Building Local Capacities for Disaster Response and Risk Reduction an Oxfam-BEDROC Study

Building Local Capacities for Disaster Response and Risk Reduction An Oxfam-BEDROC Study

incubating innovative interventions . Building Local Capacities for Disaster Response and Risk Reduction

An Oxfam-BEDROC Study

Building and Enabling Disaster Resilience of Coastal Communities (BEDROC) Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India http://www.bedroc.in Building Local Capacities for Disaster Response and Risk Reduction An Oxfam-BEDROC Study

Published by Annie George BEDROC, No. 5 Mettu Bungalow New Beach Road, Kadambadi Nagapattinam 611001 Tamil Nadu, India for DFYWA, Visakhapatnam

Study Team Leaders Satish Babu, Annie George, Ahana Lakshmi, Rebecca Katticaren and Sajith Sukumaran

Edited by Dr. Ahana Lakshmi

Document Layout in LATEX by Satish Babu

Cover Design by Ajay Kumar

Printed at Orange Printers, Trivandrum Acknowledgements

The Study Team would like to place on record its appreciation and gratitude to all the different well-wishers who helped make this Study a reality:

Oxfam America for trusting our experience and skills • DFYWA, and Mr. Arjilli Dasu in particular, for so willingly agreeing to co-host the • Study and being an active participant from the beginning to the end

Russell J. Miles, Tsunami Program Manager, Humanitarian Response Depart- • ment, Oxfam America, for his timely interventions, especially in the beginning stages of the Study, and for his guidance

Hari Krishna, Indian Humanitarian Representative, Oxfam America, for his unswerv- • ing support, quiet advice, and enabling presence

Sri Vinod Chandra Menon, H’ble Member, NDMA for his insights that enabled us • to understand national level perspectives on DRR

Sri C V Sankar IAS, formerly OSD (R & R), Govt. of Tamil Nadu, who willingly • spent valuable time with the team, helping us understand the state-level perspectives on DRR

Dr J Radhakrishnan IAS, former Collector of Nagapattinam, for his extremely pro- • active support and keen interest in our activities

Sri G Padmanabhan, Emergency Analyst, UNDP who came all the way from Delhi • to hear us, support us and contribute to the proceedings in his inimitable style

TRINet, for partnering the Study and taking on all organizing and editing work, • quietly and efﬁciently

InApp Information Technologies, Trivandrum, in general, and Ajay in particular, • for cheerfully designing and laying out the report, ﬂiers and the invitations at short notice Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner and Megan J. Hardy from Tufts University for their sup- • port in framing the Research Design

John Twigg and his team for the remarkable work done on evolving the Frame- • work on a “Disaster Resilient Community” which set us on the right track and for graciously permitting us to use this for ﬁeld testing

The people of Cuddalore and Nagapattinam, who gave up a lot of their precious • time responding to our queries enthusiastically and pro-actively

CCD, SNEHA, Dhan Foundation, PMSSS, ADRA and other NGOs who frankly shared • with us their experiences, learnings and even frustrations, with the only aim of making the Study more meaningful

SPACE, Trivandrum, with their warm hospitality, innate cheerfulness and helpful • assistance, for hosting all our Trivandrum meetings

And everyone else who cheered us on from the sidelines, giving us the zest and • energy to give this Study our very best

We have the honour and privilege of dedicating this Study to all those people who have faced disasters in their lives and have risen beyond them to face yet another day, cheerfully and proudly.

The Study Team

iv Contents

Message ix

Foreword xi

Introduction xiv

Preface xvi

List of Acronyms xx

List of Tables xxi

List of Figures xxii

Executive Summary 1

1 The Context of the Study 7 1.1 Introduction ...... 7 1.2 Disasters and Vulnerability ...... 7 1.3 The Indian Ocean Tsunami and Humanitarian Aid ...... 8 1.4 Disaster Preparedness ...... 9 1.5 Changing Paradigm ...... 10 1.6 DRR and Development ...... 11 1.7 Backdrop of the study ...... 11 2 Objectives and the Study Area 13 2.1 The 2004 Tsunami Damages in Tamil Nadu ...... 13 2.2 The Response to the disaster ...... 14 2.3 NCRC and BEDROC ...... 16 2.4 Need for the study ...... 17 2.5 Speciﬁc Objectives of the Study ...... 18 2.6 Constituencies and Stakeholders ...... 18

v 2.6.1 A note on Traditional panchayats and Panchayati Raj Institutions 18 2.7 Study Area ...... 20 3 Methodology and Research Design 23 3.1 Overview ...... 23 3.2 Area of coverage ...... 23 3.3 Overall Methodology and Data Collection Instruments Used ...... 24 3.4 Sample Frame Selection ...... 24 3.5 Village-level Sample Size Selection ...... 25 3.5.1 Village Profiling ...... 25 3.5.2 Sample selection ...... 25 3.6 Research Instrument Design ...... 26 3.6.1 Village Profiling ...... 26 3.6.2 Quantitative Survey ...... 27 3.6.3 Focus Group Discussions ...... 28 3.6.4 Key Informant Interviews ...... 28 3.6.5 Case Studies ...... 29 3.7 Team Selection and Training ...... 29 3.8 Piloting and Finalization of Instruments ...... 29 4 The Study Administration and Execution 30 4.1 Study Administration ...... 30 4.2 Challenges faced in the Data Collection ...... 31 5 Findings and Analysis 32 5.1 Introduction ...... 32 5.1.1 Riders to the Assessment: ...... 34 5.2 Thematic Area 1: Governance ...... 35 5.2.1 DRR Policy Planning, prioritization and ensuring political commitment ...... 35 5.2.2 Legal and Regulatory Mechanisms ...... 38 5.2.3 Integration with Development Policies and Planning ...... 40 5.2.4 Institutional Mechanisms, Capacities and Structures ...... 42 5.2.5 Accountability and Community Participation ...... 45 5.3 Thematic Area 2: Risk Assessment ...... 46 5.3.1 Hazard Risk data and Assessment ...... 46 5.3.2 Vulnerability and Impact Data Assessment ...... 47 5.3.3 Scientific Capacities and Innovation ...... 48 5.4 Thematic Area 3: Knowledge and Education ...... 50 5.4.1 Public awareness, knowledge and skills ...... 51 5.4.2 Information Management and Sharing ...... 52 5.4.3 Education and Training ...... 55 5.4.4 Cultures, attitude and motivation ...... 57

vi 5.4.5 Learning and Research ...... 58 5.5 Thematic Area 4: Risk Management and Vulnerability Reduction . . . . . 58 5.5.1 Environmental and natural resource management ...... 59 5.5.2 Health and Well-Being ...... 59 5.5.3 Sustainable Livelihoods ...... 61 5.5.4 Social Protection ...... 69 5.5.5 Physical Protection ...... 73 5.5.6 Financial Instruments ...... 77 5.6 Thematic Area 5: Disaster Preparedness and Response ...... 85 5.6.1 Disaster Preparedness ...... 85 5.6.2 Disaster Response ...... 87 5.6.3 Crisis management during disasters ...... 89 5.6.4 Decision Making at Critical Junctures ...... 91 5.6.5 Ideal Responder ...... 93 6 Conclusions and Recommendations 96 6.1 Governance ...... 97 6.2 Risk Assessment ...... 98 6.3 Knowledge and Education ...... 98 6.4 Risk Management and Vulnerability Reduction ...... 99 6.5 Disaster Preparedness and Response ...... 100 6.6 Recommendations ...... 101 7 Case Studies 103 7.1 Community Disaster Resilience in Kambilimedu ...... 103 7.1.1 The Annual Flood Cycle ...... 103 7.1.2 Food Habits ...... 104 7.1.3 Predicting Floods ...... 104 7.1.4 Volunteering ...... 104 7.1.5 Coping Mechanisms ...... 105 7.1.6 Poverty and Need for External Aid ...... 105 7.1.7 Some Observations ...... 106 7.2 Nomads no more ...... 106 7.2.1 Their ‘Existence’ is Accepted ...... 106 7.2.2 Tsunami Bounty: Quality houses ...... 107 7.2.3 Reducing Vulnerability ...... 107 7.2.4 Some Observations ...... 108 7.3 Coordination in Kandakkad ...... 108 7.3.1 The Importance of Leadership ...... 108 7.3.2 The Problem of Salinity ...... 109 7.3.3 Community Ownership Bears Results ...... 109 7.3.4 Replicating Success in Other Places ...... 109 7.3.5 Some Observations ...... 110

vii 7.4 Building Community Cohesiveness in Sellur ...... 110 7.4.1 Reconstruction and Relocation ...... 110 7.4.2 A New ‘Mixed’ Village ...... 111 7.4.3 Variations in Amenities ...... 111 7.4.4 New Neighbours but Old friends Still Preferred ...... 111 7.4.5 Conﬂicts and Conﬂict-Resolution ...... 111 7.4.6 Glitches ...... 112 7.4.7 Some Observations ...... 113 A Report of the Chennai Workshop 117 A.1 Background ...... 117 A.2 Inaugural Session ...... 118 A.2.1 The context of the study: Mr N. Hari Krishna ...... 118 A.2.2 Need to train the community: Mr Benjamin Larroquette ...... 119 A.2.3 The inaugural address: Dr J. Radhakrishnan, IAS ...... 119 A.3 Presentation of the Study ...... 120 A.3.1 Overview of the study ...... 120 A.3.2 The process ...... 121 A.3.3 What the study looked at ...... 121 A.3.4 Vulnerabilities and Coping strategies ...... 122 A.3.5 Disaster Responses ...... 123 A.3.6 A Clear Improvement ...... 124 A.3.7 Successful interventions ...... 125 A.3.8 Recommendations ...... 126 A.4 Discussions ...... 126 A.4.1 The Changing Scenario of DM: Mr G. Padmanbhan ...... 131 A.5 Vote of Thanks ...... 133 B List of Resource Persons for Key Informant Interview 134

C List of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Interviewed 135

D Current Status of Safety Infrastructure 136

viii Message

It was both a surprise and a delight to receive this report. It deserves to be read widely, for many reasons, but I shall mention two main ones. The first is that it sheds light on one of the most important yet relatively unstudied aspects of disasters. There are many calls for post-disaster recovery programmes to reduce vulnerability to future risks, or ‘build back better’. It is an aim all organisations seek but few achieve. Understanding why some programmes manage this better than others is vital if we are to make future recovery efforts more effective and sustainable in the longer term. Yet there is still relatively little good research into recovery processes and the factors shaping them. This case study is a valuable addition to the literature. The second reason for reading the study is because of the approach it takes. Not only is it a thorough and detailed piece of work, deploying a range of research methods and seeking to capture the views of all the important stakeholders, but it breaks new ground in seeking a holistic and structured view of community resilience and the processes that stimulate it. Its findings have much greater coherence and forcefulness as a result. It should serve as a model for future investigations of this kind. For this work to be widely read, it must be widely known. Do share it with your colleagues and anyone who might profit from it.

John Twigg University College London 1st May 2009

ix Foreword

The number of people affected by disasters has climbed significantly in the last decade under the pressures of climate change, land and resource degradation, population growth, and conflict over natural resources. However, we also recognize that disasters are not caused implicitly by natural hazards—the ‘flood’, the ‘drought’, the ‘tsunami’— and that disasters are the direct result of development and governance failures. As the incidence, intensity and complexity of emergencies continue to increase, threatening to overwhelm emergency response and humanitarian aid systems, how can humanitarian agencies best meet the growing need for humanitarian aid and disaster relief? Agencies may focus on building “surge” capacity, or internal operational capability, to respond more quickly in an increasingly diverse number of places. Or we may instead build capacity at the local level in disaster preparedness and response—first aid training, rescue training, disaster simulation exercises. But what we often fail to consider, and what this important research by BEDROC highlights, is that addressing issues of governance, decision making power, and access, are of equal importance. Building the capacity, confidence and tools for communities to assert their rights and interact with, and guide, external aid providers and government is just as critical an intervention. This research reaffirms the need for greater community guidance of a disaster response and the need to identify and strengthen existing resilience and capacities to make this possible. These are not new concepts in the humanitarian community, but they are routinely sidelined in favor of approaches that keep aid providers firmly in the driver’s seat. This research confirms that the humanitarian sector needs to continue to work towards a more rights-based model of disaster response and risk reduction—one that views disaster-affected community members as resourceful agents of their own recovery rather than helpless victims of inevitable catastrophe. Disaster affected people are the first, and increasingly may indeed be the only, responders. At the end of the day this is their home, their disaster, their rights, their future. As humanitarian agencies, we need to take care that the ownership of the risk reduction and recovery process is theirs as well. In partnering with BEDROC to undertake this study we aimed to answer a number of critical questions around this issue—what better role can international humanitarian agencies play in strengthening local capacity for emergency response and dis-

x aster risk reduction? What can external agencies do to strengthen the capacity of local disaster management systems—encompassing communities, Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) and local NGOs, local government and individuals? What are local mechanisms for resilience and how do we identify existing capacity? How can agencies like Oxfam best strengthen (and not undermine) local relationships, channels of communication, and accountability mechanisms? And lastly, how, with scarce resources, can the immediate humanitarian imperative of saving lives be balanced with the longer-term objectives of building the capacities of affected communities, local organizations, and governments to respond and protect against future disasters, without us? This BEDROC study starts to point us in the right direction.

