People’s Participation in Flood Coping Mechanism in Bangladesh

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine peoples’ participation in flood coping mechanism, to explore the relationships between selected characteristics of the respondents and their flood coping mechanism and to assess the contribution of selected personal and socio-economic characteristics to their participation in flood coping mechanism. Data were collected from a sample of 298 flood affected peoples selected by multistage random sampling procedure from Sirajganj district of Bangladesh during the period from 20 August, 2014 to 20 November, 2014. The flood coping mechanism was determined initially on five aspects namely food collection and management, agricultural products protection, household assets protection, health and sanitation and some social context. Ten statements were identified under each aspect making a total of 50 statements considered as dependent variable of the study. Finally a flood coping mechanism index (CMI) was computed. Among the 50 statements of flood coping mechanism the highest coping mechanism in each aspects was observed where ‘dry food preparation and preservation’, ‘rapid growth short duration crop cultivation’, ‘cooperate with abled relatives’, ‘transportation of all houses to the safe place due to over flood’ and ‘use small boat or vella for defecation purpose etc.  More than two-thirds (68.1 percent) of the respondents had medium, whereas nearly one-fifth (19.1 percent) had low and 12.8 percent had high concentration on flood copping mechanism. Among 15 individual characteristics of the respondents, nine of them had positive and significant relationship with flood coping mechanism while six of them had no significant relationship with flood coping mechanism.