Distress Situation in Dryland Areas Impacts on Livelihood Pattern and the Coping Strategies: A Review

This paper is a review of the different coping mechanisms adopted by the households in different dryland area of India. The primary focus of the present paper is to understand the coping mechanisms adopted by the households in the dryland areas to cope with the distress situations in India. The paper has two fold objectives; one is to understand the impact of drought on the livelihood of the people in the dryland areas. Secondly, the paper aims to understand the different mechanisms adopted by the households to avoid the distress situations. The review helps to understand that most of the societies in dryland do not manage drought or distress situation in isolation from their overall farming system. They develop strategies like loss-minimizing land utilization and social arrangement to deal with drought. Thus, for the policy framework the proper understanding of the local people's awareness, response, priorities and own coping strategies is needed. A household level analysis of the different coping mechanisms developed by the poor villagers might help in the policy analysis. [Working Paper No. 91]. URL:[http://www.cess.ac.in/cesshome/wp/RULNR_Patnaik_working_paper_91.pdf].