1. Executive summary
India is the world’s largest democracy and has been one of the fastest growing economies in recent years. However, due to its large population of over 1.2 billion people and uneven distribution of the fruit of its rapid economic growth, the country is classified by the World Bank as a “lower middle-income” country. Poverty remains a major challenge; the UN’s Human Development Index, a composite index of life expectancy, education and income, ranks India 119 out of 169 countries. Disparities in income and human development are on the rise. Twenty-nine per cent of the population lives below the poverty line (national) and 39 per cent of the adult population is illiterate. The crude death rate in 2005 7.6 per 100,000 population.
India is also one of the most disaster-prone countries with a complexity of recurrent natural and human-created disasters such as floods, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes, landslides, endemic diseases, communal violence and civil unrest. According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), approximately 75,000 people were reported killed and 500 million affected by various disasters from 1998 to 2008. More than 50 million people are annually affected to varying degrees by disasters and approximately 42 million people are considered internally displaced due to disasters and conflict in the country. The vulnerability to disasters is aggravated by social, cultural, economic, institutional and political factors.
