**7. Conclusion**

*Natural Hazards - Impacts, Adjustments and Resilience*

value of human civilization?

**6. State & its machineries**

resist, and recover from the impacts of a natural or human-made hazard"5

the lens of the given definition we just look at the story of Sunil (Baundi, 40 years old man) who asked "I had ten bigha farmland in which I used to cultivate crops affluently. Now every year water is stuck in the land so now we are neither able to cultivate in that nor sell since purchasers will give a very little amount of money. Even we are in confusion we should start a business or migrate towards the cities or should continue in risky agriculture. Going to other cities is difficult since I have four small children. Due to the dearth of money, I am not able to provide quality education. We are just trying to alive ourselves…nothing more". The present and the future of the communities of the region is in dark. Several farmers have changed their production of crops. Sukhan (Jogapurva, 45 years old man) told "earlier we used to produce wheat and rice like commercial crops, that was helpful in fulfilling my livelihood issues, but now I am compelled to change my agricultural production, in which there is no benefit and cannot properly fulfill the need of my livelihood. Flood has converted my fertile land into desert, so now I just plant watermelon in my farmland". Losing all forms of *capital* and displacing from its native places*,* the communities of the area are in the process of just being a gathering of the people or crowds in different cities or nearby places. They are uprooting from its age-old livelihood sources that were sustainable in its nature. Their vulnerability arises grave questions to the policymakers and academicians. What would be the future of such communities in terms of health, education, employment and etc.? What can we expect from such communities in the domain of creativity and productivity, which are the core

A public representative of the district, Rajesh Tripathi (Bahraich, 50 years old, man) told: "There is no strong long-term planning of administration, they just work during the flood, and once the flood is over, they get rid of their responsibilities". Here, the response and action of the local administration can be understood as in the three periods, before the flood, during the flood and after the flood. There is a serious dearth of long-term planning and preparedness before the state, so cannot be denied the fact that it is the very reason for the ravage of the flood. The eyes of the administration open just after the coming of the disaster. During the disaster, local administration works only as an agency of relief distribution like biscuits, plastics, rice, gram, matchbox and etc., unfortunately, discrimination in terms of caste, class, gender and so on, in this allocation is also clearly visible. Astonishingly, the role of the administration in the post-flood period is much more deleterious than the flood. Corruption in rehabilitation processes, social-conflict induced by the official's work-culture, unemployment, diseases and so many socio-economic problems rapidly emerge in this period. For instance, massive soil erosion takes place during the disaster, which erases the demarcations of farmlands of the people. They go to the district's land department offices for the re-demarcation of the farmlands, but officials demand a heavy amount in bribe, which is very difficult for the people, who had recently been ruined by the flood. Therefore, they try to manage it on its own community-based understating, but several times it turns into social mayhem. Sluggish and irresponsible practices of the administration can be noticed

<sup>5</sup> Nani Maiya Sujakhu, Sailesh Ranjitkar, Rabin Raj Niraula, Muhammad Asad Salim, Arjumand Nizami, Dietrich Schmidt-Vogt & Jianchu Xu. 2018. *Determinants of livelihood vulnerability in farming communities in two sites in the Asian Highlands, Water International*. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02

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We should not hide our face from the fact that our unmapped and uneven developmental policies have multiplied the pace and intensity of natural disasters that subsequently sabotage the rural livelihood setup, which is sustainable in its form from the time immemorial. The need of the hour is to come out from such public policies that overlook the interest of the agrarian communities since India's around seventy percent population live in the rural areas only. Apart from policy-making, one of the major problems is in the implementation of existing policies, since the bureaucracy is indulged in extreme corruption and money-making through illegal sources that finally hampers the livelihood issues of the communities.
