Exploring the Implications of Flood upon the Rural Communities: A Study of Chiniot, Punjab

Abstract

Flood is a type of natural disaster that leaves lasting implication upon the human lives. Most of time, the focus of such disaster has been on the primary or physical losses in terms of damage to infrastructure and entities. However, socio-economic and psychological implication of natural disaster has become equally important. The main objective of the research in hand was to examine these implication and underlying causes of the community’s vulnerability in terms of emotions, livelihood patterns, agriculture, health, education, housing, water, sanitation, assets, disruption in normal life. Data of the present study were collected using quantitative approach through a pretested interview schedule from 240 respondents belonging to 12 most affected villages of district, Chiniot. The results revealed multiple socio-economic and psychological implication upon the communities. According to the social impact, most people felt badly affected as disruption in the education and social events, migration from the area erosion of social assets like neighborhood and kinship associations. In terms of the economic impact, it was large in terms of damage to property, crops, food stock, loss of livestock and other value able assets. Regarding the psychological implication, most of the respondents suffered from anxiety, depression, shock and experienced post traumatic disorder due to lasting effects of this natural tragedy. It is recommended that there must be upgrading of the infrastructure terms of building of new dams or re-capacitating of the existing dams, roads, link canals and the drainage system; that there must be a relocation plan, compulsory insurance, early warning systems, and that there must be good communication in the communities and institutions during floods.