GROUND ZERO

It is strange how matters of social welfare enter our conscience only when a disaster occurs ... Don't like to sound gloomy, but people are dying everyday ... More than 150,000 people died in this disaster ... But did you know that over 165,000 people die every month because of Malaria? ... The figure is 240,000 per month for AIDS ... Not that nothing is being done about it - There are millions of dollars being donated regularly for these causes too ... But the figures remain there - in the hundreds of millions ...

Something else I did'nt know till a week back ... The US spends 6 billion dollars a week in Iraq ... What they donated for the Tsunami is peanuts compared to money like that ... So the most powerful nation in the world spends more to kill people than to save them ... US hypocrisy merits a seperate blog entry by itself, and I promise I'll get back to it ...

For now, let me present to you an account of the real heroes to emerge from all this ... I'm not talking about VIPs who paralyse relief efforts by raining down upon the Tsunami hit areas ... I'm not talking about the politicians, filmstars and sportsmen lining up for a photo-op presenting a cheque to the prime minister (Did you know there actually were instances of people refusing to give cheques unless photographed) ... And I'm definitely not talking about all those countries trying desperately to win that game show "Who wants to donate a Billion dollars" ...

I'm talking about the volunteers working at ground zero, with the people ... All of those handling the logistics, the counseling, the rallying for support ... The ones who were there for them before the Tsunami, and the ones who will continue to serve them long after the Tsunam fades from people's memories ...

Balaji Sampath is just one of them ...He is the coordinator for AID Chennai Chapter ... He was IIT-JEE rank-4 ... He pursued his PhD from University of Maryland at College Park and these days works full-time with AID ... This is a report that he filed in from the field ...





From: Balaji Sampath
Tsunami Relief Work Report - 3

(A perspective report)


A Social Movement in Progress!

Venkatesh is a poor daily wage coolie labor from Chidambaram. Right from the start he has been helping with dead body removal, debris clearance and relief distribution in the villages around our Killai center.

Every 2-3 days he gets a call from home "Come back! We have not eaten for 2 days."

Venkatesh's daily earnings decides whether his family will eat that day or not. When he gets this call, Venkatesh rushes back home - to work, to earn and to feed his family.

Two days later he is back at Killai - working on the relief efforts!

There are many DYFI volunteers like Venkatesh working in Killai and the other six centers in Cuddalore and Nagai. Extremely poor and extremely motivated volunteers. They are the backbone of our relief efforts there. They are the ones who cannot write reports, the ones who cannot discuss big ideas for long term planning. But they are the ones who went in first into the empty villages to dig out and clear and cremate dead bodies, to clean up the slush in the houses and to provide relief supplies. I would like to take this opportunity to salute these silent selfless volunteers and acknowledge their critical role.

At our Nagapatinam center a large number of "software" volunteers from Bangalore and Chennai landed up to help with the relief operations. At first, the local DYFI volunteers looked at them suspiciously "What can these well-dressed rich professionals do here in this village?" But they were in for a shock. The IT professionals promptly folded up their sleeves, put on gloves and boots and walked into the slush to lift and remove dead bodies. The local volunteers were first zapped. They had never seen software professionals doing this kind of manual labor! By the evening - at the end of a hard day's labor - a new human relationship had developed - volunteers from both groups were now great friends, sharing jokes and beedis!

Apart from a large number of individuals - "professionals who took leave from their offices" and landed up in our Chennai Office and from there to Cuddalore and Nagapatinam - helping in every way they could, we also had batches of volunteers from a number of companies like Hexaware, Ashok Leyland, TCS, Infosys, Colgate, Tirumalai Chemicals, HCL, etc. In the last 2 weeks, AID has mobilized more than 500 such volunteers who have spent varying amounts of time volunteering and helping in Cuddalore and Nagai - along with DYFI and PSF and TNSF's 500 volunteers.

The first day when I was planning with the core AID-India team and Senthil Babu of PSF and Ramesh and Kannan from DYFI about work allocation for these "software volunteers" - I had assumed these well-to-do volunteers that we were mobilizing in Chennai and Bangalore will only do things like surveys, relief distribution, etc - not manual labor. In the days that followed I was proved totally wrong - and very happily so!

We have today a social movement before us - something that has never happened before. New people from totally different backgrounds, in large numbers, breaking hierarchies and working together as equals.

