Figure 25: Response to the statements related to preparedness of Indian cities against disasters

prepared in the event of a climate-related disaster? What are the opinions of the stakeholders? As a result, we created the next question to capture the perspectives of many stakeholders on the characteristics of climate resilience in any Indian city in the face of climate-related disaster. We had provided 4 statements in the context of any indian cities and prepared a likert matrix where the stakeholders had to tick mark their opinion starting from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The statements were as follows- • External shocks can be absorbed by the city, and it can soon recover to its prior operating state. • Most of the Indian cities have enough back up in terms of infrastructure, institution and other facilities • Almost everyone in India has the capability to adapt climate induced changes • citizen’s livelihood and lifestyle will get changed

Figure 24 Response to the statements related to resilience characteristics of Indian

Source: Authors own interpretation from samples

External shocks can be absorbed by the city, and it can soon recover to its prior operating state

Most of the Indian cities have enough back up in terms of infrastructure, institution and other facilities

Almost everyone in India has the capability to adapt climate Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral induced changes Agree Strongly Agree Citizen's livelihood and lifestyle will get changed

Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Result: Figure 24 shows the outcome in pie charts. The academicians are represented by the inner circle, while the working professionals are represented by the outer circle. 50% of the professionals think that External shocks can be absorbed by the city, and it can soon recover to its prior operating state, whereas 44% of the academicians think the opposite and 21% are neutral regarding this fact. A strong sense of dichotomy observed here. For the second statement, 75% of the professionals and 80% of the academicians shows their disagreement with it which means both of them think simillar. In case of the 3rd statement also majority of the stakeholders think that the adaptive capability of Indian people are still not enough. Which reflets their opinion for the 4th statement where both of the stakeholders think that the citizen’s lifestyle and livelihood will get changed due to natural catastrophe.

Inference: The findings strongly suggest that there is room for capacity building among Indians in the area of climate change. The professional’s reaction also has a layer of obscurity to it. In the first assertion, they primarily believe that Indian cities are robust in nature because they can absorb external force and return to their original state, which necessitates the cities’ infrastructure and other facilities to be extremely redundant. However, in the second statement, their response does not reflect the same.

The next question we posed was to find out how stakeholders felt about any Indian city’s preparation in the face of climate change and climate-related disasters. The same likert matrix was created this time, and four statements were provided, as follows: • Benefits and impacts of actions are distributed evenly all through the municipality. • Resources, services, and Governance should follow decentralized planning approach • Actions and their operations follow transparency while implementation • Actions follow iterative process and modified as per disturbance over the passage of time

Result: Figure 25 shows the outcome in pie charts. The academicians are represented by the inner circle, while the working professionals are represented by the outer circle. In response to the first question, 56% of academics and 46% of professionals disagree or strongly disagree with the assertion. Although 25% of professionals are unconcerned by the issue, academicians account for only 16% of the total. The responses show that both the academicians and professionals think there are disparities when it comes to impact and benefit distribution within the municipalities. For the second question 76% of the academicians and 70% of the professional believes that recources, services and governance should follow decentralized approach of planning. Decentralized planning ring more accurecy while implementing the initiatives and also involves more local people. While it comes to transperarency of the implementation process, it is being observed that almost 32% of both the stakeholders disagree to strongly disagree with the statement. whereas rests are either neutral or agree or strongly agree with fact. Those actions go through iterative process and modified as per disturbance whereas 21% are neutral and 18% disagree with it. Interestingly only 36% of the academicians agree, another 36% of them are neutral of the fact and 28% disagree with it.

Inference: The responses somehow shows a gap in the thought process of both the stakeholders. Because, if according to them if the implementation process is transparent enough (Question. 3, Fig. X). If that would be the case