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The world’s most populous country India ranks first in economic and human losses due to extreme weather events and climate-induced disasters in the South Asia region.
Home to 1.4 billion people, the country suffered damages of over $56 billion due to weather-related disasters in the five years between 2019 and 2023, as per the latest data. Additionally, two-thirds of the 82.1 million people in the South Asia region affected by extreme weather during this period were from India.
But this data may just be a tip of the iceberg. Reporting loss and damages in a disaster remains weak in the country, and hyperlocal data on these losses is missing. Hence, affected people often do not receive their due compensation. This lack of data is increasingly becoming a concern for government agencies too, as reported earlier by Down To Earth (DTE), who have to carry out relief works and also build localised climate resilience plans.
To address this problem and assist in collection of hyperlocal data and disburse timely relief, a one-of-its-kind e-digital wallet for disasters —Akshvi — has been launched in India.
Piloted in five districts of three states (Uttar Pradesh, Assam, and West Bengal), the e-disaster wallet Akshvi allows affected communities to use the digital platform to log their losses and assets every time they are faced with an incident (flood, drought, heatwave, landslide, lighting, hailstorm, etc) – regularly over a period of time.
This community-driven platform, created by SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society) India, aggregates economic and non-economic data to inform recovery efforts and shape policies.
“Climate-induced disasters do not just take away lives but they take away everything else — socio-economic losses, cultural losses, invisible emotional impact. But our current assessment methods are inadequate to look at tangible and intangible losses. If we want to flip this, we need bottom up assessment methods that are more sensitive to ground realities,” Manu Gupta, co-founder of SEEDS India, told DTE.
The New Delhi-based non-profit, is working towards enabling resilient communities and aims to strengthen the resilience of 300 million climate risk-prone people in the country by 2030.
Akshvi, an acronym for Aapda Kshati Vivaran (Disaster Damages Description), places disaster-affected families at the heart of recovery efforts. It empowers communities to self-report their losses, ensures their needs are prioritised, and tracks their progress transparently through digital e-wallets.
“Importantly, in the backdrop of increasing multi-hazard-prone areas, Akshvi goes beyond recovery—it fosters sustainability, builds resilience, and creates a future that prioritises the well-being of vulnerable communities,” said Gupta.
Akin to a digilocker, which citizens are increasingly using to store their key official documents, each household has an E-Disaster Wallet under Akshvi in which the family members can self-report their economic and non-economic losses every time an extreme weather event hits them. This is likely to have multiple benefits.
Firstly, the family will have a credible record of all the losses it has suffered over a period of time. For instance, in rural India, most farmers do not have any such record-keeping, hence they do not know the exact extent of losses suffered by them due to climate-induced disasters, which are on the rise.
Secondly, agencies that want to provide relief and other support to the affected communities, will know exactly the losses and the needs of the people.
Thirdly, government agencies will have hyperlocal data on loss and damages, which will assist in building robust recovery and resilience plans. This will also bridge the gap between government and citizens.
There are three ways citizens can log their losses in their e-wallet for disasters. There is an IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System) helpline number. A lot of women voice record their losses and do not need to type, hence user-friendly to unlettered people too. Secondly, a chatbot on WhatsApp. And lastly, assisted filling of data by a person.
But what if citizens inflate their losses while self-reporting? SEEDS India has already independently verified this during a pilot project in West Bengal and 98 per cent of the information was found to be correct.
“We piloted Akshvi post Cyclone Dana last year in North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas. We targeted nearly 2,300 households in two affected districts for self-reporting of cyclone-caused losses. With ‘pre-loaded’ E-disaster wallets assuring relief assistance, SEEDS also carried out an awareness drive with a trusted local organisation in the community. The incentives and the awareness led to 90 per cent participation by affected households,” informs Gupta.
“When self-reported data was verified, we found that 98 per cent of the information provided by households was accurate, dispelling common myths about over-reporting when communities are given the agency to assess their own losses,” he adds.
Impacts of climate change are hyperlocal and back-to-back extreme weather events have a cascading effect. It is crucial to involve people, including marginalised and vulnerable communities, to be an integral part of response and recovery efforts, and climate adaptation.
Bringing all the affected communities across the country on a single digital platform, co-owned by governments, civil society and markets, will be a humongous exercise, but a beginning has been made.
“In the next one year, we want to bring one million households under Akshvi,” said Gupta.
The detailed family-level loss data allows delivery of tailored relief assistance including cash grants directly into family bank accounts. The family profile created on Akshvi and the quantum of assistance received offers traceability for the donor. Assistance worth Rs 60 lakhs has already been provided to communities through Akshvi, claims SEEDS India.
Meanwhile, the ‘E- disaster wallets’ created for each household are now being linked to long-term social welfare schemes of the government, and index-based insurance programmes.
SEEDS India also shared learnings from the field at the NDMA-MoEF&CC consultation held on January 24 this year, which focused on designing India's Loss & Damage Framework (L&DF). With the work done on ground, the non-profit is advocating the need to reassess current Loss and Damage assessment methodologies to ensure they are accurate, inclusive, and reflective of local contexts.
The need of the hour is adopting bottom-up approaches, empowering communities in the reporting and assessment of loss and damage.