In tsunami-affected regions of Tamil Nadu, where CSOs are hard at work on rehabilitation, there is evidence that some of the lessons of Gujarat and Orissa have not been learnt
In tsunami-affected regions of Tamil Nadu, where CSOs are hard at work on rehabilitation, there is evidence that some of the lessons of Gujarat and Orissa have not been learnt -- communities are not being sufficiently involved in the rehabilitation effort, and inappropriate shelters stand empty of inhabitants
For Fharzana Deesawalla, a volunteer who distributed relief and medicines with the Lifeline Rigid Hospital, Chennai, along the coast after the tsunami, an abiding image is that of a young boy gleefully wearing at least three shirts, one atop the other, even as clothing mounted in a heap in one of the villages. Clearly he had never seen so many shirts before the humungous wave came and turned his little world and that of so many others topsy-turvy.
Visiting Chennai and talking with people from various walks of life it becomes clear that the public response to the disaster was overwhelming. And yet four months after the catastrophe there is much evidence of the repercussions of such generous but often directionless giving.
Kuppams (fishing settlements) resound to the sound of angry voices arguing over who should get the nets or boats. The jostling for livelihoods in a socially and economically variegated society has only got more intense.
A Preliminary Report by Concerned Citizens (with inputs from John Kurien Centre for Development Studies Thiruvananthapuram, Nalini Nayak Protsahan Thiruvananthapuram and V Vivekanandan of the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies) warns that “the swell of human kindness -- if not to take the shape of a tsunami of misplaced concerns and competing priorities -- needs to be properly channeled.”
The report urges an understanding of pre-tsunami realities and post-tsunami needs. It reiterates that people of coastal communities are by and large outliers in terms of development and livelihood opportunities and that fishing communities are socially differentiated, with the weak and poor always at the bottom of the heap.
The perception that the meenavars suffered the most because their boats and nets were damaged meant that individuals and certain philanthropic institutions concentrated on giving them the relief, leaving out the more vulnerable groups -- inland fishermen, farmers, handpickers (those who catch fish by hand), women, small and marginal farmers and agricultural labourers.
In the first few days of dispensing cash and relief there was no proper assessment of needs or of the necessity of involving the community rather than individuals.
Deepish Sinha, National Training Coordinator, of the Disaster Mitigation Institute (DMI), Ahmedabad, who has worked in Bhuj after the earthquake and in cyclone-ravaged Orissa, says, “From the Bhuj experience and so many others, we know that involving communities gives them ownership. Dispensing cash and doling out charity only breeds a dependency culture. It’s important after the disasters for the people to organise themselves, to draw up their own list of what is needed and who should get it. The emphasis is on self-reliance. But those who work in disaster-struck areas are still repeating mistakes.
“We were in the process of giving some villagers the boats needed to replace those that had been destroyed. We asked them to draw up a list of the affected and how the boats would be shared. When we returned the next day they said they had already been given the boats by a foreign team. Moreover, they were fibreglass boats instead of the kattumarams (traditional boat made after tying logs of wood) that had been lost. Such quick decisions without assessing damage or needs can only cause more harm in the long run.”
DMI believes that people should be kept at the centre of the activities and that the community should contribute to the rehabilitation either with its time or through its traditional skills. It calls for horizontal sharing between communities and not vertical giving of charity.
In DMI’s cash-for-work schemes tsunami-affected women in Tamil Nadu helped clean the debris and levelled the land.
In Puddukuppam villagers set up their own facilities for water supply. Sinha also points out how in some areas counsellors came, set up camp and vanished after three days. “How can you counsel for just three days? Even the barest counselling time is a week or 13 days.”
In contrast, some NGOs are working on a two-pronged emotional rehabilitation effort. In the first phase trained counselors and workers try to help the people even as local community leaders are trained. In the second phase the community workers will step in after the trained personnel withdraw. “The emphasis is on long-term emotional empowerment of a community and not just short-term needs,” explains V Mahalakshmi, a psycho-social coordinator with ActionAid.
In the second phase of support the curriculum includes livelihood issues, psychological well-being, substance abuse and paralegal support.
Many of the organisations have also found that dispensing relief is a tricky business and requires skilled understanding of the local ground realities. For example Kasimedu kuppam of North Chennai is very volatile. Here the trawling community is at loggerheads with the fishing community. It is also a highly-charged and politically sensitive area. Members of a civil society organisation called Sangamam working in this area say that local leaders demanded that the relief be routed only through them. Sangamam workers had to negotiate with great tact to prevent clashes.
In the important question of housing and temporary shelters mistakes are still being made despite the Gujarat experience. In the Villupuram district there are deserted rows of tin houses with asbestos roofing. Shelters built by the Tamil Nadu government here and in Nagapattinam have clearly not been designed to take into account the blazing summer months. In Kargilnagar in Chennai the grounds on which the shelters are located turned into boggy mires with just a few showers.
DMI, on its part, organised meetings with the women of the community and panchayat members before deciding on the number of shelters and how to build them. The shelters were built to Sphere guidelines, with room for alterations. The shelters are largely skeet with thatch or tar sheets for walls. “Since different communities are used to different kinds of flooring we left it up to them to do and implemented our cash for work policy,” says Sinha.
Knowledge of local sensitivities and local needs can make all the difference between a shelter and what is in fact a home for about a year till the permanent houses can be constructed. In Ganpatichettikulum kuppam of Pondicherry it is the traditional rangoli on the floor that gives the shelter a distinctive touch. Some shelters provide a space for women to work from, thereby literally giving them livelihood recovery space.
Indeed as Lakshmi Suryanarayanan, a headmistress and also a volunteer with the NGO Asha, points out, “There is no dearth of funds. But NGOs must not give without due thought. After all people have opened their hearts and their pursestrings and there must be no misuse of that.”
When Asha distributed boats in Neelikuppam it did it through the panchayats so that disparities could be locally resolved. She believes that those who know the people must make the decisions and that the panchayats by and large are intelligent. “Even if mistakes are made they will learn from the experience.”
In other areas the emphasis has been on rebuilding and renovating balwadis and schools since Asha is largely involved in the field of education.
Suryanarayanan pertinently points out that in concentrating on tsunami relief the other fields of development must not be left out.
Many NGOs find that tsunami relief has affected their fund-raising for other activities.
“Tsunami relief has sadly only added to the poverty of some,” she observes.
(Freny Manecksha is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)
InfoChange News & Features, May 2005