Economic recovery of disaster survivors: a critical analysis

The economic impact of disaster is directly associated with the loss of capital and also the amount of compensation to be distributed among the survivors. However, this is still a problematic issue in developing/backward economies. The current method of compensation considers the material value of the assets and does not offer a comprehensive package to assess the use value and dependency value of the lost asset. This paper has selected the Odisha Super Cyclone 1999 and Uttarakhand Flood 2013 as the cases to elaborate the issue of economic recovery of disaster survivors. It attempts to have a comparative analysis of these disasters and also the time taken for recovery. The long-term economic recovery of such communities directly depends on the post-disaster economic support system, which could be either a new livelihood program or a program enabling the community to find effective alternatives.