Vulnerability of Tribal Rural Households in India: Measuring the Current Status, Risks of Climate Shocks and Impact of Potential Interventions for Improving Rural Livelihoods

摘要

The present study has estimated the household vulnerability indices by using the primary data collected from 684 tribal rural households from 10 villages in Jharkhand. Majority of the tribal rural households fall in medium to high vulnerability categories necessitating the urgency of income enhancement and livelihood improvement interventions in tribal areas. The climate change in the form of declining rainfall had adverse implications as additional 15 per cent of the households pertaining to mediumvulnerability category fell into the most vulnerable category. Though efforts to improve the area under irrigation as well as farm incomes brought some improvement in the situation, the impact was not as widespread as is demanded by the situation. Various development interventions aimed at increasing farm as well as non-farm income, generating employment, improving education and encouraging productive investments benefited between one-fourth and one-third of the tribal households. The combination of allsuch interventions had a larger impact as it benefited more than half of the tribal households to jump from high to medium level or from medium to low level of vulnerability. The study points to the need for a comprehensive strategy to improve incomes and rural livelihood with a combination of interventions. Such a strategy will bring larger socio-economic impacts through synergies.