TSUNAMI IMPACT: Mixed Blessing for Most Marginalised

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NAGAPATTINAM, India, Dec 30 2005 (IPS) - Although Chellapappa lost two of her children to the tsunami that smashed every home in the fishing village of Samanthanpettai on Dec. 26, 2004, she now has reason to smile: a brand new concrete-roof home with electricity, running water and a sanitary toilet.

Chellapappa’s new home, finished in pink and white, is one of 375 identical houses laid out in neat rows that are separated by wide, paved roads, equipped with street lighting and drainage – all set amidst lush lawns and shrubbery.

Best of all, the well-designed homes are built around a large community hall and a separate child care centre that can address most of the common needs of the fishing village, which previously consisted of thatched huts strung out haphazardly along the now bleak, barren beach.

Nearby is a jetty for landing crude oil from large tankers, part of the economy of another India that had no place for perennially poor, artisanal fishermen and their concerns – until the tsunami happened a year ago.

“Living in a house like this is a dream for me, although it cannot replace my children,” said Chellapappa. “I can hope for a better future for my surviving son Nitya and daughter Janani, now that we live in a proper home and there is a well-organised community that can take care of our basic needs.”

She hopes to send her children, aged five and six, to a new school that has been built in Nagapattinam town to replace the one where 52 students died under the debris of school buildings falling under the weight of the monster waves.

Chellapappa’s family, along with 340 others, were the beneficiaries of the decision taken by a trust run by the internationally-known spiritual leader Ma Amritanandamayi to adopt and relocate the entire Samanthanpettai village following the tsunami.

“Life is far better for us now than before the tsunami struck,” said Arumugham, an 18-year-old lad who marvels at the transformation that has come about in a year’s time. “We have 200 mechanised, fibreglass fishing boats in the village, all of them gifted free by various trusts, compared to the ninety-odd boats this village had before the disaster.”

Each boat cost around 3,000 U.S. dollars, a princely sum in this poverty-stricken fishing village. “With these boats we are able to catch enough fish to sustain our families, and for once we do not have to worry about repaying loans that carry heavy interest,” said Arumugham.

He is particularly excited by the huge, centralised fish auction centre that is being built in this ancient port town, a facility that will be equipped with a cold storage. “We will no longer have to worry about the day’s catch rotting just because we could not sell it quickly enough, and this will help us bargain for higher prices.”

Abhayamitra Chaitanya, who works for Amritanandamayi’s trust, says that the tsunami brought attention to long-forgotten coastal communities that were struggling to eke a living out of the sea, an opinion shared by administrators.

“We got an opportunity to look at the most marginalised communities,” said Gangandeep Singh Bedi, chief administrator of the adjoining district of Cuddalore, referring especially to the primitive Irular tribe that inhabits these parts.

For centuries, the Irulars lived by skinning snakes but were deprived of their livelihoods when the state introduced a ban on snake hunting after several species became threatened with extinction.

At Bedi’s initiative, the Irulars were given fishing nets and allowed to catch small fish and prawns in the rivers around Cuddalore so that they could pick up an alternate livelihood.

“We could not take up fishing safely because of threats from traditional fishermen but now, finally, the government has seen fit to intervene on our behalf,” said Chinnathamby, an Irular elder.

Relief efforts have had to steer around traditional social hierarchies among the different castes and communities that populate Tamil Nadu and indeed most of India.

Even the Amritanandamayi Trust was forced to build a cluster of 120 houses at Pandangasali for dalits (the “untouchable” caste at the bottom of the Hindu social hierarchy), who had to be clearly segregated from the main group at Samanthanpettai.

Nagapattinam and Cuddalore were the districts worst affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami and accounted for the bulk of the close to 9,000 deaths it caused in Tamil Nadu state, which is separated from Sri Lanka by a narrow strait.

Close to 300 million dollars in aid poured into Tamil Nadu from state and central governments and from foreign donors, while more than 400 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) stood ready to take up various tasks covering relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Consequently, Cuddalore now has amenities like a desalination plant capable of producing 2,000 litres of potable drinking water per hour, while at Nagapattinam a building capable of housing some 100 orphans in comfort is being built at a cost of a million dollars.

Indeed the munificence of the donors has been such that in Nagapattinam every fisherman now has his own boat and no longer has to seek work as a crew member on other boats for a pittance or a portion of the daily catch.

The NGOs also brought along new skills and trades, such as making roofing tiles from cement, candle-making and tailoring – skills easily taken up by people who were no longer interested in going to back to fishing.

Said Chellapappa’s husband Vaidyalingam: “I finally got the new mechanised fibreglass boat that I have always wanted to own, but I rarely put out to sea because the monster waves continue to haunt me… and will for the rest of my life.”