First Phase Relief Efforts almost completed

In the first phase (the first 10-12 days), the focus was on ensuring people are safe in relief camps, ensuring disease outbreaks don't happen, people have food to eat and blankets and clothes, and on removing dead bodies and cleaning up the villages. There was no confusion on what needed to be done - only questions of how to reach out and organize ourselves to be effective. Overcoming the shock and getting organized and reaching basic relief was the goal. We found the government and a few organizations working in some pockets where there was a lot of destruction and a lot of media attention. We therefore focused our attention on smaller villages dotted along the coast which are harder to reach.

Our team was based out of 7 cluster centers in Cuddalore, Nagai and Karaikal area. Around each cluster center, we began working in about 5-10 villages. We started clearing dead bodies and providing relief support. We also began to identify what other groups (local business groups, merchant associations and general villagers) are providing and began to ration our supply so that things are not duplicated, but also ensuring that needs are identified and met on time. Our Chennai office was also geared to source materials based on day to day field needs and transport them to the relief cluster centers on a daily basis.

Right from the start our focus was on three issues:

1. To get people out of relief camps into a family set up as soon as possible - so that regular life can restart and serious rehab process can begin.

2. Ensuring basic relief reaches all families - identifying gaps in distribution as well as gaps in items needed and providing them.

3. Ensuring more problems are not generated - disease outbreaks, fear psychosis, fights between people at the camps, etc.

In most places this first phase of efforts is over. There are some very rare pockets where we still see some dead bodies and debris needs some clearing up, but for the most part this work is complete - and will be done in the next couple of days. Basic relief provision organization structure is also in place. Relief for a month or two more will be needed, and there are people who are donating materials towards these which will hopefully keep this going smoothly.

The first phase challenge was organization and scaling up. I shouldn't be saying this myself, but we handled this quite well. A core team planning and handling and coordinating the expanding work, Lots of volunteers - assigned to different tasks, handling a whole new range of activities. A clear structure for field level intervention and stocking up the field centers with enough volunteers and materials and a good work plan strategy. A good system for collecting and channeling donations. A good reporting structure on the work in progress, field level materials and financial and volunteer needs.

Shabnam Hashmi, a well known activist, visited the AID office and our relief centers. One point she made sums up the reason why we were able to scale up and organize so effectively. "I was very pleasantly surprised by the way totally new volunteers are given so much responsibility and are able to coordinate and plan the work in AID. In most organizations including ours, we believe only the core group can coordinate and plan important things. This openness, trust and ability to devolve responsibility is what has made so many new people so quickly take on work and manage things."

This has always been the case with AID, but until she put it across like that I never realized this was an important strength.

Before I go on to describe the second phase of relief efforts that we are entering into, I must mention the special help we have received from Mr. Parthasarathy of Tirumalai Chemicals. Through his help we have been able to connect up with a large number of industrial groups which have been directly arranging relief supplies from factories and also arranging godown space for storage, helping with organizing things by sending volunteers, working on transport issues and also on technology issues.


Relief Efforts Moving into Second Phase

Now we are moving into the second phase. In the second phase, there are many more tricky issues to handle. I will go over some of them now.

There are many other NGOs at work in the affected areas. There is almost a competition amongst these NGOs to try and identify and "adopt" villages where each group would work exclusively. Since there are more NGOs than villages, there is an auction and negotiation taking place in the collector's office on a daily basis! Since we were busy with the relief efforts in the villages, we were often unable to attend the collector's meetings. Also there was a general aversion within our group at the on-going auction of villages! But since were working in these villages right from start, we had in a different sense "adopted" these villages. When we mentioned that we are working in nearly 30 villages in Nagai and 30 villages in Cuddalore, we were told we cannot work in so many villages, as many villages had been already "adopted" by different groups! After some initial confusion, here is a clear picture of what we will be doing.

1.. We are not in this business of adopting villages and keeping it exclusive. If others want to come in and do things in a village - let them. We are and will continue working with the people and ensure that all their needs are met. We don't need to meet all needs ourselves - government, other NGOs and other businesses can also provide it.

2.. Our focus is therefore on the gaps in delivery. No one is working on toy centers and crèches for children, education support for 10th and 12th students, preventive health, counseling, etc - and so we are working on these issues. We are also monitoring what the other groups are providing and will mobilize people to demand their rights whenever necessary.

