Understanding households' vulnerability to floods: A study in Dhemaji District of Assam, India Basumatary Rupon PhD, Department of Economics, Cotton University, Guwahati, Assam, India Email id: ruponbasur@rediffmail.com Online published on 10 October, 2018. Abstract The idea of vulnerability has recently emerged as a subject of academic interest and is used in both quantitative and qualitative sense in many fields, including disaster risk studies and climate change in particular. The term, however, has been defined differently but with common connotation to mean an ex-ante situation of risk in the context of some hazards. The present paper is based in Dhemaji district in the state of Assam, India. The district is one of the major flood hit districts in the state, with about 46.50% of its land area identified as flood hazard area. Based on the available conceptual frameworks, the paper tries to construct a vulnerability index to assess household level flood vulnerability for a sample of 151 households drawn from 10 flood prone villages belonging to two highly flood affected community development blocks in the district. The analysis shows that majority of the households have high vulnerability index, however with variation in terms of their individual vulnerability factors. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows that there are some homogenous sub-sets of villages, but with overall significant difference in the average household vulnerability across villages. The three household groups-households from “low lying flood prone villages', from “occasionally affected villages' and those from “villages affected by river courses changes'-have significantly different vulnerability magnitude. Vulnerability reduction policy formulation needs differential approach to incorporate variation in the individual vulnerability factors rather than looking at the overall vulnerability magnitudes of the households. Top Keywords Households, Vulnerability, Floods, Dhemaji, Assam. Top |