Russell Miles Director Oxfam International Tsunami Research Program Oxfam America

xi Introduction

Reducing Disaster Circumstances is Real Humanitarian Work

It was four days after the devastation caused by Tsunami in the coastal villages of Tamil Nadu in India. Like hundreds of humanitarian workers, I was also visiting the affected villages for a rapid assessment of the tragedy, so as to mobilize humanitarian support on behalf of Oxfam, my employer. The taxi in which I was traveling turned off the high way to enter into a village, one of the most affected in India. We reached a junction through which we had to pass to enter the village. There was a commotion; dozens of cars probably carrying humanitarian workers like me were lined up, impa- tiently waiting for the traffic to move on. I stepped out of the car to see what was happening. The traffic had been halted by half a dozen women squatting in the middle of the road. Their long hair undone and unkempt, they were beating their chests and wailing loudly. They wanted immediate help in cash, and were otherwise not prepared to allow anyone to enter the village to carry out any humanitarian work. “Your charity should begin with us” was what they were clearly conveying. Traffic had piled up because the travelers in the first car had been resisting the demand. They had to take out their purses after some local men moved in and cajoled them to heed with a latent coercive body language. I also moved on after reducing the weight of my purse. I spent about four hours in the village walking and talking to people amidst debris, dead bodies, broken houses and shattered lives. A small group of youth was trying to clear the fallen walls of a house in search of people who might still be alive under the debris. When I started walking in that village, a middle aged man joined me, walking next to me, stopping when I stopped and sitting next to me whenever I sat to talk to people. He didn’t say anything in those four hours. He was like a stone, not showing any emotions. His eyes were red and he was looking nowhere and seeing nothing. I observed him, conscious of his presence and thinking I would talk with him before leaving the village. Four hours later, it was time for me to leave to file my report to the head office. I wanted to have a brief talk with him before leaving. I turned to him, held

xii his hands as a gesture of gratitude for keeping me company for hours. At this point, he broke down. He tried to say something but his voice choked. Tears rolled down his eyes. I went a little closer to him, put my hand around his shoulders. That enabled him to open up and vent the burden of his pain. He cried loudly for over twenty minutes. He pulled out a small photo of his family showed it to me and cried again. He didn’t say anything, because all that he wanted at that time was the demonstrative presence of someone who was not in a condition like him. He clearly was not expecting any help from me and left me after some time. I didn’t try to stop him, because I knew that he wanted nothing else from me than that humane affection. I walked up to the junction where my taxi had been stopped in the morning. The half a dozen women who had stopped our vehicle in the morning were enjoying a drink along with the men who were supporting them. I bought a cup of tea at the local shop and picked up a conversation with the tea shop owner. I understood from him that these women and men were from the hamlet near the highway. They did odd jobs to eke out their living. They had adopted this method to attract attention as all the cars carrying the donors were going in and coming out of only the ﬁshing community hamlets. They also wanted to get the best help possible, since they would not have any work for the next few weeks. These two experiences have left a deep Impact on me. When I look back at these incidents I ﬁnd some lessons for myself. The method of those women who resorted to the dramatic scenes of despair was sordid, though their reason was perhaps fair enough. However, I also wonder why their method should look strange to me because, with all good intentions, that’s exactly how humanitarian actors try to attract donors in the international market - hard selling tragedy with boundless creativity. Our tools are however, bit more sophisticated and we enjoy the class of superiority called profession- alism. But, at the end of the day, we leave no stone unturned in our effort to milk the compassionate donors on which my career, brand reputation of my organization and last but not the least survival and recovery of the disaster victims rely upon. Tsunami was one classic example where like the women in that village junction, humanitarian workers, NGOs and UN Organizations were able to mobilize many times more resources than actually needed. The other side of this humanitarian endeavour includes men and women like those I met in that village. People like him remind me that there is a line that separates those who needs basic humanitarian support in order to pick up the threads and move on with life and those would like to garner humanitarian support to move up in life. The dividing line can be called as dignity. As I recall my interaction with thousands of families after several disasters in the last decade, I realize that what most disaster affected people value is dignity over charity. If I were to be a disaster victim tomorrow, I would value a support that comes without hurting my dignity than a support that comes as charity. When humanitarian workers get rid of the arrogance of charity, they are clearly able to understand what exactly the affected communities need and make appropriate use of resources to meet those real needs.

xiii The goal of humanitarian work should be to reduce the opportunities for humanitarian work by reducing disaster risk and vulnerabilities on the one hand, and strengthening dialogue between communities to prevent conflicts, on the other. Disaster risk reduction helps people to be self sufficient and manage disasters with greater capacity. Most importantly, as said by hundreds of people who are part of such initiatives in In- dia, they value disaster risk reduction strategies and support because it will avoid the situation of receiving charity after a disaster. However, the donors who pour out their charity in the aftermath of a disaster seldom respond to the call for supporting disaster risk reduction and conflict prevention initiatives. If the government wisely uses its resources, we would not require donor support to promote disaster risk reduction. But sadly, even after the emergence of the National Disaster Management Authority, government structures at all levels in India lack the perspective of disaster risk reduction. The silver lining in the cloud of post tsunami excesses by international NGOs was the number of disaster risk reduction initiatives promoted by NGOs. While some organizations have wisely integrated DRR in the rehabilitation work from the beginning, other organizations have started them as a creative strategy of making appropriate use of funds. Nevertheless, as the study conducted by BEDROC & DFYWA reveals, the communities are happy about strengthening their capacities to make advanced plans, and develop resources, skills and tools to reduce the impacts of disasters in future. An interesting finding of the study is that, whether NGOs themselves know or not, people do know what the limitations of the NGOs are, and to what extent they can be depended upon. They clearly distinguish the services they must demand from the government and the services they can expect from NGOs. People seem to have exit plans for NGOs, while NGOs themselves forever debate on the best way to exit. The study also reveals that “when the intervention is participatory and tailored according to their needs, they meet the objectives. Otherwise, they remain like retail outlets in the village that try to sell the products that nobody wants”. Oxfam America along with its other twelve associates in the Oxfam International has been in the forefront of promoting community level capacity strengthening to reduce disaster risks. We are appreciative of the critical findings and in-depth analysis of BEDROC Research Team and we hope that NGOs, humanitarian workers and donors worldwide will find some useful learning from this work.

N Hari Krishna Oxfam America [email protected]

xiv Preface

Three years of sound and fury, and what do they signify...? The years succeeding the South Asian tsunami have not wanted for resources, ﬁnancial, human and the best of skills one can could only dream of pre-tsunami and never, at the same scale, for any other disaster thereafter. Granted this was the best time to unleash all previous learnings, to correct past mistakes, to right the wrongs of the world and to build back a brave new world. The tidal wave had washed out homes and communities leaving behind, as it were, an empty slate on which future could be rewritten or pasts unbuilt. We did all this and more. We rewrote and experimented and shouted from all available platforms on how post-disaster situations have to be managed. A veritable Tower of Babel, of voices and experiences. And the communities dealt with us the best way they could amidst the chaos that their own lives had degenerated to. “What was right and what is left?” was the question a humanitarian expert asked and this question needed answers if only to justify the time, resources, energy and effort that was expended into building back better. BEDROC, with its enviable history as a Post-Tsunami Coordination and Resource Centre, was also extremely interested in answering this question, not to justify but to learn from this lifetime experience on what worked and what did not. It was during this juncture that Oxfam America mooted this idea of doing a Study on “Building Local Capacities for Disaster Resilience and Enhancing Risk Reduction” building upon the lessons learnt during post-disaster interventions. As a Study, this was a perfect solution as it tried to understand the approaches that capacitated the local leadership without trying to point ﬁngers on the rightness or wrongness of approaches or organizations. While tsunami was the predominant experience described by people, it also gave us a chance to walk them through other disasters, thereby, trying to understand coping mechanisms, in general, and the differential impact of the tsunami, in particular. Designing the Study was a major challenge and often we felt lost while trying to assess all possible impacts both at the individual level and at the community level. Added to this were the inherent natures of the different communities impacted which just added further challenges. The permutations and combinations one came up with

xv during the process of analysis were mind-boggling as the analysis had to be necessarily multi-axial with types of communities, major livelihoods, number of disasters faced, presence of NGOs, gender, age and even governance systems, traditional and elected, playing crucial roles. The Study Team had to bring in, not only their survey skills, but also their previous knowledge and experience of the areas and communities studied, to understand the nuances thrown up by the Study. While the Study does bring some new insights, what it does, unequivocally, is substantially validate the crucial role of the communities and existing systems and networks. It also provides insights into the type of NGOs best suited for different phases of disaster management and the role of the Government vis-à-vis the much publicized “Public-Private Partnerships”. This Study has been an enriching experience for all the people involved right from the Team Leader to the Field Investigators as well as the communities. BEDROC, in particular, beneﬁts from this Study with a deeper understanding on the ways to take Community based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) forward. BEDROC, with its goal of “Building and Enabling Disaster Resilience of Coastal Communities” built into its acronym, is working at integrating DRR into long term development (another cliché) in this vulnerable coastal district of Nagapattinam. This Study has been instrumental in bringing to light the inherent survival instincts and coping mechanisms that prevail in such vulnerable communities, which need to be identiﬁed and strengthened rather than eroded. A rugged community that has faced disasters with equanimity and will continue doing so, albeit with progressive deterioration, unless supported and enabled with positive external energy and tools. While the study was completed in December 2008 as per schedule, it was revised after receiving comments from reviewers. We would like to record our thanks to them and are pleased to present the revised and updated version of the report now.

Annie George BEDROC

xvi List of Acronyms

ADB Asian Development Bank

ADRA Adventist Development and Relief Agency

BEDROC Building and Enabling Disaster Resilience in Coastal Communities

BSF Border Security Force

BPL Below Poverty Level

CASA Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action

CBO Community-Based Organization

CBDRM Community-Based Disaster Risk Management

CCA Common Country Assessment

CEO Chief Executive Ofﬁcer

CISF Central Industry Security Force

CM Chief Minister

CPUE Catch per Unit Effort

CRPF Central Reserve Police Force

CRZ Coastal Regulation Zone

CSO Civil Society Organization

DDMA District Disaster Management Agency

DFID Department for International Development

DFYWA District Fishermen Youth Welfare Association

xvii DM Disaster Management

DMA Disaster Management Agency

DMT Disaster Management Team

DRM Disaster Risk Management

DRR Disaster Risk Reduction

DP Disaster Preparedness

EM-DAT The International Emergency Disasters Database

EP Elected Panchayat

EWS Early Warning System

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization

FGD Focus Group Discussion

FRP FibreR einforced Plastic

GoTN Government of Tamil Nadu

HDI Human Development Index

IAS Indian Administrative Service

IIT Indian Institute of Technology

INGO International Non-Governmental Organization

ISDR International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

ITBP Indo-Tibetan Border Police

JCB JC Bamford Excavators and Heavy Earth Moving Equipment

KII Key Informant Interview

MDG Millennium Development Goals

MSSRF MS Swaminathan Research Foundation

NABARD National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development

NCRC NGO Co-ordination and Resource Centre

NDMA National Disaster Management Agency

xviii NGO Non-Governmental Organization

NREGP National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme

OSD Ofﬁcer on Special Duty

PDS Public Distribution System

PMSSS Pondicherry Multipurpose Social Service Society

PPP Public-Private-Partnership

PPPP Public-Private-People-Partnership

PRA Participatory Rural Appraisal

PRI Panchayati Raj Institution

PWRM Participatory Water Resources Management

RDO Revenue Divisional Ofﬁcer

SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation

SDMA State Disaster Management Agency

SHG Self-Help Group

SIFFS South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies

SNEHA Social Need Education and Human Awareness

SOP Standard Operating Procedure

SPACE Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment

TEC Tsunami Evaluation Council

TN Tamil Nadu

TNTRC Tamil Nadu Tsunami Resource Centre

TNVHA Tamil Nadu Voluntary Health Association

TP Traditional Panchayat

TRINet The Resource and Information Network for the coast

UN United Nations

UNDAF United Nations Development Assistance Framework

xix UNDP United Nations Development Programme

UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund

UNISDR United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

UNTRS United Nations team for Tsunami Recovery Support

VCA Community Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments

VDP Village Development Plan

WB World Bank

YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association

xx List of Tables

2.1 Deaths and Damages to Houses and Agricultural Land due to Tsunami . 14 2.2 Damages to ﬁshing assets due to tsunami ...... 14 2.3 Proﬁle of the Districts Studied ...... 21