3.. We also oppose this shirking of duty by the government. The responsibility for rehabilitation cannot be given over to NGOs and private organizations. Today an NGO can work in a village, tomorrow they may decide to leave. They are not accountable institutions. Only the government can be held responsible for rehabilitation. And the current moves and actions suggest that the government is using this overwhelming support from the public to shirk its responsibility. What we are proposing as an alternative is that Govt and NGO partner together with NGO providing community mobilization and implementation support.

a. Funds must go to the local elected community structures (like panchayat system or water users groups).

b. Within this structure govt is responsible ultimately for rehab - no one else can be held that responsible.

c. Govt gets help from other orgn - NGOs - for community mobilization, donor agencies and industries for financial and material support and sourcing, groups of technical people (mobilized by organizations like Pondicherry Science Forum, CERD, DST, AID-India) for technical support in different areas like housing, livelihood, education and health.

d. NGOs and Community Organization apart from helping in implementation will also act as monitoring agencies - this must be accepted for transparency and to ensure smooth functioning. The Govt should not be overly touchy about some limited responsible criticism and should accept it in the interest of larger good.

The Government may not accept our proposal. In which case we will continue our work - identifying gaps that others miss out and fulfilling them and organizing people to get their rights and also pushing the government and other organizations to improve effectiveness of relief delivery.

The thrust of our work is two fold:

I. Towards Equality

An older society has broken down. This was not an ideal society - there were inequities within. There were people with 2 floor houses and people with huts, people with speed boats and people with catamarams and even people without any of these. What does reconstruction mean?

1.. Does it mean giving back to each what they have lost ? A 2-floor house for a 2-floor house and a hut for a hut? A boat for a boat and a catamaram for a catamaram?

2.. Or does it mean proportional loss coverage - a 75% coverage of assets lost. Will this mean that the rich (who have more voice) will get their boats first and then with whatever money is left some catamarams will be provided ? Or will this mean first the poorest will get what they have lost and only then the more well to do will get their losses covered?

3.. Or does reconstruction mean a move towards equality - trying to build a new society where the new assets are more equally shared and owned?

These are not easy questions to answer. One might want equity, but the people have organized under local panchayats (not the govt elected ones - traditional panchayats). They have a perception of how things should be distributed. In many villages even if you distribute nets equally to all, they plan to collect the nets back and distribute it only to those who had lost boats and catamarams earlier. Of course the poorer sections would like things to be more egalitarian - but they have little say in the matter. At this stage a debate on equity with the well-to-do who have lost their assets also brings out an emotional reaction. Even practically, pushing for equity in livelihood assets is ruled out in the current context with so many people in the game trying to help. If you are bargaining for equity with the powerful in the village and are the only one bringing in resources, it is possible. But now with so much "competition to help", this becomes impossible.

But just a simple "return to old life" is also not possible. Villages did not have toilets or libraries. Does that mean we won't construct toilets and libraries? Clearly a more complex approach is needed. Out of a lot of debate the following approach has emerged.


1.. We will ensure that basic relief - shelter, food, education, health is ensured for all the people. Today there are lots of people focusing on this - but we will work to ensure that this continues at least for 3 more months.

2.. We will work to ensure that the poorest get their due first.

3.. On livelihood we will have to go with the larger "dominant" current consensus now. We will try to ensure as much of this is done by other organizations - and will try to push for equity wherever possible. At a later stage we can look at mobilizing the poorer sections into co-operatives and provide better livelihood options. We will also focus on non-fishing villages and the livelihood options there.

4.. On housing we will try to push for more equal structures.

5.. We will focus efforts on building up community assets - like water supply, sanitation (toilet complex), health care facilities, children's activity centers, community cyclone shelters, libraries, etc.

6.. We will work continuously in these villages and work on small budget things like education, health, women's empowerment, children's support programmes. These are issues others don't want to work on very much.

7.. We will work on providing alternative technology solutions - to our own groups, to other NGOs and to the Government. (Already a number of our recommendations - though not all - have been adopted by the government in provisioning temporary structures).


II. Gap Filling Function

There are many groups working on the field (and in "competition"). Most of them will stay on only for a short period of time - they have specific agendas like building temporary shelters, or houses or giving boats and nets, etc. They have not so far (nor do many intend) to stay on for a year or two to rebuild the social fabric that was shattered. Since that is exactly what we will be doing, we feel it will be better for us to work in a sustained manner and optimize our resources. We can afford to wait. We feel our donors and supporters trust us enough and will realize that even if we spend the money slowly, we will do a good job. So we need not spend funds in a hurry. Let other organizations spend their resources on what they identify as specific needs. We will even help them in the process (as we are doing in some villages already with our volunteers helping other groups construct temporary shelters). We will continue our work and interaction with the community, understand their needs better and then help them on things that are not covered - a gap filling role. Even this gap filling role requires a lot of funds and we need to conserve our resources to ensure that we can do this effectively because we are working in more than 70 affected villages already.

