DEVELOPMENT: Tsunami Brings Sea Change in Coastal Lives

• by Ranjit Devraj (new delhi)
• Saturday, December 26, 2009
• Inter Press Service

On December 26, 2004, a 9.3-magnitude earthquake generated a tsunami that struck countries around the Indian Ocean, killing at least 200,000 people. Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India were the hardest hit.

'Before the tsunami many of these villages suffered from gross neglect by local administrations, and their inhabitants were largely left to fend for themselves,' said Bhakther Solomon, chief of the Development Promotion Group (DPG), a major non-governmental organisations involved in relief and rehabilitation work in Tamil Nadu.

DPG constructed 822 of the 22,000 houses that were built by various NGOs as the 'visible part of rehabilitation work,' added Solomon, speaking with IPS over telephone from Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu.

The wave of NGO and government support that came to the inhabitants of coastal villages in badly affected districts such as Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and Kanyakumari intended to touch every aspect of the lives of thousands of people has continued for the last five years.

'Today a point has been reached where our main fear is that these people are becoming aid-dependent and that many people are moving away from their traditional occupation of artisanal fishing and are perhaps losing skills built over centuries,' said Solomon.

For instance, fisherman Pavalaparai and his wife Sarvanade, from the village of Kameshwaram, do not want their school-going son to become a fisherman and plan to support him through higher education. They have been able to return to their traditional occupation—which involves drying and selling their catch—with support from DPG.

Pavalparai and his wife also plan on having two more children and educating them as well—something unthinkable before the tsunami. What made the difference for them was a motorised fishing boat and nets provided by DPG, which help Pavalparaj earn around 10,000 rupees (214 U.S. dollars) per month during the main season, as well as enrolment in a self- help group (SHG) that DPG encouraged the villagers to form.

DPG alone distributed 133 fibre-glass boats fitted with outboard motors that replaced the flimsy wooden craft, most of which vanished when the giant waves generated by tsunami crashed onto Tamil Nadu shores.

Pavalaparai saves his surplus income in the SHG, saying it is enough to meet their son’s educational expense and help them raise loans when the need arises. He recalls a time when fishing was the sole source of income for fishermen like him and how they were indebted, powerless people and lived constantly under the threat of big boat owners, moneylenders and merchants. 'Earlier we could not raise loans without collateral security and we did not even know how to voice our difficulties,' Pavalaparai said.

Before the SHGs were formed, the villagers depended on the village ‘panchayat’ (smallest administrative unit) for all official and legal communication. Today, empowered by the SHG, they deal directly with higher officials to address their concerns.

For example, when land for housing was being allotted, Pavalaparai and his four brothers received just two plots. But representations through the SHG enabled them to get a fair share of land with houses on them. In all, DPG formed 168 SHGs with microfinance support worth 21 million dollars.

Solomon said that while the different NGOs followed different strategies, DPG used a 'joint consultative process' involving the panchayats in identifying who would benefit from housing while ensuring that ownership was vested with both husband and wife.

'One change that we saw was the attitude (of the people) towards construction labour. The proud fishermen and their wives would have nothing to do with it but as construction activity increased and the price of labour picked up, many of the women became skilled masons,' Solomon said.

With their inhibitions gone, the women began to pick up other skills that DPG provided through special courses such as tailoring.

When Muthulakshmi in the fishing village Vanavanmahadevi found that she could not support her four children from the limited income of her fisherman husband, she enrolled for a one-year training programme run by DPG in tailoring.

With a sewing machine partly financed by DPG, she became the village’s first woman tailor.

As the NGOs built homes and community centres, the state government followed up with street lighting and other infrastructure, generating a modest economic boom in the coastal areas.

Some NGOs such as Embracing the World (ETW) run by the Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM) trust built not only homes but also roads, wells, schools, community halls and health care centres.

'There has definitely been a change in the lives of the people of these areas as result of the charitable activity that was mounted there in the post- tsunami period,' Abhayamitra Chaitanya from the MAM trust told IPS.

ETW also built and donated 700 fibre-glass fishing boats complete with engines on the condition that fishing formed the main livelihood in the affected villages.

'Overall there has been a rise in expectations among the people, and this is reflected in the fact that there are now very few school dropouts in villages such Vilunthanmavadi, Mapillaioorani, Vellapallem and Vanavanmahadevi,' said Solomon.

What made the transformation possible was the large scale funds that poured into the area from various donors.

'Money for the houses and fishing boats came from Diatonic Emergency Aid and Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst, both of which are based in Germany,' Solomon said, adding that in all, his NGO received over seven million dollars for its tsunami relief and rehabilitation programme.

'Our challenge now is to see that the momentum generated in community sustenance is not lost and the villages do not slide back into neglect,' Solomon said.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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