GAR 2009 POLICY NOTE: TAMIL NADU, INDIA
Development Context
Tamil Nadu with , with a population of 62.4 million in 2001 (6.1 per cent of the national population in 2001) is located at its southern tip, adjoining the Bay of Bengal is located at the southern most tip of India. It is ranked 7th of 20 largest states in India, wWith a per capita Net State Domestic Product (NSDP) of Rs. 29,958 in 2005 -06 which is 1.16 times that of India, the State ranked 7th among the 20 large States in India.the national average . Scheduled Castes (SCs) constitute 19 per cent of the sState’s population and Scheduled Tribes (STs) less than 1 per cent. The State’s vulnerability to disasters came to the fore during the 2004 Indian Ocean tTsunami of 2004 that caused massive deaths in the coastal districts.
Tamil Nadu is India’s the most urbanized large State (44 percent) of India, with the proportion of population residing in urban areas being 43.86 per cent in 2001. Itswith a diversified economy. is also diversified. The primary sector contributeds only 1413.96 per cent of the NSDP in 2004 while accounting for 46 percent of the though its share in work force, was relatively high at 46.4 per cent, indicating the relatively low per capita agrarian incomes per capitaand productivity in this sector. The secondary sector, contributed 3029.5 per cent to of the NSDP the GDP (2004-05) and employed 26.11 per cent of the work force, while the . The tertiary sector’s output contribution to NSDP at 576.9 per cent was much higher than its share in work force employed in this sector atshare of 287.52 per cent indicating relatively high per capita incomes of the workers engaged in some of the highthe importance of high productivity sub-sectors such as information technology (IT), financial and real esState services to the state economy. In all, there is a very largeR rural-urban income gaps in incomes in the State are high because of this sectoral output asymmetry..
Drought is the most serious hazard, with 23 of the 30 districts being drought prone. The urbanized districts of central coastal Tamil Nadu (, viz., Chennai, Thiruvallur and Kanchipuram, Cuddalore and Nagapattinam) in the central coastal belt, Kanyakumari in the southern region, and the north-western districts of Salem and Dharmapuri are all highly prone to floods. The entire coastal belt, in particular the southern Tamil Naduparts isare also highly prone to cyclones and high winds with (50 cyclones have hitstriking this region overfrom 1990-2005. period), 23 of the 30 districts of the State are drought proneWhile Tamil Nadu is exposed to limited local seismic risk, , and the entire eastern coastal belt and the southern tip was impacted by the tTsunami. In short, a large part of the State is multi-hazard prone to various hazards.
Vulnerability is also high in Tamil Nadu Two factors that need to be noted in the context of disaster risk reduction in Tamil Nadu are (a)as more than half the population resides inresides in rural areas with very low incomes, and is highly vulnerable to drought and other income shocks. The that could be triggered by intensive and extensive disasters and (b) the relatively high level of urbanization may itself bring in aappears to be inducing a number of new vulnerabilities from flooding and fires to industrial accidents that are poorly understood, and hence inadequately addressed. new set of disaster risks that are less than well understood.
Poverty Profile, Dynamics and Vulnerability
Tamil Nnadu’s has been more successful in record in poverty alleviation has been betterreduction than that at the all India level,many Indian states, particularly with respect to urban poverty. The rTural poverty he Head Count Ratio (HCRs) of poverty declined significantly from 32 to 23 percent over 1993-2004, while the urban HCR.48 per cent in 1993-94 to 22.80 per cent in 2004-05 in rural areas and at afell faster rate from 40 to39.77 per cent to 22.20 per cent in urban areas. Consequently, the total number of rural poor in rural areas declined from 12.17 to 7.7 65 million and in urban poor areas from 8.04 to 6.91 million. The depth of poverty declined by 50 percent over this decade from 7.3 to 3.7 in rural areas and from 10.2 to 5.3 in urban areas, with a significantly higher depth than in rural areas. This is corroborated by the 2004 urban Gini coefficient of 36.1 being higher than the rural Gini at 32.2.
