Abstract

This document is an output from the “Voices After Disaster: narratives and representation following the Kerala floods of August 2018” project supported by the University of East Anglia (UEA)’s GCRF QR funds. The project is carried out by researchers at UEA, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, and Canalpy, Kerala. In this briefing, we provide an overview of some of the emerging narratives of recovery in Kerala and discuss their significance for post-disaster recovery policy and practice. A key part of the work was a review of reported recovery activities by government and NGOs, as well as accounts and reports of the disaster and subsequent activities in the media and other information sources. This was complemented by fieldwork on the ground in two districts, in which the teams conducted a total of 105 interviews and group discussions with a range of community members and other local stakeholders. We worked in Alleppey district, in the low-lying Kuttanad region, where extreme accumulation of floodwaters had been far in excess of the normal seasonal levels, and in Wayanad district, in the Western Ghats, where there had been a concentration of severe flash floods and landslides.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24943/VAD09.2021