhsana et al. (eds.), Habitat, Ecology and Ekistics, Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49115-4_15
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practices. In such a scenario, migration becomes the alternative livelihood strategy for the people of Bankura. The debate and scientific discussions on the drought of Purulia District are going on, and migration becomes the alternative strategy for the local people to cope with this vulnerable situation. There may be two implications of arriving in such a conclusion: first, the context of the climate change scenario for Purulia decreased rainfall pattern especially in the northwestern, and southern block creates severe to extreme drought proneness. second, within West Bengal lowest productivity was recorded in the Purulia where one hectare of net sown area provided crop output worth of Rs. 35 thousands at farm gate price. The success and outcome of the agriculture of the Purulia especially depend on the seasonal rainfall. Lack of salt-
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