News: Post Tsunami: Waves of Neglect!

By Krithika Ramalingam
India Resource Center

Cuddalore, India: The tsunami of December 26, 2004 left an estimated 8,010 dead and 3,432 injured in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The damage as a direct result of the waves, according to a United Nations-Asian Development Bank-World Bank Joint Assessment Mission is US$ 437.8 million, and the livelihood loss is estimated at US$ 377.2 million, amounting to a total of a stupendous US$ 815 million.

For the survivors, worse was to follow. Almost a million people (984,000) in 12 districts have become refugees in their own villages, still living in makeshift shelters.

After the tsunami waves receded, the bureaucratic leviathans and an army of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were the next to invade, initially at a loss about how to handle the situation. And as 18 weeks post-tsunami draw to an end, the gaps in relief and rehabilitation are glaring.

Non-Fisher Communities Marginalized

In their hurry to get relief going, both government agencies and NGOs initially targeted primarily the fishing communities for distributing welfare. Even as the government officially closed relief in April 2005, the Dalits (former untouchables), Adivasis (indigenous peoples), people involved in fishing-allied trades and women may not have received their legitimate share of relief.

Thirty-eight year old Uma Krishnamoorthy was knee deep in the water when the tsunami washed over the backwaters near her village of Periyar Nagar Dalit colony in Cuddalore district, 260 km from Chennai. The clam collector had to struggle to swim to safety. Though alive, she is now devastated, unsure whether people like her – involved in non-fishing activities – will find succor.

Not more than 10 years ago Uma was a well-to-do weaver. Once the handloom industry went bust, she, like other women in her micro credit group took to harvesting clams for a livelihood. “At high tide, when the sea enters the backwaters, we wade in to chest-high water. With bare hands, we grope in the sand bed for clams. Agents from big companies used to buy shelled mussels at Rs. 5 (US$ 0.10) per bowl. A team of three women made Rs. 100 (US$ 2.5) on a good day,” she says.

Even that backbreaking work would have been heaven-sent because Uma and others have not returned to work since. “First there is the fear, we have to pass through the graves of those killed in the tsunami and then there is the government ban on clam collection.” The ban has been in force for the last two months, due to the risk of contamination from the dead bodies in the backwaters.

Uma wonders where her family’s next meal will come from. Her husband worked in a clam processing unit that has not re-opened after the tsunami. They now depend on the eldest daughter who brings home Rs. 25 (US$ 0.60) a day washing and chemically treating clam shells imported from neighboring Andhra Pradesh and other southern districts of Tamil Nadu like Ramanathapuram that were not affected by the tsunami. “We have sent three petitions to the district Collectorate seeking help. We have protested, but the fishermen’s demands have been given precedence. It was almost February when we first got the compensation of Rs. 2,000 (US$ 50) for livelihood loss and 30 kilos of rice,” says Uma.

No Relief in the Camps

Even in the early phase of the relief operations, Dalits and Irulars (a hunting-gathering tribe) across the districts of Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and Chennai had to move out of the temporary shelters. Caste clashes broke out as the fisher communities tried to establish their primacy in accessing relief.

In Srinivasapuram in Chennai, the Dalits who lived in rented shacks on the Marina beach were forcibly moved to Tsunami Nagar, Okkiyam Thoraipakkam (on slum clearance board land 20 km from the city) after quarrels broke out in the temporary camps. In Karikattukuppam (45 km south of Chennai), Irulars who lived off fishing in the backwaters and supplying rats and other prey to the nearby crocodile bank were forced out after fishermen started barricading relief because they were not coast dwellers.

The Irulars of Sangolikuppam in Cuddalore taluk, were not coast dwellers either, their homes linked to the backwaters by a brook. (Cuddalore lies in the delta region of Rivers Cauvery and Kollidam and smallish backwaters run every other kilometer on the coast.) Of the 161 families in the tribal part of the town, nearly 31 had catamarans.

Perumal, the community leader, says the tribe members used to leave at dawn to a semi-permanent dock in the backwaters, to fish inland. “When we were sent out of the community forests (in the early 1980s after the passing of the Protection of Forests Act (1979)) and forbidden from hunting animals, we turned to fishing. Our neighbors then had no problem with sharing the waters,” he says.

That camaraderie is gone after the tsunami, with competition over relief assistance. Sangolikuppam’s Irulars were first pushed out of the relief camp. And because their homes were tucked into a tribal outpost, it was on the threshold of starvation that Sarpam, a national organization for Irulars, found them.

Who is Worthy of Aid?

The categorization of communities that need assistance in relief and rehabilitation is based on a superficial understanding of who suffered damage. Take the case of Kalaignar Nagar and MGR Nagar abutting the Pichavaram Lake in Cuddalore. As of date, 58 families (around 250 people) of Irulars are yet to receive any relief or assistance, as it is assumed that they did not suffer any damage.

The Irulars’ fishing society president T Kaliappan says that only after repeated petitioning did the district officials include them in the list of those indirectly affected. While today, these villagers receive relief (Rs. 1,000 (US$ 25) and 10 kg of rice per month), they have to share it with the families left out of the relief net. “A few of our tribe spread across the coastal region of the district got seasonal employment in trawlers when labor was required during peak shrimp season (between January and April). After the plantations they worked in were destroyed by the waves their employers have turned them out. Without help from the government they will starve,” says R Jayaraman, member of the Cuddalore Irular Fishing Society.

