Intrinsic vulnerability redefined
Student name: Mr Manan Parashar
Guide: Dr Suresh Jain
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: TERI School of Advanced Studies
Abstract: This paper has defined ‘needs’ as the ‘intrinsic vulnerabilities’ that cause human beings to seek out livelihoods for sustaining their ‘self,’ or extensions of their ‘self’ within the global or local socio-economic environment. The specific need for self-actualization has been investigated for (i) a local population of auto-rickshaw drivers in New Delhi and (ii) for India at the global level. Using an inductive data-oriented approach towards framing the vulnerability of a human being, each of the profiles of the needs of an individual, a household, a region, and a country have been derived in vulnerability-space. Embedded within the Indian system, the case of the Auto-Rickshaw-Drivers (ARDs) of New Delhi has been presented as an example of a population under environmental strain. Within the current debate of sustainability in the Anthropocene, the case of India has been presented as an example of a country under population strain. The simple model of the livelihood vulnerability index (LVI) used in common literature has been applied to create a composite index of vulnerability for the ARDs using questionnaire-based primary data collected in a field survey for the months of April, May and June 2018, in which the sustained exposure of 151 ARDs to urban air pollution and extreme heat events along with their socio-economic vulnerability has been analyzed. Another composite index has been created for India using 75 national-level indicators, which has then been entered as an indicator of the regional sensitivity of the ARDs. Psychological vulnerability, life satisfaction and religiousness have been explored as additional indicators of adaptive capacity.
Keywords: vulnerability, sustainability, psychology, heat waves, air pollution
