Understanding Grassroots Recovery: India Field Trip 2016

In Gujarat, India, a group of nine DEP students worked in partnership with The All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) on a study focussing on the long-term recovery of Gujarat after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. As a group we decided to focus our research on shelter, livelihoods and lessons learnt over the 15 year period since the quake. While our primary methodology for carrying out this research was interviewing, we also applied others such as transect walks and sketching.

We spent six days travelling around different rural and urban communities in Gujarat, particularly in the Kutch area, where we interviewed inhabitants and institutions on their recovery since the earthquake. For some of this time we partnered with the Self Employed Woman’s Association (SEWA), a women’s membership co-operative who work with women to enable their skills to provide them with an income. SEWA worked with communities after the 2001 earthquake in a variety of ways including providing shelter and livelihood opportunities. We visited communities that had benefited from their shelter package and heard inspiring stories of sewing kits being distributed just nine days after the earthquake to enable survivors to continue to generate incomes.

After our period of research on the road, we attended the ‘8th South-South Citizenry Based Development sub-Academy (SSCBDA) in Ahmedabad hosted by AIDMI and the United Nations. The three day conference was a great opportunity to listen to practitioners’ experience from different countries; and to learn more about how micro-insurance programmes for small business can help to mitigate risk. We concluded the SSCBDA with a DEP presentation on our research findings.

We are excited to have recently had our findings outlined in the report 'Youth Leadership in Long-term Recovery', which has been published in March 2016 issue of southasiadisaster.net; a publication that is distributed globally to agencies including the UN.

The field trip was a fantastic opportunity both personally and academically. Academically it allowed us to engage with local people and to understand recovery at a grassroots level. Further, exposure to the work of AIDMI and the South-South academy was interesting and partnering with them was enjoyable. On a more personal level, it was memorable to participate in a culture full of tradition from eating their delicious food to flying kites with locals in the International kite festival. 

Katie Reilly, DEP 15-16