During 2004-05, the Scheduled Caste (SC) group had a higher headcount ratio of poverty at 31.2 per cent in the rural and 40.2 per cent in the urban areas While this is lower than the ratios at the all India level (where the incidence of poverty among the SCs is 36.8 per cent and 39.9 per cent for the rural and urban areas respectively), the HCR of SCs in Tamil Nadu is 50 per cent higher than the overall HCR in the rural areas and double the overall urban HCR.
The poverty gap index, which indicates the depth of poverty, declined by 50% in this decade - from 7.3 to 3.7 in rural areas and from 10.2 to 5.3 in the urban areas. The urban poverty gap is higher than rural poverty gap indicating that the depth of poverty in urban areas is higher than that in the rural areas. This is corroborated by the fact that the urban Gini coefficients are higher than the rural Gini coefficient, 32.2 per cent and 36.1 per cent respectively in 2004-05. Economic growth in Tamil Nadu does not seem to be trickling down to the extent required and public policy interventions would need to be stepped up, to address the issue.
In terms of human development, Tamil Nadu with a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.53 in 2001 is 3rd among India’s 15 largest states. The state has made considerable progress is among the top 5 States in the country. The State has reached the 3rd position among the 15 large States in India on the Human Development Index with a value of 0.531 in 2001, an improvement over the value of 0.466 recorded in 1991. Improvement in in raising its HDI from 0.47 in 1991, because of was on account of higher rapid improvements achievements in income and education components. In education, for the entire population as well as for SCs, the State has higher achievement than all India. In the year 2004-05, theR rural female literacy in Tamil Nadu was 554.5 per cent and than of female SCs 44 percent, compared to whereas for all India it was 45 and 32 percent for India. .0 Tamil Nadu’s per cent. The rural SC female literacy in Tamil Nadu was 43.6 per cent as compared to 31.5 per cent at the all India level indicating the pay offs to policy attention paid to ensuring the reach of public services to the people belonging to the disadvantaged groups. The State’s performance on health delivery is weak, with its is however not as satisfactory with the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) among the children being 36 (per 1000 children born) for males and 37 for females in 2006. This compareds poorly with the IMR ofto Kerala which sets the benchmark in this respect with an IMR ofat 15. In Moreover, as per the National Family Health Survey, 2005-06, 25 percent of the under-3 were % children in the State (age 0-3 years) are stunted, 22 percent % children are wasted and 33 percent% of them are underweight.
Strong differentials still exist in Tamil Nadu with 31 percent of the Scheduled Caste (SCs) being poor in rural and 40 percent in urban areas, nearly twice the mean HCR in urban and 50 percent higher than the mean rural HCR. Economic growth does not seem to be trickling down to the most vulnerable, in spite of a long history of pro-poor programmes and policy interventions.
Differential vulnerability, especially of marginal groups like the SCs, women and children continues to be a serious challenge in Tamil Nadu, as the patterns of mortality and loss during the 2004 tsunami indicated. With a rapid build-up of urban population without adequate infrastructure or public services, urban vulnerability can be expected to increase.indicating the magnitude of the challenge on this front.
Disaster Risk Profile
Extensive disaster events in the State have caused widespread damage in Tamil Nadu. Cumulatively they have caused more, mortality, destruction and damage to of houses than the intensive events. The only major intensive disaster in the recent past has been the Tsunami of 2004. The intensive disaster risk blocks are located all along the coast of the State and pockets in the Nilgiri hillsAlmost all of the state is exposed to . Nearly all talukas of the State are under the influence of extensive risks. This is primarily due to the widespread incidence of drought, fires and epidemics across the state due the limited coverage of irrigation, poor quality of some of the housing, high urban densities and weak health care delivery systems.
The most serious recent intensive event was the 2004 tsunami that tends to skew the loss record considerably. Intensive risk is concentrated in areas along the coast and pockets in the Nilgiri hills.