3.1 Village Selection Matrix ...... 24 3.2 Villages Selected for Study ...... 25 3.3 Proﬁle of Respondents ...... 26

4.1 Study Timeline ...... 31

5.1 Information Dissemination ...... 53 5.2 Perceptions on Return to Normalcy–Fishing Livelihoods ...... 63 5.3 Perceptions of return to normalcy–non-ﬁshers ...... 64 5.4 Seasonal Migration ...... 65 5.5 Full-time Migration ...... 66 5.6 Possession of Ration Card and Election ID ...... 70 5.7 Social Security Schemes ...... 71 5.8 Participation in NREGP ...... 72 5.9 Penetration of Insurance ...... 84 5.10 Crisis Management–Nagai ...... 90 5.11 Crisis Management–Cuddalore ...... 90

D.1 Samiyarpettai (Cuddalore) ...... 136 D.2 MGR Nagar (Cuddalore) ...... 137 D.3 Sothikuppam (Cuddalore) ...... 137 D.4 Kandakadu (Cuddalore) ...... 138 D.5 Kambilimedu (Cuddalore) ...... 138 D.6 Arcottuthurai (Nagapattinam)) ...... 139 D.7 Sellur (Nagapattinam) ...... 139 D.8 Papakoil (Nagapattinam) ...... 140 D.9 PR Puram (Nagapattinam) ...... 140 D.10 Pazhayar (Nagapattinam) ...... 141

xxi List of Figures

2.1 Tsunami Damage in India ...... 13 2.2 Coastal Taluks of Tamil Nadu ...... 15 2.3 Cuddalore District ...... 20 2.4 Nagapattinam District ...... 22

3.1 A village proﬁle ...... 27

5.1 The Community ...... 33 5.2 The interactions between the Thematic Areas ...... 33 5.3 The Disaster Management Continuum ...... 37 5.4 Information Dissemination ...... 53 5.5 Useful Early Warning Systems ...... 54 5.6 Awareness about DMT ...... 56 5.7 Return to Normalcy ...... 61 5.8 Return to Normalcy, Gender-based ...... 62 5.9 Return to Normalcy, Livelihoods-based ...... 62 5.10 Safety Infrastructure ...... 74 5.11 Sources of Credit: Overall ...... 78 5.12 Credit Sources: Occupation-wise ...... 78 5.13 Credit Sources: Fishing Sector ...... 79 5.14 Pattern of Savings: Gender-wise ...... 81 5.15 Pattern of Savings: Livelihood-wise ...... 82 5.16 Savings: District-wise ...... 83 5.17 Insurance Coverage ...... 83 5.18 Disaster Preparedness ...... 86 5.19 Factors Building Conﬁdence ...... 86 5.20 Conﬁdence Building Agency ...... 87 5.21 Decision Makers: Cuddalore ...... 91 5.22 Decision Makers: Nagapattinam ...... 92 5.23 Ideal Responder: Nagapattinam ...... 92 5.24 Ideal Responder: Cuddalore ...... 93

xxii Executive Summary

Preamble

The outpouring of humanitarian response after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami changed the way aid is perceived, with the emphasis increasingly shifting to enhancing community resilience to disasters. A study was commissioned to look into the community’s perceptions of disasters, aid, and changes to their own response capacity and community resilience. The study, commissioned by Oxfam America, was carried out by Building and Enabling Disaster Resilience in Coastal Communities (BEDROC), Nagapat- tinam, in 10 villages of the tsunami-hit districts of Nagapattinam and Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu.

Methodology

The study considered the perceptions of all important stakeholders: village communities, State-level and local-level Government, NGOs and donors, also specifically demographic groups such as women, youth, dalits and occupational minorities. Data was collected through multiple instruments: a Quantitative Household Survey, Focus Group Discussions, Key Informant Interviews (Key Informant Interviews (KIIs)), Village Profiling and Case Studies. The Sample frame consisted of five villages in each of the two districts selected through a two-stage process. The first step was to pur- posively cluster villages using two axes: livelihoods (agriculture, fisheries, other) and level of NGO activity (High and Low) for agriculture and fisheries dominated villages. In the second step, one village was randomly chosen from each of the clusters. In each village, a study team consisting of four enumerators (of which at least two were women) and a district co-coordinator, first made a village profile through a participatory process, then conducted the household survey (30 houses per village), followed by focus group discussions with selected groups. They also documented anything of particular interest as case studies. KIIs were carried out with state-level and external resource persons by the members of the Study Team. The results were analyzed by the Study Team. Both the method-

1 ology as well preliminary findings were first vetted by the Study Advisory Committee, constituted by BEDROC , that included the Study Team, members of BEDROC’s Board of Directors, and NGOs representatives. The final findings of the study were presented in a workshop on 26th November in Chennai.

Findings

This study used the guidance note by John Twigg to analyze the status of communities in the Nagapattinam and Cuddalore districts of Tamil Nadu, India, with reference to the Hyogo Framework of Action’s ﬁve thematic areas for disaster resilience.

Thematic Area 1: Governance The National level machinery is in place and working on several fronts simulta- • neously, trying to set up National-State-District-Community interfaces, strengthening disaster response mechanisms, developing guidelines and policies for effective disaster management, drawing up legislations and trying to ensure compliance, integrating disaster management into school, college and professional course curricula and building up awareness among the populace on disaster management.

At the community level, the awareness of disaster response mechanisms are bet- • ter than before but community involvement in, ownership of and access to the systems being put in place are still at less than desirable levels.

Thematic Area 2: Risk Assessment: A number of institutions involved in science and technology, academics and re- • search, social sciences, medical sciences etc., have studied, amassed information and learned valuable lessons in the last four years, post- tsunami.

Risk and vulnerability maps have been prepared, but there has been little input • from the community nor have the other relevant studies been used to reduce their vulnerability

Thematic Area 3: Knowledge and Education: The awareness on disaster risk and management has improved tremendously • thanks to the trainings and the experiential learning at the community level.

There is a lack of space provided for integration of indigenous knowledge pos- • sessed by the communities in general DRR procedures

2 Increased focus on DP and DRR at all levels, from schools to general populace is • needed

Thematic Area 4: Risk Management and Vulnerability Reduction Social security mechanisms have been set up with appreciably high levels of cov- • erage. The communities are aware of most of them and also access quite a few of them. The complaints voiced mainly relate to the operational management and unless these are addressed, the net effect is just as good as having no systems in place.

Community participation needs to be redeﬁned at all levels, especially those of • the planners and policy makers. Even NGOs, despite their high sensitivity to community-centric approaches, have attempted ‘community participation’ only to the extent it ﬁts in with their overall framework, timeframe and other external factors.

Thematic Area 5: Disaster Preparedness and Response The tsunami response has placed larger demands on them in terms of people’s • expectations driven by greater awareness and capacities to claim. What this has also brought out is the lack of people’s participation in such exercises and with the recently developed sensitivities; both the central and state governments have been trying to remedy this gap.

While the physical vulnerabilities are being addressed speciﬁcally like shelter and • safe zones, the social and the economic vulnerabilities still have a long way to go to being addressed

Speciﬁc Findings

1. Awareness of disasters and need for preparedness had increased considerably amongst village communities in the post-tsunami period

2. The tsunami-hit communities had enhanced their capacity to deal with governments and other external agencies in the course of the 3-year period after the 2004 tsunami

3. Disaster-prone areas still exist in both districts studied even after the tsunami response, and that local communities in these areas have historically evolved their own coping mechanisms for disasters

3 4. First responders, are always the insiders, the villagers, the traditional panchayat, the youth groups; and the communities stated their preference for traditional panchayat and/ or ‘insiders’ to take on larger roles even in future disasters 5. Disaster Management Committees, wherever formed, as artiﬁcially created bodies, cease to function once the external trigger is deactivated. Wherever these have evolved organically and are well entrenched within the community ediﬁces already existing, like the traditional panchayat, they are effective and sustainable 6. Interventions that are aligned with the existing livelihoods and structures have a better chance of success

6. NGOs with strong core competencies tend to organize better interventions as compared with NGOs that are less focused

7. Platforms, smoothening the interfaces between the service providers, including the Government, and the affected communities, helped in communities directly accessing the government and feeling a sense of ownership over the government. Conversely, the lack of such platforms resulted in a government-dominated process (although NGOs did participate) where, communities feel alienated from the government and prefer to depend on the traditional panchayats instead

8. The mechanisms that continue to be relevant have been stabilized through longer term back-stopping support. With most NGOs moving out after initiating processes, however good the intentions, the initiatives have not survived

9. Community Participation and ownership is the central theme for success of interventions. In some cases, communities were sufﬁciently astute to negotiate with a group of NGOs and asking them to jointly provide for their requirements.

10. Blueprint-based interventions, designed away from the grassroots and implemented by ﬁat on to the communities, have low chances of success as compared to ﬂexible interventions.

11. Low levels of access of safety nets and policies, which, while in place, are not reaching the communities

12. ‘Single-focus’ development interventions run the risk of missing out vital resilience based components

Recommendations

The Study made the following recommendations:

1. DRR needs new structures and mechanisms other than the hitherto-existing top- down approaches. Existing community based structures need to be identiﬁed,

4 capacitated and strengthened to transform them from being just ﬁrst responders to long-term actors, able to articulate their overall development requirements and engage with the service providers to drive the implementation

2. Traditional knowledge, community wisdom and indigenous practices to be respected and built upon for DRR initiatives

3. Strong community mobilization to capacitate them in accessing all available resources. Transparency, inclusiveness and accountability to be built in through appropriate dissemination processes

4. Contractual partnerships between all players, including the elected village level bodies, would be effective in ensuring synergy, transparency and accountability

5. Livelihood interventions need to be aligned with traditional livelihoods and should provide for spreading of risk

6. Long term support, both for the people and implementing bodies, is required for consolidation and stabilization of interventions.

7. Implementing bodies need to be clear about their available time frame and limit their interventions to such activities that can be consolidated, not just completed, during that time frame, with an overarching emphasis on ‘and harming none’.

8. Social Engineering processes should be attempted only after a rigorous ‘risk assessment’ with preventive and protective mechanisms well in place for the fall- outs, if any, as well as continuous support till the new system stabilizes

9. There is a need to revisit both the outcomes envisaged and the reasonable time- frames necessary for each of the stages of disaster responses. Agencies planning to work on relief should plan only such interventions with shorter time frames, while agencies planning to work on early recovery will have a slightly longer time frame and those in rehabilitation will have the longest. This will not only ensure optimum utilization of scarce resources but will also help in the agencies developing core competencies in the different ﬁelds of disaster management

10. While responding to disaster, there is a need for dynamic approaches and partners with ﬂexibility and adaptability

11. Monitoring of interventions to follow a ‘results based’ approach rather than a ‘target based’ approach. This brings better responsiveness into the programme and allows for corrective actions

12. Implementing and funding agencies should ensure that DRR is built into all development projects

5 13. There are few governance-based interventions today. So, while programmes/ tools/ schemes that support disaster preparedness exist, their appropriateness, adequacy and reach need to be revisited and reshaped periodically, in keeping with the differing requirements. This iterative process can only be fruitful if the community is allowed to and capacitated enough to articulate their needs and partner in the process of designing and implementation.

14. There is a need for development of a suitable ‘resilience index’ on the lines of MDGs/HDIs and continuous tracking of community resilience through it

6 Chapter 1 The Context of the Study

1.1 Introduction

It is now over three years since the adoption of the “Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters”, and almost four years since the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. There has been a lot of progress on many fronts in disaster risk reduction and preparedness but it is clear that there is a need for scaling up of efforts and resources1. EM-DAT statistics indicate that there is a global upward trend in natural disaster occurrence with the number of hydrological disasters increasing by 7.4% per year on an average. Another interesting observation made in the same report is that “there is a decreasing trend in the average number of reported victims per disaster”. It would be useful to investigate whether this is because of better preparedness, a better response of government and humanitarian agencies during emergencies or due to improvements in reporting of disaster occurrence and impacts.

1.2 Disasters and Vulnerability

Disasters are deﬁned as situations or events that overwhelm local capacity, necessi- tating a request to national or international level for external assistance2. While one cannot wish away natural hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis or cyclones and ﬂoods, it is possible to ensure that the impact of such natural hazards is brought down to the lowest level possible by reducing community vulnerability. Communities are the greatest potential source of information regarding hazards that they face as well as

1Implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. Report of the Secretary General to the Sixty-third session of the General Assembly, http://www.unisdr.org/eng/about_isdr/ basic_docs/SG-report/SG-report-63-351-eng.pdf accessed November 8, 2008 2Scheuren, J-M., et al., 2008. Annual Disaster Statistical Review: The Numbers and Trends 2007.

7 the coping mechanisms used to overcome disasters3. Hence, the focus needs to be on ensuring reduction in vulnerability and increased resilience. Vulnerability is roughly described as the susceptibility to and inability to cope with any adverse situation. It is a function of the stress a system is exposed to, its sensitivity and its adaptive capacity. It has been described by Adger (2006) as being ‘portrayed in negative terms as the susceptibility to be harmed’ 4. Adger also points out that insights through newly emerging interdisciplinary understanding of vulnerability and resilience indicate that resilient ecosystems and resilient societies can better cope up with external physical as well as socio-political stresses. This is an important factor to be considered in understanding the cycle of vulnerability of communities largely directly dependent on natural resources such as the agriculturists and ﬁshers.