Siddamma of Bharti Trust, an umbrella organization for tribal welfare, says the story repeats itself in tribal villages. “In Shanmuga Nagar, Sami Nagar and other towns around Pichavaram backwaters, NGOs were handling a majority of the relief work as the government was reluctant to provide aid to communities that did not see any deaths. But their livelihoods have been hit and groups that live on subsistence incomes should be treated on par as far as compensation for livelihood loss goes,” she says.

Bharti Trust and others have been demanding a fresh count of population affected by tsunami based on occupation, to ensure that relief reaches everyone. According to Sarpam livelihoods of nearly 104 families in Cuddalore and 123 families in Thiruvallur districts have been affected but the government has officially closed the relief phase in early April, declaring that all the affected had been given relief packages.

District-level bureaucrats, however, say that Dalits or Adivasis being left out of the relief net is an aberration. “Whenever we have received information of communities without relief, we have made arrangements to extend compensation. Nearly 85 Dalit villages have been identified where there has been partial damage. The government has asked NGOs to report any other village that has been left out of the relief net,” says J Radhakrishnan, Nagapattinam district collector.

“In fishing hamlets, there is a sizeable population of other communities affected. They work in fishing-allied industries, doing carpentry for boats or repairing nets. Even the barber of the village belongs to a non-fishing community. It is here that one can clearly see the strength of the fisherfolks’ traditional panchayat (village council), which can bargain with the government,” says Pondicherry-based Ko Sukumaran, Secretary, Federation for People’s Rights.

Short Sighted Donor Assistance

Lobbying will undoubtedly have to be stepped up, because after the initial phase of relief, the Dalits and marginalized communities might have even less coming their way because they are not a very powerful lobby. And this time the Indian Government may have even less say in the rehabilitation allocations. International Finance Institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), as well as the United Nations and its special agency International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) are going to pump in around US$ 850 million for rebuilding. The money from the IFAD alone is US$ 15 million and that alone would be used for agriculture. The World Bank allocation is for infrastructure, fisheries, etc. and the ADB allocation of US$ 200 million for livelihood and agriculture reconstruction.

In the US$ 682.8 million Emergency Tsunami Reconstruction Project, the International Donor Association has promised US$ 465.0 million and the Government of India will contribute US$ 18.6 million. Of this, Civil Society Organizations and the government anticipate four-fifths will be spent on the fisher community, after the World Bank in its statement on May 3, 2005 said that nearly 80 percent of the affected population was engaged in fisheries, 15 percent in agriculture and 5 percent in micro-enterprises. This is in direct conflict with the report entitled “Post Tsunami Recovery Program: Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment” that the team of the three international agencies published, which said only 39 percent of the population affected are fisher folk.

The same report pegs the number of fisherfolk affected at 120,000 in Tamil Nadu. Those involved in agriculture, micro-enterprises and other employment were 380,000. The report adds: “that for every person directly employed in fisheries, four other persons were dependent on downstream employment (such as cleaning the fish, marketing it, boat repair, transport of ice, etc).” But the damage incurred by the fisheries sector stood at US$ 184.2 million out of a total of US$ 206.1 million.

Ask the government if these numbers as far as the damage goes and the fund allocation that followed were accurate: the answer is a vague “It should be. The assessment is based on numbers that the government has made available. So we will rather work with what is allotted,” say top bureaucrats working on rehabilitation and relief.

The result? Seriously lopsided allocations. The Environmental and Social Management Framework of the World Bank pins the funding for restoration of livelihoods at US$ 36.4 million (about 5 percent of the total) as compared to US$ 596.8 million, (about 87.5 percent of the total) to be spent on housing. While this is the case with the World Bank, a strategy is yet to be evolved about what the government intends to do with the 50 percent loan-50 percent grant it is to receive from ADB.

There is a veil of secrecy about how this money will be disbursed and the government expects the plan to be ready only after six months. Community organizations are now left wondering if they will be excluded from the livelihood rehabilitation planning as they had been left out of the talks between the government and International Donor Association about the quantum of funds. “It is as if the government is in secret talks. There is no transparency about the funding. The NGOs and the stakeholders in talks have been left out by the government though that was the mandate when the Government of India first invited the three institutions,” says an activist from Human Rights Foundation, a Chennai-based NGO.

The other schemes of the government for short-term rehabilitation, such as “Food for Work” and “Cash for Work” are also flawed. At a recent public hearing on food security, organized by People’s Union for Civil Liberties and Action Aid, the agricultural laborers of Nagapattinam (mostly Dalits) said they had been asked to identify suitable work and approach the district administration with the proposal. On one-level this meant identification of work for which the laborers had the skill sets, at another it meant all the more bureaucracy. And all this for a wage Rs 15 (US$ 0.37) per day and seven kilos of rice, says Clifton Rosario of the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, who has been working in the area.

While the government fumbles, the likes of Kalyani Mariappan, of MGR Nagar near Pichavaram Lake have started fending for themselves, knitting nets. “During the scheme to rejuvenate Pichavaram lake, we were organized into groups and Village Development and Mangrove Councils by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and the Forest Department. Fishing in the backwaters will be an imperative part of our lives; but we are also lobbying for funds to lease agricultural land so that there will be something to fall back on,” she says.

Echoing this view is Uma Krishnamoorthy of Periyar Nagar Dalit colony: “Our SHG has been given skills to add value to the shells that are otherwise sold in bulk to cement factories. If only somebody would invest Rs. 200,000 (US$ 5,000), we could make craft items and sell in the towns,” she says.

Processes of rebuilding from tragic disasters such as the tsunami can provide opportunities to change the socio-economic dynamics among marginalized communities. But the rest of us will have to wait for another six months before the government will tell us whether they will do just that.

http://www.indiaresource.org /20.05. 2005.

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