Indian women work to limit monsoon flood damage

Summary of story from AlertNet, October 18, 2011

Women from the southern Indian district of Villupuram, in Tamil Nadu, are leading the way in preparing their communities to deal with possible hazards from this year’s monsoon season.

The women learn and teach swimming and rescue, store life jackets and makeshift rafts, and help to flood-proof the local geography.

They also lobby for the building of bridges, dams and retention walls, and the widening of the barriers which border the rivers.

The initiative is an offshoot of a micro-credit programme that a local non-governmental organisaiton, Kalvi Kendra, has promoted through women’s self-help groups.

Meanwhile, across India 10 such community-based disaster risk reduction initiatives are supported by the Dutch relief and development agency CORAID.

At Sornavur Melpathy village, women’s groups have helped the local self-governance body – the panchayat – build and maintain a rescue centre, one of five in 10 project villages.

Meanwhile, at Sorappur village, disaster risk reduction measures include placing hand pumps on raised platforms to avoid damage and contamination of drinking water during floods.

Other women contribute to the flood relief in their own modest but significant way.

Vairamani Ranganathan, 39, rears goats as a form of insurance against the loss of rice fields to flooding, and Venkatesan, 46, sells milk for a dairy run by the local women’s group, as part of an effort to broaden livelihoods and reduce disaster risk.