1.3 The Indian Ocean Tsunami and Humanitarian Aid

The Indian Tsunami of December 2004 devastated a dozen countries in the Indian Ocean. The outpouring of humanitarian aid changed many things including the way humanitarian aid is perceived and utilized. This was the focus of many studies where not only was the aid provided evaluated for its timeliness and utility in recovery but also how meaningful such aid efforts are in the context of disasters and development. A recommendation made by the Tsunami Evaluation Council (TEC)5 says, “the international humanitarian community needs a fundamental reorientation from supplying aid to supporting and facilitating communities’ own relief and recovery priorities”. This translates to enhancing community capacity to respond to disasters of any kind. This can be further examined under various sections—beginning with identification and capacity building of the first responders through building capacity of institutions responsible for disaster mitigation as well as rehabilitation. In any disaster, the people who respond first are those present locally: in general, the local community, especially in the rescue stage. It is only in the relief and recovery stages that outsiders, i.e. anyone external to the immediate members of the community reach out to help. This has been proved time and again especially in the case of the major disasters such as the 2004 tsunami6 and earthquakes as well as cyclones and floods. However, the sensitivity of outsiders including breaking down of caste barriers to help those in distress appears to have increased subsequent to the 2004 tsunami as evidenced by various reports such

3 UN/ISDR. Living with Risk: A global review of disaster reduction initiatives, 2004. 4Adger, W. Neil., 2006. Vulnerability. Global Environmental Change, Vol 16., pp268-281 5Telford, J, J Cosgrave and R Houghton (2006) Joint Evaluation of the international response to the Indian Ocean tsunami: Synthesis Report. London: Tsunami Evaluation Coalition. 6Recommendation 1. Local Capacity and Preparedness is Key to Effective Relief: One of the lessons from the Tsunami is that most relief is local and that local capacity and preparedness are key to effective relief. In preparing for future disasters, it is critical that there be (a) an accurate assessment of the local capacity to handle disasters, and (b) collaboration among the various stakeholders in creating a plan to respond to disasters. Lessons from the Tsunami: Top Line Findings. Fritz Institute, 2005

8 as how the tsunami affected fishermen rallied to help farmers after the 2005 floods in Tamil Nadu 7. Considering that floods and cyclones are frequent disasters in the Indian subcontinent and standard operating procedures exist to respond to these events8 , the kind of spontaneous help to people affected by ‘traditional’ disasters is something new that appears to have emerged after the tsunami disaster.

1.4 Disaster Preparedness

Preparedness is a crucial key in reducing the impact of natural disasters. Preparedness can take many forms—from ensuring that rivers and channels are desilted in anticipa- tion of the seasonal monsoon to training communities to respond to any disaster. In October 2004, barely two months before the tsunami struck, villagers of Samiyarpettai in Cuddalore district had been trained under the UNDP-Government of India Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Programme. This programme was part of the DRM initiative being implemented in 169 of most multi-hazard prone districts of 17 selected states during 2002-07. The training given to the Samiyarpettai villagers speciﬁcally in the areas of search, rescue and prevention from drowning resulted in keeping the death toll down to 24. In the adjoining village of Pudupettai , a little less than 2 km away, the death toll was as high as 929. Similarly, Early Warning Systems (EWS) also play an important role. EWS are fairly well entrenched into the system as far as known disasters such as ﬂoods and cyclones are concerned. Villages now have Public Address Systems, control rooms that are manned round the clock and other facilities for warning people of impending disasters. The last mile connectivity is tackled with regular updates on TV and Radio, both of which have high penetration especially in the state of Tamil Nadu. A UNISDR report also cites how 3000 people in the village of Nallavada were saved because of a timely phone call from a concerned relative to his family. He had watched the devastation in Indonesia on Singapore television. Similarly communities in the western coasts of Sri Lanka were able to warn and save relatives on the south and south-eastern coasts of the country 10. Bangladesh’s focused activities in EWS and communications resulted in the evacuation of 2 million people during Cyclone Sidr (2007) but the death of less than 3500 compared to the toll of earlier cyclones 11. On the other hand, despite warnings from agencies, because of the break in the last mile connectivity, the impact and death toll due to Cyclone Nargis was devastating in Myanmar 12.

7Tsunami Fishermen Help Flooded Farmers: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/12/ prweb325825.htm accessed November 13, 2008 8 CV Sankar, Key Informant interview 9Forearmed for Surviving Natural Disasters. Good Practice 2005-04-18.4648364550. UNDP Asia-Paciﬁc 10UNISDR, 2006. “Lessons for a safer future: Drawing on the experience of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster”. 11Cyclone Sidr, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Sidr 12Cyclone Nargis, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Nargis

9 1.5 Changing Paradigm

Till about ten years ago, the focus was on managing disasters with states having their own ‘relief codes’. The government’s disaster response essentially was on financing relief measures13. In other words, it was reactive and relief centric. There has also been increasing realization that India’s vulnerability to multiple disasters and disaster risks are compounded by increasing vulnerabilities including the growing population, rapid urbanization, industrialization, income disparity, erosion of natural resources due to environmental degradation etc. After the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, there has been a paradigm shift to holistic and integrated approach with emphasis on prevention, mitigation and preparedness14. This attitude appears to have intensified after the 2004 tsunami. The national vision is ‘to build a safer and disaster resilient India by developing a holistic, pro-active, multi disaster and technology driven strategy for DM. This will be achieved through a culture of prevention, mitigation and preparedness to reduce the impact of disasters on people. The entire process will be provided momentum and sustenance through the collective efforts of all government agencies supported by NGOs15. The Disaster Management Act, 2005 (DM Act, 2005) lays down institutional and coordination mechanisms for effective disaster management (DM) at the national, state, and district levels with the formation of the NDMA (National Disaster Management Author- ity), SDMA (State Disaster Management Authority) and DDMA (District Disaster Manage- ment Authority). However, many of districts and states have not yet set up the DMA and in some cases where the DDMA have been set up, the members do not know about their roles and responsibilities. The role of NGOs in the recovery process from a disaster has been often discussed. After the 2004 tsunami, there was urgency amongst everyone, especially the humanitarian community, to ensure that the affected populace recovered as quickly as possible and recovery here referred to resuming normal livelihood rou- tines. The fishing community deemed the most affected in the tsunami were seen as very vulnerable and efforts were made to diversify their occupations by introduction of alternate livelihoods. Women were targeted and training programmes were conducted in tailoring, production of incense sticks, making pickles (fish/prawn/vegetable), repairing mobile phones, making gold covered articles, designing fashion wear and so on1617. In many places, Self Help Groups have been set up to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship. However, it has been seen in many cases that such interventions 18 have not been quite successful because of poor market/employer links as well as lack of business training has resulted in many though the picture may not be as bleak as

13Oxfam, 2005. “Creating a culture of disaster preparedness.” 14GoI - NDMA, Approach to Disaster Management, www.ndma.gov.in 15GoI - NDMA, 2007. National Disaster Management Guidelines: Preparation of State Disaster Manage- ment Plans 16Sudhakar, P, 2005. “NGO trains tsunami hit ﬁsherfolk in new trades”, http://www.hindu.com/ 2005/10/13/stories/2005101303850300.htm; accessed November 13, 2008 17GoTN, 2006. “Taking Stock of Tsunami Recovery in Tamil Nadu, India”. 18SSP,2005, “Done and Undone—Assessing Tsunami’s Efforts—A Women’s Perspective”.

10 that painted by some reviewers19. On the other hand, activities allied to their original livelihood were preferred20.

1.6 DRR and Development

This brings us to the important issue of mainstreaming DRR into development, an issue being extensively discussed today. Focus on diversification of livelihoods seems to be the route that is believed to bring maximum impact on building resilience of people. However, moving people away from their traditional livelihoods takes a long time and effort. As has been noted earlier, when the alternate livelihoods are allied to their traditional livelihoods, they are likely to be more successful. Rego and Roy21 point out that the process of development and the kind of development choices made in many countries, sometimes creates disaster risks. They call for integration of DRR into development in a manner similar to the integration of gender and environment issues into the development process. There is also concern that if the mainstreaming of DRR into development is not done properly, it will also make achievement of the Millennium Development Goalss (MDGs) more difficult22. It is also important to note that both vulnerability and hazard are conditioned by human activities. Reducing the effects of natural hazards means tackling the development challenges that lead to the accumulation of hazard and human vulnerability that prefigure disaster23.

1.7 Backdrop of the study

The importance of developing disaster preparedness capacities cannot be overstated in areas that are constantly affected by natural hazards. The east coast of India where the state worst affected by the tsunami, Tamil Nadu, is located is battered every year by cyclones because it is on the Bay of Bengal which is one of the major centres of the world for breeding of tropical storms. Tamil Nadu which falls in the rain shadow region of the South-West monsoon gets its rainfall mainly during the North East monsoon, October to December. The TN coast is affected by storm surges and ﬂoods during this season apart from droughts; and there are standard operating procedures and mechanisms in the state government that respond to these. However, it has been observed that the impact of natural hazards especially on the agrarian communities has resulted in mak-

19Alexander, R. “Mantra aside–an aid gone wrong story”, A livelihood sector review, March 2006. 20 Alternative livelihood project for tsunami victims launched. http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/ 13/stories/2008031352240300.htm accessed November 13, 2008 21 Rego, Loy and Arghya Sinha Roy, “Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction into Development Policy, Planning and Implementation. ADB, 2007. http://www.\acs{ADB}.org/Documents/Events/ 2007/Small-Group-Workshop/Paper-Rego.pdf accessed November 13, 2008 22 UNISDR/UNDP: Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction Into CCA and UNDAF: Draft Guidance Note, 2006. 23 UNDP, 2004. Reducing Disaster Risk: A Challenge for Development

11 ing them sink deeper into the poverty cycle24. The tsunami was a rare occurrence, but because of the scale of its impact, it appears that it was the trigger to set off a lot of interest in and implementation of disaster preparedness mechanisms. In fact, one of the strategic intents of the Government of Tamil Nadu was, “Build Capacity of coastal communities to cope more effectively with disasters”25. The focus of the government has been mostly in structural measures such as multi-hazard resistant houses, shelter- belt plantations and early warning systems. Some NGOs also gave training on disaster preparedness in various places and disaster risk management task forces were formed at the state as well as district level. It is in this backdrop that the present study analyzed the reﬂection of national level engagement in the way local capacity building for DRR was attempted by NGOs in Tamil Nadu.

24 NCRC, 2006. Understanding vulnerabilities of Agricultural communities, and their coping mechanisms: A sample study of tsunami affected agricultural villages in Nagapattinam district. 25 GoTN, 2008. “Tiding over tsunami- Part II”

12 Chapter 2 Objectives and the Study Area

2.1 The 2004 Tsunami Damages in Tamil Nadu

The Indian Ocean tsunami that was caused by an undersea earthquake off Sumatra devastated the coastlines of a dozen countries in the Indian Ocean. In India, the main- land states of Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and the islands of Andaman and Nicobar were worst affected (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1: Tsunami Damage in India Source: UNTRS (http://www.un.org.in/untrs/maps/india.jpg accessed Feb 4, 2009)

13 Table 2.1: Deaths and Damages to Houses and Agricultural Land due to Tsunami

District Deaths Houses Agri Land (acres) Partially damaged Fully damaged Nagapattinam 6065 2169 17461 456.98 Kanniyakumari 799 3953 3379 9.7 Cuddalore 610 544 2328 1925.48 Source: GoTN, 2005. “Tiding over tsunami”

Table 2.2: Damages to ﬁshing assets due to tsunami

District Kattumarams Vallams Mech. Boats Nets wooden FRP Nagapattinam 6144 - 1761 869 7604 Kanniyakumari 6582 - 694 385 7236 Cuddalore 5530 862 - 505 4935 Source: GoTN, 2005. “Tiding over tsunami”

Overall, the state of Tamil Nadu was the worst affected with all the 13 coastal districts suffering various levels of impact of the waves. The unprecedented disaster caused large scale destruction to the structures closes to the shoreline, but the actual impact was felt upto 3 km inland. The three worst affected districts were Nagapatti- nam, Kanniyakumari and Cuddalore as can be seen from Tables 2.1 and 2.2. The scale of the disaster was so high in Nagapattinam district that it was well beyond the scope of the district administration to cope with1; as the entire 190km coastline was affected with even the hospitals and Primary Health Centres flooded. The pilgrim towns of Nagore and Velanganni in Nagapattinam district were badly hit. Approach roads to some of the villages were blocked and a bridge connecting Nagapattinam and Karaikal was washed away. Kanniyakumari district, located at the tip of the Indian peninsula has coastline on both the east and west. With a sizeable fisher population that lives very close to the shore, damages were heavy. Cuddalore, located north of Nagapattinam was the third most affected district with several fishing hamlets disappearing and other villages being cut off from the rest with roads washed away or blocked due to debris.

