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By Nityanand Jayaraman There's more money, clothes and goodwill than there is vision, organisation and an understanding of what's needed, reports Nityanand Jayaraman from Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu. It seems as if the need to help has overcome the need for help, as relief agencies rush to be photographed giving aid to the 'victims'
 Sunday marked the end of one week of tsunami relief efforts. Life is far from reaching normalcy in the affected areas. Many of the villages in Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu have been reached by non-governmental organisations and public interest groups, including residents' associations and community groups from all over India. The response has literally overwhelmed the rural areas.
The district administration in Cuddalore has done better than its counterparts in other parts of the country. Within 24 hours of the disaster, access roads had been cleared to many of the villages and within villages. Areas that could only be reached by boat remain that way even now. Villages that were inaccessible before the disaster -- especially certain scheduled caste/tribe villages on the edges of fishing villages -- also remain as inaccessible today. After the panic created by the false alarm of a second tsunami, people have begun returning to their houses, or what's left of them. In the fishing villages near the beach, people spend the day haunting the remains of their houses, and return to their relatives' houses or the relief camps for the night. "There's no way I'm going to spend another night on the beach after what happened that morning," says K Kanniappan, a 70-year-old veteran of the sea. Kanniappan's house in Thazhanguda was battered by the sea and he saved himself by riding the tsunami clinging on to a kattumaram (catamaran) as it shot past him. Vans carrying relief material and disaster tourists comprised the second tidal wave. Many just dumped the clothes they brought along the sides of the roads after villagers refused to take used clothes. Despite attempts by non-governmental organisations to coordinate their efforts, coordination and organisation remain a distant and elusive dream. In Chennai alone, there were three separate coordination meetings held between December 29 and January 2. There was talk about coordinating the coordinators. There's more money, clothes, and goodwill than there is vision, organisation and an understanding of what's needed. It seems that the greed of giving, and the need to help has overcome the need for help. People are desperate to personally hand over the items they have collected. In some villages, this could translate to 5-10 truckloads of material that people have to queue up for at various times in a day. Needless to say, people don't do it. Or those that do are regular queue standers. As NGOs and relief agencies made a beeline for the coastal areas, did any pause to consider pressuring the government to do its job? No doubt, this is too large a task for the government to handle by itself. But the frenzy of relief-truck movement seemed to suggest an excitement -- at least among many of the givers -- at the prospect of providing relief, of helping the ’victims’. This seemed tinged with a voyeuristic desire to see ‘victims’, photograph them, photograph oneself giving away packets to the ‘victims’. Perhaps, humanitarian assistance is a package deal. Dilip D'Souza, a columnist friend from Mumbai, said he saw no sign of the government in Nagapattinam when he visited there on New Year's Eve. Relief workers from the Association for India's Development, DYFI, and Neyveli Lignite Corporation workers were the only ones he saw engaged in recovering and disposing of bodies. True, relief workers cannot and should not wait until the government acts. That may never happen in some instances. But what if the numerous offers of help that are now being turned down were instead channelised into targeted pressure on the government? What if all the people, say, from Chennai, who want to help were to figure out ways of pressuring the Tamil Nadu government to act, and act right? In places where the government has entered the scene, it is ignoring its own systems. Rather than rely on voters' lists, even the government is relying on incomplete lists. It would be better for the government to use the electoral lists as the basis, and build upon these to ensure that no person is left out. In many villages, the government is relying on lists prepared by fisher panchayat leaders, many of whom have shown remarkable alacrity in viewing the disaster as an opportunity to amass wealth and consolidate power. One social worker showed me a list of affected people and damages sustained by them from Samiarpettai -- another large mixed village with several ‘communities’. The list was made on the letterhead of the Fisher Panchayat. The list mentions not one name of people from the other ‘communities’. When asked about it, they said when relief comes they will distribute to them what is due to them. I can't believe this is happening. Today, I plan to confirm or negate this by checking the list of people who received government relief with the voters' list. My apologies to the people of Samiarpettai if I am mistaken -- and I hope I am. Fisher panchayat leaders at Devanampattinam -- a large fishing village in Cuddalore district -- have declared that all aid should flow only through them and not go directly to the people. In many other villages, this would be a desirable thing to ensure fairness in distribution. In Devanampattinam, this is not the case. Irate women from the village, representing more than 50 women, yesterday visited FEDCOT, a Cuddalore-based consumer organisation that I volunteer with, and alleged that the son of the Fisher Panchayat President diverted 11 sacks of rice given by the government to his house, and that many women were being intentionally left out of the public distribution. Locals in Cuddalore dismiss the Devanampattinam leaders as valueless, arrogant and undeserving of sympathy. But they admit that it is almost impossible to break the leaders' hold over their village and reach the affected people directly. At every step of the way, we saw caste and ‘community’ -- the latter used in a discriminatory sense rather than a positive and inclusive manner -- playing a significant role. S Anand, a friend and