Landslide risk, resilience and resistance: confronting community resilience with economic benefits in landslide-prone areas in Kerala

Landslides are increasingly posing challenges to disaster risk management institutions in countries like India. Unlike other disaster risk reduction measures that include community-based resilience, it is a challenging task in the present context of development. Landslide-prone areas in India are not just risky geographical regions with vulnerable people; instead these are 'emerging economic zones'. The economic value of these regions displaces the risk and hence, state governments and central government often find it difficult to promote community-based resilience in landslide-prone areas. The community often interprets resilience as resistance. Community-based resilience in landslide-prone area never follows the general theoretical position on resilience as the ability to bounce back. Large-scale concentrations of quarry industries in the landslide-prone areas of Kerala limit the community mobility as resilience. The idea of resilience converged into resistance in the landslide susceptible areas in Kerala. Resistance becomes an easy method rather than building resilience.