Reading list: Disasters in West Bengal: An Interdisciplinary Study
Natural disasters are destructive and tragic events that harm society, economy and environment. Cyclone Aila hit West Bengal, India, in the year 2009, flooding villages and forcing thousands of people from their homes. The cyclone, accompanied by heavy rain, hit the coastal areas of West Bengal, leaving at least 18 people dead and around 0.1 million affected. A large part of the state of West Bengal is exposed to frequent natural catastrophes like floods, cyclones, droughts and landslides that often turn into disasters causing significant disruption of socioeconomic life of communities and loss of human lives and properties.
Global consequences of natural disasters for the survival and livelihoods of individuals and communities are increasing over time. It has been observed that the number of natural disasters occurring now is more than four times than that occurred two decades ago. But at the same time there has been a paradigm shift in the attitude of the global community towards natural hazards, from a relief-centric approach to a holistic and integrated approach that emphasizes prevention, mitigation, and preparedness of extreme events.
It is felt, therefore, in West Bengal too there should be an increasing importance of disaster risk reduction and increased disaster-response capacities towards building disaster resilient societies. Consequently, this demands an interdisciplinary study on natural disasters in this state. This book is such an attempt to accomplish the above requirements. Experts from different fields have contributed articles, starting from meteorology to management and geomorphology to economics, on the basis of which this book has been edited.
“MICRODIS – Integrated Health, Social and Economic Impacts of Extreme Events: Evidence, Methods and Tools” under the EU Sixth Framework Programme has provided financial assistance to publish this book. So, we would like to thank Professor Debarati Guha-Sapir, Microdis Coordinator and Professor, Catholic University of Louvain, Brussels, Belgium for her inspiration and continuous cooperation in preparing this book. The editors also acknowledge all sorts of help provided by Prof. P. N. Ghosh, Vice-Chancellor, Mr. G. K. Pattanayak, Finance Officer of Jadavpur University.
We hope the topics in this edited book would be of immense interest to the researchers, planners and policy makers engaged in disaster management in West Bengal as well as India.