Mortality: Intensive Disaster -risk Mortalit Mortality: y Extensive Disaster - Mortalityrisk
Intensive Disaster - Houses Destroyed: Intensive risk Extensive Disaster – Houses Destroyed: Extensive risk
Houses Damaged: Intensive risk Intensive Disaster - Houses Damaged Houses Damaged: Extensive risk Extensive Disaster – Houses Damaged
Urbanisation level, 2001
Intensive events have contributed most to Mortality in the state, especially the 2004 tsunami. On the other hand, much of the housing damage and destruction has been caused by extensive events such as floods, fires and other hydro-meteorological risks.
Tamil Nadu has a long history of chain tank based irrigation, which has fallen largely into disuse. The catastrophic failure of tanks, flooding in silted channels and rivers during extreme weather events including cyclones are causes of flood damage. Pockets of High extensive risk pockets are concentrated located mainly around Tamil Nadu’sthe urban centres, due to high population densities, the location of informal settlements and poor drainage infrastructure and services.
As indicated by the maps, most of the housing damage and deaths have been inflicted by extensive risk such as floods rather than intensive risks. Among intensive risks, Tsunami has caused the highest mortality and than any other hydro-metrological event. The damage due to floods is mainly around large urban centres primarily due to high density of population in these areas.
Disaster induced mortality is relatively low in Tamil Nadu compared to other Indian states, except for extreme intensive events like the tsunami. House destruction is however, much more common. The above graph depicts the houses destroyed due to disasters at regular intervals during 1976-2006. The sudden increase in 2004 is due to the Tsunami. However, the deaths due to disasters have been in fewer years as compared to the years when several houses were destroyed. Floods cause the largest share of house destruction and damage but they do not cause as much less mortalitymortality in Tamil Nadu. It is important to note that the StateTamil Nadu has a long record of strong pro-poor welfare programmes measures for the poor which could have contributed to the minimization of deaths during extensive disasters such as floods.lowered vulnerability to extensive risks like flooding.
Poverty-Risk Relationship
The poverty-risk relationship is more difficult to establish in Tamil Nadu than other Indian states, partially because of the dramatic reduction in poverty incidence and depth, the demographic transition that the state is going through and the strong interventions that have been made in most areas of human development, except possibly in some health-related
The high level of urbanisation and the transition from farm to non-farm employment are well on their way in Tamil Nadu, which also has a higher share of industrial in total employment than many Indian states. Hence, the impact of drought, which used to be scourge leading to famines and mass migrations, as recent as the early 20th century is much less than before.
The availability of data on urban risks in the state is weak, as DesInventar does not distinguish between urban and rural areas. Therefore, unbundling emergent risk-poverty relationships in urban Tamil Nadu is also not possible at this point in time.
The poverty and disaster risk relationship in the State has been tested for the one way relationship - does poverty, defined in a multidimensional manner (including deprivations not only in income but also education and health dimensions) impact disaster outcomes?. In order to understand the relationship, data on disaster risks and poverty were analysed both at the district and sub-district (taluka) level. AThe analysis is further was constrained by the absence of official district level poverty estimates in India, including for Tamil disaggregated time-series data on household expenditure, assets and shocks and official district poverty data for India and Tamil Nadu.
Nadu. The analysis was therefore conducted using proxy indicators for poverty. Hence, disaster impacts reflected in mortality, houses damaged and destroyed by each disaster were correlated with the incidence of poverty (using estimates of individual researchers), housing conditions, and human development indicators at the district level. However, this analysis did not indicate any correlation among the indicators included.
At the block level ( a unit of administration below the district)l, cross-sectional correlations were analysed relating disaster impacts with the proxy indicators of poverty and human capability deprivation. In the absence of poverty estimates, temporary housing which had a good correlation with poverty was taken as a proxy. Once again, the mortality caused, houses destroyed and houses damaged did not have any significant correlation with percentage population residing in temporary housing and percentage literate population.
However, Block level analysis for the vulnerable Scheduled Castes throws up interesting results: