Considerable proportion of disadvantaged populations are still out of radar of the risk and resilience dialogue & action world-wide, especially in the developing countries. The macro-level aggregations vis-à-vis disaster risk reduction mask the inequalities at grassroots. This is especially true for the indigenous populations. Whatever little attention these populations have received is more towards the tribals while the plight of the nomadic tribes is unaddressed.
The paper shares learnings and policy implications from the efforts (including action-research and interventions) of the author and his team with the indigenous populations in India with strong focus on the gender dimension and participation. It builds on grassroots participatory action research and global innovations developed by the author to assess and address the vulnerabilities of these populations. These innovations, which were felicitated with the global Risk Award 2015, include: women’s participation in decision making, developing a cadre of women master trainers cum volunteers, using participatory methodology of ‘Gender-Sensitive Community Self-Assessment & Planning’, developing innovative scientific and systematic tools like ‘Settlement level Disaster Risk Assessment & Risk Reduction Plan’, child friendly IEC visual tools, creative media of communication in the form of street plays & puppet shows, grassroots sustainability mechanisms like ‘Settlement level Disaster Risk Reduction Committee’ with atleast 50% women members as key decision makers and building a cadre of ‘young women & men leaders’ through the ‘Movement of Youth for Disaster Risk Reduction’ (MY DRR).
A special feature of these efforts has been that it covers both the types of the indigenous populations: tribals (STs- Scheduled Tribes in Indian context) and the nomadic tribals (DNTs- Denotified & Nomadic Tribes in Indian Context). Usually, the DNTs get missed from most of the risk and resilience dialogue. The author will elaborate the relevance of these efforts from the perspective of the SDGs. Given their substantial numbers (In India alone: STs are 104 million, DNTs are 107 million, each of these communities alone would constitute 12th largest country in the world) and that most of them are still highly vulnerable, their disaster risk reduction and resilience building is crucial for the attainment of the SDGs.