Joint survey on floods in Kerala and financial inclusion

Thanks to the invitation that Sheri Markose (Co-I) and Thankom Arun (PI) received from Prof. Rudra Sensarma and his Group at Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK) to present our findings on Financial Inclusion in September 2018, we were able to forge a project with them on a field survey of the response of low income households to extreme weather events in that region.

A project write-up is available from the ACEFINMOD website.

In collaboration with IIMK researchers Rudra Sensarma, Anil Thomas and Remya Tressa Jacob, we developed an extensive questionnaire to see what impact the recurrent flooding has had on the residents of some parts of Kerala. In particular, we are keen to see if any of the PMJDY Insurance products and other governmental measures were able to ameliorate the negative impact of the floods or if the latter have made poor households more open to taking up insurance schemes. What barriers stand in the way of flood hit households from availing these products. For this, primary data was collected from some 700 residents of Wyannad in Kerala. Remya Tressa Jacob, IIMK, organized and oversaw the data collection .

In December 2019, Sheri Markose visited IIMK to give a presentation on new results on our project and to discuss the results from the survey.