Livelihood Resilience in Bihar Districts

This is almost like a long hiatus after I am restarting to write and share some useful write-ups, etc. Hopefully, this would be regular...Recently, we did some quick check on the understanding of livelihood resilience at the district level in Bihar..

Livelihood resilience is visualized as ideal, wherein variability of bio-physical, economic and social systems operates within respective threshold limits and adaptive capabilities (Swaminathan, 1991). The Livelihood Resilience Index (LRI) developed here, includes three major components: Bio-physical resources, Economic resources, and Social resources. The resilience of bio-physical systems is influenced by factors like biodiversity, redundancies, response diversity, spatiality, and governance and management plans. The Bio-physical resilience index (BRI), is largely constructed from stock and flow resource indicators to capture the dynamics of climate change and impacts on bio-physical (re)production cycle by judiciously selecting static and dynamic indicators.

Social resilience can be increased through improvements in communications, risk awareness, and preparedness. Social resilience index (SRI) can be constructed from personal and social well-being indicators, like health, nutrition, education, employment, income-consumption, housing, and energy. Further, there is a need to examine whether the resources in a given context are over-exploited to meet the local and or global economic demand crossing the threshold limits of the resilience.

The Economic Resilience Index (ERI) is constructed from production, productivity and resource allocation indicators, for example, shifting attention to ‘more crop per drop’ and total factor productivity growth. The indicators were carefully chosen at the district level to capture the essence of the livelihood resilience as well as the practicality of available data. The standardized index, adapted from that used in the Human Development Index, computed and rescaled into a single scalar – a composite index, the LRI is scaled from 0 (least resilient) to 1 (most resilient).

Here is the link ET BLOGS