A striking feature of the rehabilitation effort in Kanyakumari district is the lack of sensitivity and accountability on the part of the administration and non-governmental organisations. The ultimate casualty is the effectiveness of long-term rehabilitation.
R. KRISHNAKUMAR in KanyakumariANNOYED at the nosy camera distracting them from their favourite card game, a group of fishermen, obviously under the influence of country liquor, shouted expletives in a nasty tone: "Come, you NGOs [non-governmental organisations], take our pictures and give it to the rich donors. We are the victims of the tsunami. We are here for everyone to make money... ."
This was as good an introduction as any to the reconstruction efforts in the tsunami-battered coastal villages of Kanyakumari district in south Tamil Nadu, almost a year after the disaster.
At a fish-landing centre some distance away, a woman at a temporary shelter thankfully had a welcoming smile, though she was clearly embarrassed about the dark one-room shack. Maria Irudayam said apologetically: "We used to live in a big house that had a kitchen and other facilities. We had a bathroom and a toilet. We had electricity and water. Now we are forced to live in a dingy atmosphere. I have three grown-up children."
About a kilometre from the Arabian Sea, a lonely earth-mover was roaring inside a 23-acre "abandoned" saltpan, filling it with blood-red soil, which is alien to the coast. The legend on the board there read: `Tsunami Response, Permanent Shelter Rehabilitation, Colachal', with the names of the "Christian NGOs" sponsoring the 300 to 400-house project in bold.
Of the 828 deaths reported in Kanyakumari, 370 were from Colachal, one of the 51 fishing towns and villages that were devastated by the tsunami.
Making sense of the reconstruction and rehabilitation work in the district can be as difficult as the fabled six blind men trying to judge the shape of an elephant. All its facets are part of the truth, but not the entire truth: the veneer of normality in the efforts of the government and the NGOs; the sub-human conditions in the temporary shelters; the bias against women in the rehabilitation process; the fiercely possessive role of the Church in these predominantly Christian villages; the lack of sensitivity and accountability on the part of the authorities and the NGOs; the unconcern for the special needs of the vulnerable people; the piecemeal understanding and handling of the crisis by the implementing agencies; the miserable level of awareness among the majority of the affected people about their rights and entitlements; the lies that victims tell visitors in the hope of attracting more relief; the disparity in rehabilitation that one sees all around; the lack of empathy about people's long-term needs; and the jostling by outsiders to hog the new business opportunities that the tsunami has created.
A mosaic of donor emblems and NGO credit lines greets visitors at village junctions, on buildings, boats and water tanks, at temporary shelters and permanent rehabilitation sites. Donors and NGOs are reportedly eager to provide houses and boats and engrave their names on them.
District Collector Sunil Paliwal said 3,468 temporary shelters and 547 (in situ) and 1,989 (ex situ) permanent houses were constructed within a few months, 3,953 houses were repaired, nearly 93 acres (37.2 hectares) of land was purchased at a cost of Rs.5.32 crores and Rs.23 crores was spent on livelihood restoration efforts in the months after the tsunami.
The AVM canal, which separates the villages from the coast and where many of the victims were drowned, is today the launch pad for freshly painted boats from the nook-and-corner units. They are tuned to the needs of aid agencies, big and small business houses, charitable organisations, missionaries and under-cover evangelists.
"Most NGO representatives who come here are flush with money. There is a mad rush, and you need not be surprised if boat-making units compromise on quality. The only restraining factor is the volatile nature of the fishermen. Many leaking boats have been dumped at the gates of their makers," the owner of one unit said.
Representatives of NGOs say that fishing communities in Kanyakumari were a more affluent lot than their counterparts in Nagapattinam and Cuddalore. The task of rehabilitating them to their satisfaction is therefore a more challenging one, they maintain. So far the victims have shown no enthusiasm either to continue in the temporary shelters or to move to the small, permanent homes that the NGOs are building for them, away from the coast.
According to the Collector, since the death-toll in Kanyakumari was not as high as it was in Nagapattinam or Cuddalore, a "misconception" had gained ground that the scale of devastation too was not as large as in the other districts. "This proved to be a blessing in disguise and we believe it checked, to a large extent at least, an overwhelming NGO interest in Kanyakumari. We believe the number of fishing craft distributed in the district may not be more than 15 to 20 per cent in excess of what was required, which we consider is one way of judging NGO enthusiasm in the district," he said.
The number of NGOs that eventually settled for Kanyakumari may be smaller but a conspicuous feature of the rehabilitation effort has been the contrast between the enthusiasm of the NGOs to advertise their sponsorship on boats and buildings and their reluctance to provide similar information about the source of their funds or how they were spending them.
No one knows how much money has flowed in. "There is no accountability or transparency in the utilisation of relief funds that they get in the name of the tsunami victims," Soosai Antony, president of a people's unity and social development organisation, said.
"There are NGOs with little credibility, run by a few prominent individuals in the villages, including politicians and priests, who have found in the tsunami a great opportunity to make money for themselves and their kin," he said.
According to Sunil Paliwal, though the government has provided a framework for private-public partnership in permanent relocation and rehabilitation efforts, the district administration has no authority to monitor the activities of the NGOs.
This has created a peculiar situation in some villages as once a housing project is completed or boats are distributed, the sponsors leave the scene and are not available when things go wrong.