2.2 The Response to the disaster

The initial response was left to the district administration. Subsequently, the government and civil society swung into action with the Chief Minister sending handpicked

1Dr J.Radhakrishnan, IAS, former District Collector, Nagapattinam during the Key Informant Interview

14 Figure 2.2: Coastal Taluks of Tamil Nadu Source: GoTN

15 senior government officers to oversee relief measures. Area teams were formed that included personnel from various departments such as public health, public works department, highways, water and drainage, electricity board etc. Men, machines and money were deployed effectively so that hot food was being served in the relief camps within 3 days of the disaster2. The media spread the word about the devastation and civil society responded immediately by rushing people and supplies to the affected areas. At the state level, the Relief Commissioner was overwhelmed with not only the immediate relief activities but also in terms of organizing various packages for relief, medical and other related relief activities, and having to meet a large number of people from International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) and UN organizations apart from high profile visits from the Central government. Mr C.V. Sankar, IAS, was posted as Officer on Special Duty, Relief and Rehabilitation on 31st December 2004 to handle all agencies and to coordinate response (in addition to his duty as Chairman, Power Finance Corporation)3. At Nagapattinam, prominent NGOs SIFFS and SNEHA with a long track record of working with fishing communities, spearheaded the setting up of a coordination centre, the Nagapattinam Coordination and Resource Centre (NCRC), with the support of the Dis- trict Administration, and later, the UNDP. This was a unique effort, essential because of the scale of the disaster; and ensured appropriate, equitable and sustainable post- disaster responses during relief and rehabilitation. At Cuddalore, much less affected, the proactive District Collector was able to manage for the most part.

2.3 NCRC and BEDROC

The NCRC was set up on the 1st of January 2005 in the space provided by the District Collectorate helping in the registration of NGOs as well as tracking supplies of various kinds that were pouring in and coordinating to meet the demands of the affected people. Over 500 NGOs were registered with the NCRC in the first month but many possibly did not register or record their presence—this is just an indication of the numbers that NCRC had to deal with in the early days. Subsequently, as a part of its mandate after it transitioned into the full fledged NGO Coordination and Resource Centre, NCRC was fully involved in the sectors of shelter reconstruction, reclaiming agricultural land affected by tsunami, education, livelihoods for the vulnerable dalit community, children who had lost one or both parents in the tsunami, community facilitation for informed decision making and advocacy for fine tuning policies, strategies and approaches with a special focus on universal inclusion, equity and sustainability. Building and Enabling Disaster Resilience in Coastal Communitiess (BEDROCs) (Building and Enabling Disaster Resilience of Coastal Communities), a legally registered Trust, was set up as the formal successor to the NCRC in November 2007.

2 ibid 3 Mr C.V.Sankar, IAS, during the Key Informant Interview

16 NGOs who came into the tsunami affected areas worked in all the sectors to ensure recovery of the affected populace. The housing reconstruction was largely NGO driven, with the TN government preferring a public-private partnership in reconstruction of over 50,000 houses that had to be repaired/built. NGOs helped in livelihood recovery as well being involved in disaster preparedness activities including training programmes.

2.4 Need for the study

This study was originally mooted at a point when, more than three years after the 2004 tsunami disaster, rehabilitation efforts sponsored by external agencies were progressing towards their completion. In the aftermath of any disaster, the speed of response to ensure that rehabilitation and recovery are quick overrides other considerations. The same was evident after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, where the aid assistance provided was unprecedented. The outpouring of aid and the implicit pressure to spend perforce could not have supported a process that acknowledged, involved or aided community and governance based structures already in place. Despite this pressure, a considerable number of such aid agencies did make deliberate attempts to incubate community/ governance-driven disaster response mechanisms and foster a disaster resilient development. In general, most of these initiatives were divided into three broad categories: 1. With stated preferences for working only through the prevailing governance mechanisms at the village, district or state level

2. Working only through local partners, generally NGOs but occasionally even CBOs 3. Working directly with the affected communities In each of these approaches, intensive efforts have been made to develop capacities of individuals, institutions, systems and structures that will facilitate better disaster preparedness including responses. While each of these approaches has their own ad- vantages as well as disadvantages, it was also noticed that there were very few attempts made at synergising the efforts of all these internal constituencies. The various initiatives attempted need to be studied in the light of their continued sustainability, where sustainability is seen as a function of its continued relevance, effectiveness and political ownership, be it of the community or of the governance, at whatever relevant levels and across disasters in order to understand: How successful these efforts have been in terms of participation, involvement • and ownership by the local constituencies Their sustainability and the barriers inhibiting sustainability • The considerations that need to be factored into the planning, strategies and • processes of any external agency that is desirous of meaningfully intervening in a post disaster situation and building up a disaster resilient community

17 2.5 Speciﬁc Objectives of the Study

The following were the speciﬁc objectives of the study:

To understand and document multi-stakeholder perspectives on external aid, lo- • cal coping capacity and disaster risk reduction.

To review and document selected approaches of using external aid to make last- • ing impact on enhancing community coping capacities.

To provide comparative analysis of selected approaches of local capacity enhance- • ment and their impact on community coping capacities.

Based on research learning, to provide a set of recommendations and guidelines • for sustainable program interventions to enhance local coping capacities.

2.6 Constituencies and Stakeholders

Given the nature of these objectives, it was evident that information from all prominent stakeholders had to be elicited through different means. The stakeholders considered for the study were:

Affected communities • State- and local-level administration • Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) • Traditional Community Panchayat (Traditional Panchayats (TPs)) • Panchayati Raj Institutions (Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs)) • 2.6.1 A note on Traditional panchayats and Panchayati Raj Institutions

Traditional Panchayat (TPs) or Traditional Community Panchayat is a leadership that has evolved over time in the close knit single caste ﬁshing communities along the Coromandel Coast in India. Elected by the community members and not “government- sanctioned”, the panchayat consists usually of elders from the community who exercise a very high control over the community’s activities and are involved in settling disputes between individuals and villages. According to Mr. V.Vivekanandan4, Advisor, SIFFS, though there is no law backing their existence and functioning, these are local governance structures that play a central role in the lives and livelihoods of the people. His view is that no long term programme in marine ﬁsheries on the Coromandel Coast for

4 Key Informant—during the course of an interview for this study

18 instance, can succeed without the support and involvement of the Pattinavar Panchay- ats, the traditional panchayats of the Pattinavar sub caste, the main fishing caste of the Coromandel Coast. Elected panchayats are constitutional bodies entrusted with local self governance in India. The 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India made it mandatory on the state governments to make laws for local self governments and to hold regular elections to the panchayats. The panchayat system exists in most of the Indian states, even though their degrees of powers and entitlements differ across states. These local government institutions are called Panchayat Raj/ Nagar Palika Institutions, PRIs for short. A village on the Coromandel Coast usually has a traditional panchayat looking after its affairs. However, the boundaries of the village as defined by the PRIs are usually different. There is no one-to-one correspondence. PRIs are larger entities typically covering several villages (villages as defined in a traditional sense of the term). For instance, Tarangambadi is a large fishing-dominated village on the Coromandel Coast. It is dominated by the Pattinavar sub caste. However, there are people from several castes living there including Christians, Muslims, Dalits, and other Hindu sub castes. The traditional Pattinavar Panchayat of Tarangambadi is concerned only with the Patti- navar caste, who are into fishing and related livelihoods. When it comes to PRIs or local administration, the village forms three electoral wards of a Town Panchayat, which is a Nagar Palika Institution. The fishing communities of Cuddalore and Nagapattinam are known to have powerful systems of traditional panchayats. Farming communities also have their own panchayat systems. Some of the Dalit groups and nomadic communities also have their own local governance systems, but many of them do not play the critical roles that traditional panchayats play in the case of fishing communities. In short, even though nearly all the respondents covered in this study are part of some traditional governance system, the role and control of the traditional panchayats differ across communities. It is also important to appreciate the fact that fishing communities may rank first in terms of the role that the traditional panchayats play in their lives and the controls that they exercise over them. For the purpose of clarity, this report would use the terms PRIs for elected panchayat and ’traditional panchayats (TPs)’ for the informal ones consistently in this report. Since the study dealt with subjective perceptions by different actors, and a-priori knowledge indicated that not all actors were equipped with full and correct information, consultation with all groups were essential to draw inferences that could be gen- eralized. The study also had to ensure that within the broad definition of affected communities, some specific subgroups were included. Subgroups such as women, youth, dalits and minority occupational groups were considered especially relevant.

19 Figure 2.3: Cuddalore District Source: http://www.cuddalore.tn.nic.in/maps.htm

2.7 Study Area

The two districts, Cuddalore and Nagapattinam, chosen for this study were both affected by the tsunami. 610 lives were lost in Cuddalore which has a coastline of 57.5 km whereas 6065 died in the 187 km long coast of Nagapattinam (accounting for 76% of the deaths in the state)5. Both districts are vulnerable to cyclones and floods especially during the North East monsoon (October-December) and the district administration has disaster management plans focused on ‘seasonal disasters’ such as floods, droughts and cyclones67. Both districts are below the state average for Human Devel- opment Indexs (HDIs) (TN HDIs = 0.636) though Nagapattinam (HDIs=0.618) is ahead 8 of Cuddalore (HDIs=0.590) . The profile of the two districts based on the 2001 Census as well as the damages incurred due to the tsunami9 is given below in Table 2.3.

5 GoTN, 2005, Tiding Over Tsunami, p15. 6 Anu George, “Disaster Management in Cuddalore District”. Readings and Case Studies on Disaster Management (Volume 1). 7 Carla Prater, Walter G. Peacock, Sudha Arlikatti, and Himanshu Grover, “Social Capacity in Nagapat- tinam, Tamil Nadu after the December 2004 Great Sumatra Earthquake and Tsunami”, Earthquake Spectra Volume 22, Issue S3, pp. S715-S729 (June 2006). 8 R.J. Chelliah and K.R.Shanmugam, Some aspects of Inter-district disparities in Tamil Nadu. Working Paper No. 1, Madras School of Economics 9 GoTN, 2005, Tiding Over Tsunami.

20 Parameter Category Nagapattinam Cuddalore 1. Area (sq. km.) total 2417 3706 rural 2,225 3,354 urban 191 351 2. Population total 1,488,839 2,285,395 rural 739,074 1,531,034 urban 749,765 754,361 3. Population Density (per sq. km.) total 615.99 616.67 rural 520.69 456.45 urban 1,720.49 2,144.53 4. Sex Ratio total 1,014 986 rural 1,011 984 urban 1,025 990 5. Literacy Rate (%) total 76.34 71.01 rural 74.16 65.37 urban 83.89 82.32 6. Number of villages affected 38 8 7. Number of kuppams affected 73 43 8. Population affected 196,184 99,704 9. Population evacuated 196,184 61,054 10. Human lives lost 6,065 610 11. Persons injured 2,375 259 12. Orphaned children 179 12 12. Women widowed 294 78 Compiled from various sources

Table 2.3: Proﬁle of the Districts Studied

21 Figure 2.4: Nagapattinam District Source: GoTN www.tn.gov.in

22 Chapter 3 Methodology and Research Design

3.1 Overview

On account of the nature of the research problem, it was decided to employ quantitative and qualitative instruments for data collection. The decisions on data collection methodology involved details such as:

Area of coverage • Overall methodology and instruments used • Sample frame selection • Research Instrument design • Team Selection and training • Piloting • Finalization of instruments • 3.2 Area of coverage

The two districts of Cuddalore and Nagapattinam were selected as the universe for the study. These two districts had signiﬁcant, but differing, tsunami impact. The response was also qualitatively different in the two districts, with Nagapattinam, having a higher civil society participation in co-ordination and prioritization of the response. Also, since these were contiguous districts, it was easier to complete the data collection under the given time and budget constraints. Cuddalore and Nagapattinam are also disaster prone with frequent cyclones, ﬂoods and other natural disasters.

23 3.3 Overall Methodology and Data Collection Instruments Used

The two basic sources of information available were from communities of the two selected districts, and from key outsiders who had played significant roles in the tsunami response, including Government Officers, and NGOs and civil society representatives. A sampling frame was developed for eliciting information from different strata among communities of the two districts as described below. Three instruments, viz., Village Profiling, Quantitative Sample Survey and Focus Group Discussions were adopted for the sample frame. In addition, Case Studies were created whenever something unusual was found. Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) were chosen for the information sources outside the sample frame.

3.4 Sample Frame Selection

Since the study sought to explain variations in its findings across livelihood sectors as well differing NGOs involvements, it was decided to do a two-stage sample frame. Based on the practical feasibility under the given time constraint of a month for data collection, it was decided that the Quantitative Sample Survey would have a sample size of 300 households, with a minimum of 30 household per village. The first stage created clusters of villages for each district based on two axes: the dominant livelihood sources in the village, and the level of NGO activity. This was done using a-priori information in the possession of BEDROC. The dominant livelihoods chosen were ‘Fisheries’, ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Other Livelihoods’. Of these, the first two were further divided into villages with ‘High’ NGOs activity and ‘Low’ NGOs activity. In the case of ‘Other Livelihoods’, this subdivision was not done as they were very few. Villages of the each district were entered a matrix shown in Table 3.1.