journalist from Outlook, told us that the Tamil Nadu administration brought in sanitation workers from various districts of the state to clear rotting bodies of tsunami victims and decaying fish from the beaches, rivers and waterbodies. Most sanitation workers are dalits, scheduled tribes and backward castes -- communities at the bottom of the caste ladder. The State's casteism was exposed when it sent these workers to fetch the bodies without the barest of protection -- no shoes, no gloves to handle the bloated, decaying corpses, not even masks. The officials who directed operations worked with masks held to their noses with one hand, and had the other hand free to direct the hapless workers. About 1 kilometre west of Chinnur North lies the Vedar (hunters) settlement of Shanmugapuram with 46 houses. Shanmugapuram has no road access. A path or a freestyle trek across the brush is the only way to get there. The nearest health facility is reportedly an 8-kilometre walk away. This village lost four people, and many others were injured. But Shanmugapuram does not figure in the government's list of affected villages. There are many such villages, including low-income (but otherwise economically stable) fisher villages -- such as Gunduppalavadi, Sonnanchavadi, Sangolikuppam and Saminayudunagar -- along the various creeks in Cuddalore. The sole livelihood of Shanmugapuram villagers is fishing. The people are too poor to own boats. However, being skilled hunters, they fish using a variety of improvised gear and primarily by casting handlines from the seashore or in rivers. Some of their lives are inextricably twined to those of the sea-faring fishers; they supplement their income by assisting the fishers with loading of gear, unloading fish, transporting their kattumarams (catamarans) to and from the surf. Now, with government-sponsored fears of an epidemic outbreak doing the rounds, fishing is unlikely to resume at least for a month, if not longer. For one month, at least, there will be no income and no food for the Vedar settlement. Their fisher neighbours will not suffer as much because they are the focus of governmental and NGO relief. The government of Tamil Nadu has advised people to avoid consumption of fish for the next six months. This announcement has no basis in science. More dangerously, it prevents fisherfolk from attempting to rebuild their lives. Fisherfolk from these villages have suffered losses both in terms of life and gear, and all will be unable to make a living out of fishing in the foreseeable future. Despite these facts, these villages and people whose lives are totally dependent on fishing are not recognised as even partially affected for the purposes of governmental relief. No interim aid -- provisions -- goes to them, and no short-term relief is on the cards. Relief workers and the hundreds of philanthropists who throng the tsunami-affected villages unfortunately have a very skewed, and perhaps culturally conditioned, notion of relief and aid. What is given is given as charity, not as something that is the survivor's due or right. Very little is being said about the rights of disaster survivors. This failure would reduce survivors to the status of victims dependent on the largesse of the government and the public, as beggars living off the charity of the rest of the world. Both in this present case, and in the case of the survivors of the Bhopal disaster, I have heard people dismissing survivors' claims for better rehabilitation packages as a case of looking the gift horse in the mouth. Relief work has to be done with sensitivity and attention to rebuilding the dignity of the affected people. This is just not happening yet. The world, the government and relief workers tend to view survivors as victims. This difference between survivors and victims is crucial and fundamental. Survivors would need to be organised to enable them to fight for their due; victims would need to be provided for. In the efforts in Cuddalore, there is very little emphasis on organising communities; very little attention paid to rebuilding the communities better than they were before. Rebuilding efforts tend to gloss over and even accentuate the traditional distempers of caste and community within these villages. Not all is bleak in this scenario. On January 1, a car-load of people from Madurai landed up at FEDCOT with a van-load of kerosene pumpstoves. Relief workers had given provisions, even utensils. But stoves were in short supply. People who could have just as easily given money to organisations to buy stoves kept giving their old clothes because they did not know that old clothes were not welcome. The media failed to tell them that. The Madurai party consisted of entrepreneurs from the Tamil Nadu Pumpstove Manufacturers and Sellers Association. They heard about the glut of old clothes and the need for stoves through a media report quoting the District Collector of Cuddalore. They acted immediately. These owners of "tiny industries" -- that's what they call themselves -- pitched in with Rs. 100,000 worth of stoves, and carted it to Cuddalore hoping to find the right people to give it to. Villagers around Parangipettai couldn't find words to thank their neighbours. The Jamaat volunteers numbering around 100 youth descended on the affected villages in their vicinity and dived into the unsavoury job of recovering the dead. Within a day, the Parangipettai Jamaat had extended an invitation to nearly 3,000 homeless villagers to partake of their hospitality. For a week, they were provided shelter and food. I have merely focused on the shortcomings of our collective efforts because we will have time for congratulations once the dust settles. But the need of the hour is to reach relief and rehabilitation assistance to all those who are affected in a timely and equitable manner. And timely does not only mean immediately. If those interested in helping can hold on to their interest for a little while longer, they will find better ways to help with contributions in cash or kind after this frenzy of giving and grabbing ends. (Nityanand Jayaraman is an independent journalist and researcher focussing on investigating corporate abuses of the environment and human rights. He is based in Chennai, and is associated with the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal) InfoChange News & Features, January 2005
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