The above is one kind of gap filing role - identifying specific issues that are not covered and addressing them. The other kind of gap filing is location based. There are places that are being neglected. Cuddalore-Nagai (and Kanyakumari) have been affected the most and so most organizations are putting their energies there. We also put in a lot of effort there in the early days. More recently we started expanding to areas that are also affected - obviously less affected than Cuddalore-Nagai, but whether there has been no help so far either. For example around Koovathur area in Kanchipuram, we have started working in 4-5 villages. These villages have about 30-40 houses destroyed, no lives lost, but boats and nets have been damaged. Very little help comes into these villages. Similarly even in Nagai and Cuddalore areas, there are non-fishing villages that are affected by the Tsunami. Villages which depended on selling fish and villages where water came into the fields and made it salty. There are relief effort gaps here that we will be addressing.

We have made a list of different issues on which we need to focus - it is listed at the end of this note. One must understand that we won't be doing all the things ourselves - our job is to ensure all this gets done and gets done on time. We might have to do some things ourselves, we might need to get people to demand other things from the government and we might be able to get other NGOs to do a few things. But it important to keep all the issues in mind and to work on whatever is needed in each village.


Report of Progress

This is not a report of work done - it is a report of the evolving perspective amongst people who are working on the problem. There have been very interesting things happening on the field in many directions which will be reported separately in detail. We are trying to get together a village by village report of work done - but in this short time and with so much activity this is hard. We have been working on Counseling, Preventive Health and Games for children which have thrown up interesting new perspectives like the fear of the Tsunami and the Sea. We are working on a video and booklets to address this fear, apart from direct counseling efforts. We have had water experts visit the areas to do studies on what can be done to provide drinking water. We have had people looking at ways to regenerate the wasted agricultural fields. We have done detailed village level PRA exercises and prepared overall reconstruction proposals for each village. We have had people looking at alternate boat design and construction design for housing and children's activity centers. In each area of intervention listed below there have been a number of interesting activities - but too detailed to mention here. Since this is merely a perspectives report, I will stop with this with a promise of a more detailed work report to follow sometime soon!



What is needed ?

At this stage things are getting into the tricky phase - so the most important thing that is needed on all fronts is PATIENCE and TRUST! We need to work carefully, stretch our resources and have the ability to wait and work patiently. Hurrying will only worsen things at this stage in terms of our long term ability to bring about a better life for all.

There has been a huge response from volunteers, donors and supporters. This support needs to continue for a much longer time. We will need volunteers to work on issues over at least a year. Gearing ourselves up for working over such a long time is critical. It is important not to fizzle out at this stage. It is important to understand our overall strategy and to go along with it. The pressure to see immediate results should not cloud the need to work slowly but steadily.

Having said this let me go on to list the four key areas for support:

1. Volunteers who can stay on for a longer period of time - and are staggered in time - spread out over a year. I understand this is harder than getting a rush of motivated volunteers now. But we are trying to address a harder problem - so we must be able to do the harder things. Also we need volunteers who will work in the office and also go to the field. It is this back and forth interaction which is critical at this stage.

2. Funds that are raised to be spent slowly over a year or even two years. Even people who have collected funds to buy and give things must conserve their resources to buy and give things more slowly over a year or at least over 3 months. Is this possible? This is something people who are collecting and raising such support must decide. Is it needed? Yes!

3. Material Support - Different kinds of materials are needed and we have been getting support from a large group of people for this. Some people have been sourcing materials directly from factories.

4. Technical Assistance - Please look at the range of issues that we are trying to work on. Clearly we don't have the expertise to handle all of this! But as you probably know that never stops us from trying - and so far we have found teams of architects, doctors, community health workers, water experts, and lots of others coming forward to help us in different ways. We need this to continue.


A Non-Tsunami Perspective

There has been an amazing response to the Tsunami disaster. Yes - the people there need this help. But the people in other villages nearby are asking "What sin did we do? We are also poor - how come no one comes to help us like this?" At this stage it may seem insensitive to ask for such help. But looking at it from their perspective, they are also poor and need help if it can be provided. Is it possible to channel this energy, hope and resources that have been released by the Tsunami relief efforts into other areas as well? There is a lot to do there as well and if we approach the problems there with the same level of interest, there is a lot we can do in these areas as well.

Slowly as we are recovering from the shock of the Tsunami and the immediate relief efforts that followed, this question keeps coming up again and again. A hope lingers on that the human spirit the Tsunami has released will sustain and in time will extend to other areas as well.

- Balaji Sampath