Dominant Livelihood Level of NGO Activity High Activity Low Activity Fisheries Agriculture Others

Table 3.1: Village Selection Matrix

Stage two involved randomized selection of one village from those listed in each cell. This was done through random number generated from a computer spreadsheet. In this way, ﬁve villages were selected from each district. The villages chosen from the two districts are provided in Table 3.2.

24 Dominant Livelihood Cuddalore Nagapattinam High Activity Low Activity High Activity Low Activity Fisheries Sothikuppam Samiarpettai Pazhayar Arcattuthurai Agriculture Kandankadu Kambalimedu PR Puram Pappakoil Others MGR Nagar Sellur

Table 3.2: Villages Selected for Study

3.5 Village-level Sample Size Selection

Given the sample frame of 10 villages and 30 households per village, the next task was to identify 30 random households in the given village. This was done through the following process:

3.5.1 Village Profiling Each team of enumerators and the district coordinator would first meet with some of the key people in the village such as the head of the traditional panchayat in order to explain to them why the study was being done, and what would be the outcomes. Subsequently, they would sit down with a group of villagers to profile the village. Village profiling involved geographic and demographic mapping of the village, identifying relative locations of natural features such as rivers, lakes and the sea, as well as the number of hamlets, and size and location of each hamlets. The natural vulnerabilities of the village were also documented. The final outcome of this process was a sketch of each village identifying all the features above.

3.5.2 Sample selection Once the number of hamlets and the size of each hamlet were known, a systematic sampling methodology was adopted to identify the actual samples. Consider the case of a village with three hamlets of 60, 90 and 30 households re- spectively. Dividing the desired sample size of 30 amongst the three hamlets leads to a hamlet-level sample of 10, 15, and 5 each. Now, in each hamlet, the team took the 1st house, the 7th house, the 13th and so on. In case a house was empty, or contained no adults, the next house was taken and the process repeated. Once the sample selection was over, the team continued on to the actual household- level data collection which could take 2-3 days. By this time, the team was usually aware of the major issues of the village, and went on to identify participants for FGD and conducted them. The proﬁle of respondents of the survey is provided in Table 3.3.

25 Table 3.3: Proﬁle of Respondents Category Cuddalore Nagapattinam Agricultuarlist 25 15 Agr. Labourer 20 17 Artisans 9 14 Business 3 7 Fishing (Owner) 53 28 Fishing (Labour) 22 23 Fish vendor 1 4 Other Labour 18 Prawn picker 2 Pettry Trader 6 9 Salaried 9 15 Total 150 150

3.6 Research Instrument Design

The research instruments used were:

Village Profiling • Quantitative Survey • Focus Group Discussions • Key Informant Interviews • Case Studies • 3.6.1 Village Profiling The village profiles were created based on a PRA-based interaction between the study team and community members in the village. Village Profiles provided:

General layout of the village • Natural features such as rivers, lakes, sea, dunes etc • Man-made features such as roads, bridges, schools, places of worship etc • Location and size of hamlets in the village • Vegetation, ﬁelds etc •

26 Figure 3.1: A village proﬁle

Natural vulnerabilities • Besides documenting the basic features of the village, the Village Proﬁle was also useful in determining the sampling strategy. A sample of the proﬁle is given in Figure 3.1.

3.6.2 Quantitative Survey The questionnaire-based quantitative survey was designed to collect information from individual households. The questionnaire was designed to be administered by the enu- merator team, and included questions on:

household demographics •

27 employment distribution across the year • migration patterns • previous disaster exposure • household disaster preparedness • disaster response • governance and policy • social security and welfare • 3.6.3 Focus Group Discussions

Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted among speciﬁc population sub-groups in order to obtain the view points of less visible sections of the village community regarding disaster risk reduction and coping strategies, as well as local issues. Men and women had separate FGDs for each sub-group. The following sub-groups were selected for FGD analysis: Fisherfolk • Dalits • Women • Agricultural Owners • Agricultural Labour • Youth • The FGDs were conducted in Tamil, transcribed by the enumerators, and translated at the study ofﬁce by the District Co-ordinators and the Field Co-ordinator.

3.6.4 Key Informant Interviews Key informant interviews were conducted to obtain the opinions of groups that may not easily be gathered together as a group for an FGD. These groups included the following:

Panchayats (TP and PRI) • Village- and district-based NGOs • Community-Based Organizations • Government Ofﬁcials (at community, district, state and national levels) •

28 3.6.5 Case Studies The team of enumerators instructed to pick out, during their ﬁeld interaction, instances of innovative responses, which were later developed into brief case studies. These help in highlighting some of the success stories as well as failures.

3.7 Team Selection and Training

Each district Field Team consisted of four enumerators (at least two of whom were women) and one District Coordinator. All team members had more than two years of experience of working with local communities (mostly in Nagapattinam), and most were ex-staff of BEDROC. The team was given a two-day training that covered the objectives of the study, and methodology. Study resource materials such as the draft questionnaire, checklists for KIIs and FGDs, and formats for village proﬁle were designed by a group comprising the Team Leader and BEDROC personnel, Field Co-ordinator and Research Co-ordinator. These took several iterations to be in their ﬁnal form for piloting, and were then translated into Tamil.

3.8 Piloting and Finalization of Instruments

The pilot phase was carried out during 10-11 July in the village of Sellur in Nagapatti- nam where all teams took part. The Field Co-ordinator and the District Co-ordinators then ﬁne-tuned the questionnaire based on the feedback from the piloting process. These were then used for the actual data collection.

29 Chapter 4 The Study Administration and Execution

4.1 Study Administration

The design, planning, execution of the study and the analysis of data was directed by the Study Team that was created by BEDROC, which consisted of the following members:

Team Leader • Field Co-ordinator • The Chief Executive Officer of BEDROC • Documentation Coordinator • Research Coordinator • Part-time Research Associate • The two field teams reported to the Field Co-ordinator through the data collection phase. The Study Team met three times during the data collection phase to review the quality of data and to clarify any questions that arose during the data collection phase. The Advisory Committee of the Study included the Study Team, members of the BEDROC Board, and invited NGOs. The Advisory Committee met twice during the study to validate the study processes as well as its findings. There was a delay in getting the study started off on account of procedural difficulties. Once started off, however, the study proceeded as planned. The study was completed between July 2008 and December 2008. The scheduled and actual time line of the study is provided in Table 4.1.

30 Activity Scheduled Actual Completion of Field Interviews & FGDs 20th Aug Completed Key Informants Interview completion 27th Aug Completed Data Analysis & Draft Report 15th Sept Completed Workshop for Analysis and Findings 20th Sept 4th Oct Final workshop to present findings 20th Oct 26th Nov 08 Finalisation of Report 15th Oct 30th Nov TRINet Report documenting the final workshop 31st Oct 8th Dec Publishing of the final Report 15th Nov 31st Dec

Table 4.1: Study Timeline

4.2 Challenges faced in the Data Collection

The Study Team faced a few challenges in the process of data collection. Some of these were general problems, while others were speciﬁc to the post-tsunami context. These are outlined below:

1. Cuddalore was not as well-known to the study team as was Nagapattinam. This caused some delays for the Cuddalore team in getting started

2. Despite the fact that each study team did have at least two women, the team had difﬁculty in interviewing the women of some villages. In one village, it took several days for the team to get the requisite permission

3. Several village communities seemed to expect material support from the study team. This is not unusual in the post-tsunami context

4. At the ﬁeld level, it was often hard for the study teams to establish conclusive cause-effect relationships vis-à-vis their observations. For example, if a community exhibited better preparedness, it was not always easy to pinpoint the cause– whether this was on account of the local leadership, the NGOs that worked there, or because the village was exceptional even before the tsunami.

31 Chapter 5 Findings and Analysis

5.1 Introduction

A disaster resilient community is the ultimate aim of disaster risk reduction activities. A community is not merely a group of people living in a geographically defined space. It involves interactions within groups of people present in the community as well as the interface of the community with the external world as depicted in Figure 5.1. The interactions could be formal as well as informal. The Hyogo Framework of Action has identified five thematic areas for action to cover various aspects of resilience. In 2007, John Twigg1 developed a guidance note to show what a ‘disaster resilient community’ might consist of by setting out the different elements of resilience. A set of tables were created listing out the components of resilience, the characteristics of a disaster resilient community which can be considered as the ‘in- ner strength’ of a community while the conditions of an enabling environment list the external influences and interactions that make resilience possible. The five thematic areas from the Hyogo Framework of Action are: 1. Governance 2. Risk Assessment 3. Knowledge and education 4. Risk Management and Vulnerability Reduction 5. Disaster Preparedness and Response However, it must be stated that these are not really stand alone entities as each thematic area exerts influence on the others, and may be depicted as shown in Figure 5.2. It must be mentioned here that governance can be both a thematic area by itself and a cross-cutting issue and is represented as such.

1 John Twigg, 2007. “Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community”: A Guid- ance Note. Version 1, August 2007. For the DFID Disaster Risk Reduction Intera- gency Coordination Group. http://www.benfieldhrc.org/disaster_studies/projects/ communitydrrindicators/community_drr_indicators_index.htm

32 Figure 5.1: The Community

Figure 5.2: The interactions between the Thematic Areas

33 The Twigg note also suggests a method by which the preparedness and/or resilience of a community can be assessed to understand the progress towards resilience as shown in the Box 5.1:

Box 5.1: Progressing Towards Resilience: a qualitative ranking system (Twigg, 2007)

Level 1 Little awareness of the issue(s) or motivation to address them. Ac- tions limited to crisis response.

Level 2 Awareness of the issue(s) and willingness to address them. Capac- ity to act (knowledge and skills, human, material and other resources) remains limited. Interventions tend to be one-off, piecemeal and short- term.

Level 3 Development and implementation of solutions. Capacity to act is improved and substantial. Interventions are more numerous and long- term.

Level 4 Coherence and integration. Interventions are extensive, covering all main aspects of the problem, and they are linked within a coherent long- term strategy.

Level 5 A ‘culture of safety’ exists among all stakeholders, where DRR is em- bedded in all relevant policy, planning, practice, attitudes and behaviour.

In this chapter, we present the ﬁndings of the study using the Guidance Note to understand the existing capacities of the communities, how these capacities were developed and the areas where interventions are required to increase disaster resilience. The tables at the beginning of each section contain the suggestions from the guidance note.

5.1.1 Riders to the Assessment: The Study Team acknowledges the fact that these “levels” have not been debated • or accepted at larger platforms and reiterates that, given the lack of other indicators, the ones closest to the local context were used for assessing the “levels”. While it is seen in many areas that there have been great strides made by both, the • Central and the State Governments, in putting Disaster Management mechanisms in place, this Study is assessing the “disaster resilience of the community” and is ascribing “levels” for the Community and not the Government. Thus, despite the progress of “enabling environment”, if it is not accessed by the community or the

34 communities are not aware of and involved in the progress, then the assessment will tend to be on the lower side.

5.2 Thematic Area 1: Governance

Governance can be described as relating to decisions that deﬁne expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists either of a separate process or of a speciﬁc part of management or leadership processes. Under this thematic area the following components of resilience are listed:

1. DRR policy, planning, priorities, and political commitment 2. Legal and regulatory systems 3. Integration with development policies and planning 4. Integration with emergency response and recovery 5. Institutional mechanisms, capacities and structures; allocation of responsibilities 6. Partnerships 7. Accountability and community participation

The study has looked into some of these components discussed in detail as follows:

5.2.1 DRR Policy Planning, prioritization and ensuring political commitment

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Shared Vision of a prepared and resilient community • Consensus View of Risks faced, risk management approach and speciﬁc • actions planned Vision and DRR plans informed by understanding of underlying causes of • vulnerability and other factors outside community’s control Community DRR and DP plans developed through participatory pro- • cesses, put into operation and updated periodically

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

DRR a priority at all levels of Governance • Ofﬁcial policy and strategy for support to CBDRM • Local level understanding and community support of and for the com- • munity vision Local Govt. DRR policies, strategies and implementation plans in place •

35 Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Post tsunami, Nagapattinam had a Disaster Management Plan prepared with details on the safe spaces, health systems in place, food arrangements, watsan arrangements etc., complete with village level task forces identiﬁed. Unfortunately, these were not updated or kept live and the Study found that most of the members had moved out or changed after local elections. Although this Plan complied with spaces for the local community representatives, the communities were not part of the planning or decision making process. Quite a few of the NGOs also prepared village level Disaster Management Plans and formed DM task Forces. These have also subsided into near silence after the initial ﬂurry of activities. The common malaise seems to be:

Lack of systematic regular updating of the DMP and related activities • The need to maintain high levels of enthusiasm in structures that do not have • very many chances to be active

Unless the area is highly disaster-prone, there needs to be some way of keeping the community interested in keeping their DM initiatives alive. Integrating it into development activities seems to be the most obvious solution.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

In the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, the National Disaster Management Bill was passed in both Houses of the Parliament in 2005. The National Disaster Man- agement Authority (NDMA), headed by the Prime Minister of India, is the Apex Body for Disaster Management in India and was also set up in 2005. The setting up of the NDMA and the creation of an enabling environment for institutional mechanisms at the State and District levels is mandated by the Disaster Management Act, 2005. According to the NDMA, “India envisions the development of an ethos of Prevention, Mitigation and Preparedness and will strive to promote a National resolve to mitigate the damage and destruction caused by natural and man-made disasters, through sustained and collective efforts of all Government agencies, Non-Governmental Organisa- tions and People’s participation, by adopting a Technology-Driven, Pro-Active, Multi- Hazard and Multi-Sectoral Strategy for building a Safer, Disaster Resilient and Dynamic India”. This is also reﬂected in their approach to disaster management (Figure 5.3)2. As a part of its mandate, the NDMA has the responsibility for developing plans and policies for disaster management at the National level and approving of plans at the State levels and department levels. They also coordinate enforcement and implementation of the policies and plans for Disaster management. They are also in the process of setting up state level and district level Disaster management agencies which will then be carried forward at the Block level and the village level.

