Vedantam Niranjan,M. DINESH KUMAR,NITIN BASSI,YUSUF KABIR, INSTITUTE FOR RESOURCE ANALYSIS AND POLICY, , niranjan@irapindia.org
Abstract
An index, which helps identify communities for surveillance of water supply in rural areas, is derived. The index helps compute the vulnerability of a household to problems associated with lack of water for domestic and productive needs. This composite index has six sub-indices, viz., water supply and use index; family occupation and social profile index; social institutions and ingenuity index; climate and drought proneness index; water resources availability index; and financial stability index. The number of “minor” factors which together are considered to have influence on the measure of these sub-indices, the underlying assumptions, the methods for methods and procedure to compute and the data sources are also discussed. Computation of vulnerability index for three villages, viz., Varoshi, Kerkatta and Chikkali in Maharashtra is presented. Out of these three, households in Kerkatta, which is located in a hot and semi-arid, hard rock area, have the highest vulnerability.
Keywords: vulnerability index, multiple use water services, surveillance of water supply