"The administration has totally abdicated its responsibility to monitor the rehabilitation efforts entrusted to the NGOs. Very little information reaches the people on how the money is spent, who the beneficiaries are or where they are going to be relocated," G. Celistine, president of the Kanyakumari District Fishworkers Union, said.
WHILE the sponsors were busy with high-visibility programmes, the loudest complaints were heard in the temporary shelters that Frontline visited. There, for the past eight months, people have been forced to live in asbestos-roofed, rat-infested parallel sheds close to each other in slum-like conditions, with a minimum of 12 people sharing a room, under the prying eyes of neighbours. Asked to name her most important concern after she moved into the temporary shelter at Muttom, an old woman replied poignantly: "Hunger."
In all the shelters, women complained about lack of privacy. The heat radiated by the asbestos roof was unbearable. Women feared for their safety and that of their grown-up daughters. In most cases, the common toilets were situated quite a distance away from the shelters and some were in a dilapidated state and without proper lighting. And, at many places, in a district known for high land values, the survivors' dream of a permanent home was locked in disputes over land acquisition and concerns about accessibility to the sea.
The most striking contradiction in the tsunami rehabilitation effort in Kanyakumari seemed to be the discrimination against women, despite the apparent shrillness with which women themselves talk about community, land and assets issues. Many women said they were not consulted on the nature of relief that they needed or on issues of sanitation, privacy, land or personal security.
In many villages women seemed unaware that the government had issued an order to sanction new houses in the names of both men and women. Some of them told Frontline that permanent houses had been allotted in the names of their husbands or sons. There were also instances of aged couples, who earlier had houses in their own names, being dispossessed with the government adopting the one family-one home norm, even if its members had lived separately earlier.
At Muttom, the situation seemed surcharged on the eve of the first anniversary of the disaster, with parishioners crowding before an exasperated priest, asking him to put pressure on the government to find immediate solutions to a list of grievances. "The fishermen do not want to move to the permanent houses built by the government far away from the sea. The parish village committee had therefore bought 3.2 acres of land elsewhere for them but the district administration is refusing to build houses there," Lawrence, the priest, explained.
Sunil Paliwal says the administration faces difficulty in finding suitable resettlement locations at Muttom and Kurumbanai where land was simply not available and the prices were high. "A dispute over the land identified by the village committee at Muttom is before a court and the government cannot possibly give sanction there for building houses. Families who want to move to the houses already built by the government are being threatened by others in the village," he said.
The second challenge, according to the Collector, is in the identification of beneficiaries for the provision of livelihood support through the NGOs. "I think it is an achievement that we were able to reduce the margin of error to about 15 per cent," he said.
In several villages, people said they had got less than the sanctioned share of benefits or that their names had been struck off from beneficiary lists without reason. Frontline also heard allegations, for example at Keezhemanakkudi, about swindling of funds using bogus lists. From what people said, there are variations in the way the compensation package announced by the State government had been distributed. While some were yet to receive livelihood compensation, others said they got only partial compensation.
THERE were sharp divisions among fishing communities on the question of relocation: some were afraid of another monster wave and wanted to move out; others were fiercely adamant that moving further inshore would threaten their livelihood. There were also worries about the government displacing them from the coast to favour land sharks and tourism developers. But in general, the authorities do not seem to have insisted on strict enforcement of Costal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms in the reconstruction work.
V. Vivekanandan, chief executive of the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies, told Frontline that the funds that were being spent on livelihood rehabilitation were likely to prove to be a big waste in the long run in the light of dwindling resources, as there was already an over-supply of motor boats in Kanyakumari. Sometimes, it was better to give less than to give more, he said. In contrast, the money spent on building permanent homes is likely to prove to be a good investment, according to him.
He also said that the replacement of fishing equipment was being done without taking into account the reality of the owner-worker relationships in fishing communities. The new boats were given under joint ownership, and in many cases they were not provided the other assets required to run a boat. The result is a chaotic situation in which the new owners are unable to meet even the running costs and are forced often to sell their boats.
According to a government official, the district administration has received reports of a growing tendency among fishermen not to go out to sea but idle away in the temporary shelters. They are also not interested in finding alternative employment and the women mostly stay at home. According to government figures, nearly 28,000 women victims have been offered alternative employment through 1,400 self-help groups.
Religion plays a big role in the decisions taken in the coastal societies. In most of the villages, the Church took control of coordinating the relief efforts right from the day the disaster struck. Coastal Kanyakumari ticks to the tune of the Church and the writ of the government is of little consequence.
Already rehabilitation of tsunami survivors in the district has become a matter of jurisprudence.
On January 24, the State government ordered the formation of three-tier panels at the State, district and the village levels to monitor the implementation of the relief work. According to Susai Antony, the most important reason for complaints about the selection of beneficiaries and choices made in the rehabilitation effort is the failure to activate such panels at the district and village levels.
"A few months earlier, in a case filed by my organisation, the Collector informed the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court that such committees had been formed. But we find that they have been formed only on paper. We have now decided to press the district administration to ensure the activation of the village committees based on the court's ruling," he said.
Another petition filed before the Madras High Court by a member of the Tamil Nadu Lawyers Association sought an inquiry into the use of the funds received by the various missions and voluntary agencies in the district.
In many villages, the tsunami had wiped out property boundaries and title deeds. Given the government norms for allocation of alternative land and permanent houses, a whole new series of property and inheritance disputes also seem ready to unfold in the district.