2 NDMA: www.ndma.gov.in

36 Figure 5.3: The Disaster Management Continuum Source: NDMA: www.ndma.gov.in

Policies and guidelines for the management of various disasters have either already been brought out or is in the process of ﬁnalization. The thrust areas of NDMA are:

Improve Disaster Preparedness through public awareness • Strengthened Early Recovery • Enforcement of compliance of regulations • Mobilizing Stakeholder participation • Community based Disaster management Initiatives • The NDMA has already set up, or is in the process of setting up:

The State Level Disaster Management Agencies • National Disaster Response Force with a strength of 8 Battallions earmarked from • the Paramilitary forces of the CISF, CRPF, ITBP and BSF Regional Response Centres • National NGO Task Forces at the National and State Levels • Disaster Response Funds and Disaster Mitigation Funds at National, State and • District levels National Core Group of scientiﬁc and technical institutions to strengthen the • Early Warning Systems National Policies for effective management of disasters • The National Institute of Disaster Management •

37 The Tamil Nadu State Government is in the process of finalizing the State Disaster Management Agency. Emergency Relief Funds are available at the State Government levels as well. The State Government already has a protocol and Standard Operating Procedures for frequently faced disasters. As Mr. C V Sankar IAS, former OSD (R & R) and Dr. J. Radhakrishnan IAS, former Collector of Nagapattinam district put it, “We are prepared for managing the frequently occurring disasters. It was the sheer magnitude of devastation of the tsunami that flummoxed us. We took some time to recoup but we were able to handle the post-tsunami devastation.” This is evidenced from the field also as in both Cuddalore and Nagapattinam, the District Collectors swung into almost immediate action and had systems set up for rescue and relief within hours of the tragedy. Water supply and power connections were restored by the third day, all bodies were removed and safely cremated by the fifth day and even this delay was more due to the inability to move heavy machines into the areas for search operations. The standard operating procedures are well in place and, before every monsoon, the District Collectors hold meetings with their officials to gear up their systems for meeting the threat of floods.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 1 to Level 2: There is awareness of the issues but at the local level, it seems as if the interventions are one-off. The high enthusiasm for developing DMPs after the tsunami does not seem to have been sustained.

5.2.2 Legal and Regulatory Mechanisms

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Community understands relevant legislations, regulations, procedures • and their importance Community aware of its rights and the legal obligations of the Govern- • ment and other stakeholders to provide protection

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Relevant and enabling legislations, regulations, codes • Mechanism for compliance and enforcement of laws, codes, regulations • Legal and regulatory systems underpinned by guarantees of relevant • rights: to safety, to equitable assistance, to be listened to and consulted

38 Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

The study clearly brings out the enhanced capacities of coastal communities in managing the interface with government. Three signiﬁcant community perceptions emerged from the outputs of the different methods used in the study as follows:

1. People have clear understanding of what ‘government’ is. They consider district administration and the state government as ’government’ and PRIs as government institutions. They also understand that there are hierarchies in government and they determine the levels at which decision are taken. People clearly attribute matters like fuel subsidies and administration of public distribution system to the state government, responsibility for quick action in disasters and the authority to decide on beneﬁciaries of rehabilitation programmes to the district administration, and provision of drinking water and the responsibility for solid waste management to the PRIs. Government is seen as the only agency that is accountable to the people at large. People attribute anything with long term implications to government. People see government as the only agency capable of implementing large projects that need huge investments.

2. People understand that policies exist, that it is the government that decides the policies, and that the policies have implications for their lives. More importantly, people also understand that they can influence policies, and are able to cite instances when the communities had been able to influence policies. Programmes and the extent of policy awareness are related. For instance, people from the villages where habitat reconstruction projects were ongoing better understood the housing policies of the government of Tamil Nadu. Communities in general and fishing communities in particular consider the traditional panchayat system as important. They are quite clear about the roles that these traditional panchayats play and should play, and also understand that these panchayats are not government.

3. People do believe that specific interventions by government officials can make significant changes to communities. A case in point here is the rehabilitation of nomadic community popularly known as ’Boom Boom Mattukar’. According to them, their rehabilitation had been made possible only because of the initiative that the then district collector and a couple of senior officers in the district administration took.

Translation of enabling policies into actions at the ﬁeld level still leaves much to be desired. This is especially true with administration of social security mechanisms and disaster risk mitigation. While the Public Distribution System (PDS) has a strong presence across the villages, insurance schemes are yet to make serious headway into the coastal communities. In spite of a better realisation at the government level on the need for insurance coverage and viable models emerging in the ﬁeld, large sections of the population still remain uncovered. Even though enabling policies are available

39 for disaster risk mitigation, last mile problems in communication still can make these ineffective in the ﬁeld. As pointed out in various sections of this report, post tsunami interventions have helped in strengthening local capacities to deal with the external world. Here ’external’ stands for anything outside the immediate community. People’s understanding of the roles of government, PRIs and the traditional panchayats has led to improved relationships among these institutions. However, there are still informational gaps within communities pointing to the need for mobilisation.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

The Government of Tamil Nadu with the assistance of the UNDP developed building codes and advisories for building multi-hazard-resistant houses for those affected by the 2004 tsunami. The houses were also insured for ten years. In addition, the CRZ notiﬁcation under the Environment Protection Act (1986) provides details about areas where building is controlled in coastal areas. A number of training programmes were organized for various categories of construction personnel to ensure quality construction. A shelter advisory group also ensured that quality in construction was maintained in the houses reconstructed by various agencies for those affected by the tsunami disaster.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 3 to Level 4: Post tsunami, the interface between the government and the people has improved tremendously where people are well informed about their rights as well as relevant legislation. However, some of the legislation is not properly implemented.

5.2.3 Integration with Development Policies and Planning

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Community DRR seen by all local stakeholders as integral part of plans • to achieve wider community goals

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Routine integration of DRR into development planning and sectoral poli- • cies (poverty eradication, social protection, natural resource management, health)

40 Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Integrating DRR into development plans , while understood at higher levels of policy making and planning, have not percolated to the actual implementing departments or groups. Apart from Environmental Impact Assessments being built into project proposals, a disaster audit has not been promoted even by International bodies like the World Bank, donors and INGOs as an integral part of their development proposals and plans. Community involvement in caring for and maintaining common resources is relatively low. While at the State level a formal Community Based Disaster Management Programme had been launched by the TNTRC3, they were unable to continue as they were not clear about the roles involved and the future road map. The National Level machinery also had not evolved enough to provide clear directions and guidance and hence this initiative is still at the very nascent stages. What is coming through is the lack of involvement of the actual users in the planning and implementation processes. The schemes are conceptualized well but put into operation without the inputs from the actual beneﬁciaries, thereby eliminating chances of ﬁne-tuning and smoothening glitches.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

The State has developed effective social security mechanisms such as the Public Dis- tribution System for essential commodities such as foodstuff and cooking fuel as well as employment guarantee schemes for poverty alleviation. In the case of natural resource management, efforts are being made to promote schemes such as social forestry and community based resource management, though many of these are in the nascent stage. The last mile connectivity, in linking these with the common man has been successful in cases like the Public Distribution System and Education, but not as successful in livelihoods, insurance mechanisms and credit linkages.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 1 to Level 2: At the level of the administration, many things are clearly conceptualized. When it comes to implementation, there seems to be little involvement and input at the local level.

3TNTRC: TN Tsunami Resource Centre

41 5.2.4 Institutional Mechanisms, Capacities and Structures

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Representative community organization in place dedicated to DRR • Responsibilities, resources etc deﬁned in community disaster plans • Shared understanding among all local stakeholders regarding DRR re- • sponsibilities, authority and decision making Access to govt. and other funding and resources for DRR and recovery • Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Institutional mandates and responsibilities for DRR clearly defined. Inter- • institutional or coordinating mechanisms exist with clearly designated responsibilities Human, technical, material and financial resources for DRR adequate to • meet defined institutional roles and responsibilities Devolution of responsibility and resources for DRR planning and imple- • mentation to local govt. levels and communities backed up with provision of specialist expertise and resources to support local management of disasters

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

The differences in the approaches adopted by the respective district administrations of Cuddalore and Nagapattinam have come up repeatedly through the responses to the various queries in the study. The two districts followed different strategies vis-a-vis CSO participation, with Nagapattinam having a much more vibrant CSO role. The NCRC, which emerged out of the NGO Coordination Centre which started functioning at the ofﬁce premises of the district administration from 1st January 2005, has played a major role in ensuring the effectiveness of the CSO role. Several experts interviewed for the study pointed out the critical role that NCRC4 played in managing the CSO-government interface. During the expert consultations on the interim ﬁndings of the study it has been pointed out that the NCRC was crucial in leading to improved understanding that the people of Nagapattinam showed on the role of government. Assuming that the pre-tsunami situation in the two districts was roughly comparable and considering the difference in the extent of impact, Nagapattinam seems to be distinctly ahead in most of the indicators. It may be important to draw inferences from the effectiveness of government policies as well as CSO strategies from an effectiveness vantage point. It has been observed that purely NGO driven interventions have not been as successful as

4 NCRC: NGO Coordination and Resource Centre: www.ncrc.in

42 those with a higher degree of community participation. Here it is also important to understand ’participation’ as it happened in several instances. In some cases community participation was about people being involved in implementing the projects conceived by the agencies. In some others traditional panchayats were consulted in decision making. In several others, Self-Help Groups (SHGs) were involved at various stages of the programmes. There were instances when communities engaged collectively with multiple NGOs to maximise programme benefits as perceived by them. Some CSO interventions were blueprint based, drawn up by experts far too removed from the field. Such projects seem to have at least less chances of success compared to those that are designed, or at least fine tuned in the field, with carefully administered pilot phases. Interventions with long term perspectives and implications seem to be more effective in the following cases.

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)/NGOs focus on their core areas of specializa- • tion and competence and implement programmes within the framework of their specialisation and competence CSOs/NGOs had standard operating procedures that were developed from experi- • ence CSOs/NGOs had means of and willingness to transfer knowledge and expertise • instead of reinventing the wheel after every disaster

Interventions aligning with existing mechanisms, structures or local livelihoods seem to be more successful. It also follows that interventions are more successful when communities take part in decision making and prioritisation. A need to align external interventions within the broad framework of a larger village development plan is evident. Such development plans should be drawn up adopting a bottom-up approach. It is important to develop and strengthen community based institutions for ensuring such a bottom-up approach. Community institutions, on the other hand, should critically examine the question of inclusion.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

An important enabling feature that led to the success of the NCRC in Nagapattinam was the fact that it was in partnership with the district administration. This enabled credibility and avoided duplication apart from serving as a bridge between the community and the administration. While recognising the critical roles that the existing institutions play in the lives, livelihoods and disaster preparedness of coastal communities, it is important to understand that long term development would require new institutions like the local CBOs/ SHGs, structures, and mechanisms. Understanding and acceptance of the public private partnership (PPP) method is visible among the people. This opens the possibilities of effective partnerships between government and NGOs/CBOs for decentralised services. Such partnerships however, should be forged with clearly contractual obligations. In villages where PRIs have assumed responsible roles in managing the village affairs and

43 also in delivering essential services, they can also adopt PPP method for enhancing programme effectiveness. Advocacy and dialogue at higher levels would be essential to bring in players like banks, NABARD, and insurance companies to play larger and more effective roles in financial services such as customised sector-specific loan products and micro-insurance. Approaches should be dynamic enough to leverage the already developed community capacities, with sustained and focused efforts from institutions being a necessary recipe for success in a development paradigm. Improved DRR indicators have been reported while new development initiatives are also visible. However, additional efforts would be necessary to integrate the DRR element into the development framework. Organisations need to be sufficiently flexible for engaging with multiple stakeholders. Flexibility is critical in devising innovating adaptations based on realistic assessment of the situation, in turn based on continuous monitoring of selected parameters. Fragmented approaches to development by various agencies would lead to disaster resilience losing importance in the development agenda. The NCRC experience holds cues towards overcoming the limitations imposed by fragmented approaches. There is a felt need to have specific interventions focusing on governance at various levels as well as this is an area that has seen few efforts but holds a promise in enabling communities to be disaster resilient.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 1 to Level 2: The NCRC was a one-off intervention. In the long term, the SDMA and the DDMA set up under the NDMA should be capacitated sufﬁciently to enable them to function effectively in a role similar to that played by the NCRC.

