‘Disasters displaced 2.8mn within India’

Nearly 2.8 million people in India were internally displaced last year due to disasters and conflicts linked to identity and ethnicity, a new report by a monitoring centre said.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre of the Norwegian Refugee Council released a report that ranked India at third position among countries most affected by displacement related to disasters in 2016 followed by China and the Philippines.

There have been 448,000 new displacements due to conflict and violence in India. Nearly 2,400,000 people were displaced due to disasters, the report said.

“Together with China and the Philippines, the country regularly sees the largest numbers of displacements. In recent years, displacement has mainly been associated with flood and storm events, although approximately 68% of India is prone to drought, 60% is vulnerable to earthquakes and 75% of the country’s coastline is prone to cyclones and tsunamis,” the report said.

Combined with the country’s high population density, with a third of the population living in multidimensional poverty and substandard housing with less resources to cope, particularly in disaster-prone areas and environmental degradation, climate change and geological hazards, India’s exposure to hazards makes it the country most at risk of damage and displacement related to disasters in South Asia, the report added.

“Conflict is largely linked to identity and ethnicity, and it has taken the form of violent secessionist and identity-based movements and localised violence, including conflicts based on religion and caste,” the report said.

India’s significant economic growth and attempts to improve its social protection system have failed to resolve the problem of inequality between social groups and between people living in urban and rural areas.