44 5.2.5 Accountability and Community Participation

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Access to information on local govt. plans, structures • Capacity to challenge and lobby external agencies on DRR plans, priori- • ties, actions that may have an impact on risk Participatory M & E Systems to assess resilience and progress • Inclusion/ representation of vulnerable groups in community decision • making and management of DRR

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Basic rights of people formally recognized to: safety, equitable vulnera- • bility reduction and relief assistance, to be listened to and consulted Effective quality control and audit mechanisms in place and applied • Govt. consults civil society, NGOs, private sector and communities • Popular participation in policy development and implementation • Citizen demands for action to reduce disaster risk •

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

It is only post-tsunami that there has been slight improvement in the access of the common persons to information about government plans. This top down planning and implementation of plans has not allowed participation in community decision making in general. Welfare programmes, social security schemes, Disaster management initiatives etc., which are beneficial, well planned and available, need to be brought closer to the people and fine tuned based on the changing requirements at the field level. This mechanism is extremely weak. Thus there is no room for dialoguing, monitoring or demanding their rights.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

With the 73rd/74th amendment already in place and functioning, accountability from grass-roots levels should not be a problem, except for the fact that the PRIs which are the nodal points for grass roots level development, have not been given enough leeway and financial freedom to develop plans or prioritise development initiatives. The Revenue Department which controls the fund flows to the Panchayaths works as a parallel structure to the Department of Local Governance, which is in charge of PRIs and local development. All financial decisions are taken by the Block Development Officials

45 who report to the Revenue Department. Multiple loyalties and conﬂicting priorities are not conducive for a holistic planning process at the village level.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 1 to Level 2: Improving interfaces between the service providers and the actual beneﬁciaries is of utmost importance if any of the well meaning plans for disaster proof development has to become a reality.

5.3 Thematic Area 2: Risk Assessment

Hazard is a situation that produces a level of threat to life, health, property or environment. Risk is a probability that the adverse effects actually occur. Risk assessment is a tool used in risk management. The components of resilience in this section include:

1. Hazards/risk data and assessment 2. Vulnerability and impact data and assessment 3. Scientiﬁc and technical capacities and innovation

5.3.1 Hazard Risk data and Assessment

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Community Hazard/ Risk assessments done in a participatory manner • with representations from all communities including the vulnerable Common sharing and understanding of the risks/ hazards and ongoing • monitoring

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Systematic and repeated assessments of risks/hazards undertaken in de- • velopment programming and data made available to support local level assessments and planning Participation of all relevant agencies/ stakeholders in assessments •

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

The villages studied had only experiential knowledge of the disasters faced by them and some of the anecdotal evidence did not feature in the state-wide data giving credence to the fact that ‘disaster’ as deﬁned by the State is not necessarily the same as viewed by the communities.

46 As per the community’s understanding, any event that affects their livelihoods in a drastic manner amounts to a disaster, whereas, on a macro level, an event is a disaster only if it involves large-scale damage to lives or property. However, even such data has not been collected in a formal systematic manner or analyzed at the village/ panchayat levels.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

At the State level, post-tsunami, the UNDP had assisted the State Government in collecting data over the last thirty years on the various disasters faced district-wise. The disasters included storms, ﬂoods, droughts, ﬁres and the tsunami; and information on the lives lost, damages to houses, assets and livestock are available as raw data for analysis. However, this has not been utilized for any further planning or matched with climatic or other hydro-geological factors to assess future risks. While it was the responsibility of the district centres to furnish the data from their available records, the districts, themselves, have not been involved in any further analysis or planning based on this and neither have the district authorities taken up any responsibilities on their own to further update or analyze the data furnished.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 1: While the government has SOP based on known vulnerabilities, these have not been developed with the assistance of the communities or shared with them. The government’s understanding of a disaster is at variance with the people’s perception.

5.3.2 Vulnerability and Impact Data Assessment

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Community Vulnerability and capacity assessments (VCA) done in a par- • ticipatory manner and ﬁndings shared, discussed and understood by all stakeholders and incorporated into community disaster planning

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Vulnerable groups and causes of vulnerability identiﬁed. Systematic use • of VCA in higher level development policies and planning.

47 Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Of the 10 villages studied, in 6 villages NGOs had organized vulnerability mapping in a participatory manner and shared the results with the communities. The vulnerabilities were based on their experiential knowledge. While in Cuddalore, a single NGO was involved in the exercise in all villages studied, the other places had different NGOs for different villages. And hence the approaches followed were not standardized. The Vulnerability maps, with the escape routes, were painted on the Panchayat walls in Cuddalore, thereby making it a permanent ﬁxture helping in keeping the idea and concept alive and also ensuring a wider dissemination. However, even in the NGO led interventions, the communities have not as yet been further capacitated or empowered enough to carry this forward through periodic updating or reassessments on their own. Indigenous practices: In one habitation, inhabited mainly by tribals and vulnerable to frequent ﬂooding, the tribal community was found to have their own indigenous mechanisms to track the rising levels of water. They used long poles to track the level of water and matched it with their experiential knowledge of danger levels to warn the rest of their people in the community. This was seen in an area and a community generally unassisted by formal systems like the Government or the NGOs.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 1 to Level 2: While the awareness of vulnerability mapping and planning exists, communities do not seem to be inclined to use this knowledge for planning.

5.3.3 Scientiﬁc Capacities and Innovation

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Community members and organisations trained in hazards, risk and VCA • techniques and supported to carry out assessments Use of indigenous knowledge and local perceptions of risk as well as • other scientiﬁc knowledge, data and assessment methods

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Institutional and technical capacity for data collection and analysis • Ongoing scientiﬁc and technological development; data sharing, space- • based earth observation, climate modelling and forecasting; early warning. External agencies value and use indigenous knowledge •

48 Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Training using various PRA techniques has been provided to communities, but does not appear to be a sustained effort. Indigenous Systems of early warnings: There has been a renewed interest among the research community on traditional warning systems, especially after the tsunami. Numerous types of natural cues that people use across the world have been studied and reported on. These include animal behaviour, change in wind direction, and particular sea behaviour. While such cues have helped people escape or mitigate the impact of natural disasters over ages, it is also important to consider the fact that these cannot be standardized. Quite often they are also cultural-specific. The question being raised in the context of natural cues is the possibility of understanding patterns in them, even while accepting that they only work within cultural contexts. A few types of natural cues were reported by the current study also. Sea snakes curl- ing into a ball were reported as premonition of disastrous events. The sea withdrawing substantially from the shore was also reported from several tsunami affected villages just before the disaster struck. Peculiar fish behaviour was also described during the discussions. Prediction of extreme weather using wind direction could be realistic given the tradition of using wind direction for deciding on fishing voyages on the Coroman- del Coast. Referring to traditional almanacs is also a means to understand weather fluctuations. Change in the colour of river water as a warning for a natural disaster was also reported in the survey. Naturally, the main challenge in using these cues is the complexity involved. Thus, there exists a situation in which there are scientific warning systems on the one hand and natural systems on the other. There is a third system of warnings that operates effectively in the coastal villages where indigenous knowledge and scientific improvisation are combined. Water level monitoring using bamboo poles to predict floods and using ropes as safety devices in a tribal hamlet in Cuddalore can be included in this category. Evacuation of families when floods and cyclones were expected to areas surrounding the village temple, in many cases located at a higher altitude, also may be considered here. Communities also use spots of higher elevation such as bridges where ever they are available as safe areas under these conditions. However, what also came through was the fact that such precautionary measures were in place only where there were no formal systems operating. Conversely, one may say that formal systems, wherever set up, have not taken the existing traditional practices into consideration and have evolved totally new, and sometimes even culturally alien, systems, there completely eroding such traditional practices.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Soon after the tsunami in 2004, the Ministry of Earth Sciences carried out vulnerability and inundation mapping using remote sensing techniques of the tsunami affected areas. While some of the results have been presented at technical conferences including

49 one organized by the Anna University in June 20065, the information held by the scien- tiﬁc and research institutions do not appear to have found their way to the community level. Similarly, Early Warning Systems as well as forecasting using models have been developed. INCOIS (www.incois.gov.in) is the nodal agency for collection and dissemination of ocean data information including tsunami warnings while the meteo- rological department (www.imd.gov.in) provides early warning for weather related events.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 2 to Level 3: Scientiﬁc capacities for vulnerability analysis and forecasting systems are highly developed but apart from providing Early Warning through proper channels, mapping and analysis of vulnerable areas has been done with little involvement of the communities.

5.4 Thematic Area 3: Knowledge and Education

The old adage of being forewarned is forearmed rings true in DRR. This is an area where considerable effort has been put in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster. Components of resilience include:

1. Public awareness, knowledge and skills 2. Information management and sharing 3. Education and training 4. Cultures, attitudes, motivation 5. Learning and research

526th December 2004 Tsunami: A geoscientiﬁc Perspective. Editor in chief: G.V. Rajamanickam. New Academic Publishers, 2006.

50 5.4.1 Public awareness, knowledge and skills

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Whole community has been exposed to/taken part in ongoing awareness • campaigns, which are geared to community needs and capacities Community knowledge of hazards, vulnerability, risks and risk reduc- • tion actions sufﬁcient for effective action by community (alone and in collaboration with other stakeholders)

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Appropriate high visibility awareness raising programs designed and im- • plemented at national/regional/local levels by ofﬁcial agencies Media involvement in communicating risk and raising awareness of dis- • asters and counter-disaster measures External agencies understand communities’ vulnerabilities, capacities, • risks, risk perception and rationality; and recognize viability of local knowledge and coping capacities

The UNDP has been running DRM programmes in various parts of India. Samiyarpet- tai, one of the study villages had been selected and community members trained in disaster preparedness in October 2004. The result was that the training given to the Samiyarpettai villagers speciﬁcally in the areas of search, rescue and prevention from drowning resulted in keeping the death toll down to 24. Some parts of this section are discussed under other sub-headings. For example, the role of the media is discussed under the next section.

51 5.4.2 Information Management and Sharing

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Information on risk, vulnerability, DM practices etc shared among those • at risk Community disaster plans publicly available and widely understood • All sections of community know about facilities/ services/ skills available • before, during and after an emergency and know-how to access these Maximum deployment of indigenous, traditional, informal communica- • tion channels

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Govt. committed to information sharing and dialoguing with community • on risk and DRM Public and private information gathering and sharing systems exist and • are accessible

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Information Dissemination

Due to large-scale post-tsunami interventions, the awareness levels on risks in the study areas were very high. Knowledge about vulnerabilities was mainly restricted to geographical and physical vulnerabilities and to a lesser extent on socio-political-cultural vulnerabilities. This was mainly seen in areas where the NGOs had taken the lead for DM trainings. Based on the responses on how the communities got information, it is seen that NGOs played a smaller role than either the Government machinery or media or even word- of —mouth sources. However, the larger presence of NGOs in Nagapattinam could be the reason they ranked higher as a source of information in Nagapattinam than in Cuddalore (Table 5.1) The sources when categorized as Government, Media, Traditional Panchayat, Elected panchayat, NGOs and Word-of-mouth, showed that the largest source in Cuddalore was word-of-mouth or informal sources followed by media whereas people in Nagapattinam got their information mainly from the media (Figure 5.4) Nagapattinam also ranked the traditional and elected Panchayat as sources of information.

52 Table 5.1: Information Dissemination

Category Cuddalore Nagapattinam Total Co-workers 0% 4% 3% Government Ofﬁcer 27% 16% 18% Headmaster/mistress 0% 3% 3% Neighbours 0% 13% 11% Newspaper 33% 17% 20% NGO 3% 6% 5% Radio / Television 21% 13% 14% School Teacher 3% 5% 4% Family 3% 1% 1% Tradional Panchayat 3% 15% 13% Elected Panchayat 6% 5% 5% Banks / Cooperative Banks 0% 1% 1% SHG 0% 1% 1% Societies / Associations / Institutions 0% 1% 1% Total 100% 100% 100%

Information Dissemination 60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% Govt. Oﬀrs Media TP EP Word of mouth NGOs

Cuddalore Nagai

Figure 5.4: Information Dissemination

53 Useful Early Warning Systems

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% Village PAS Govt. PAS Media Verbal--insiders Verbal--outsiders Cuddalore Nagai

Figure 5.5: Useful Early Warning Systems

Information on Early Warning Systems

In response to a query on means and effectiveness of existing early warning systems, Cuddalore responded that information from “Insiders” who comprise of villagers and friends were found more useful, whereas Nagapattinam claimed information from media and Government to be more useful (Figure 5.5). This difference in responses clearly shows the need to identify and develop multiple sources of information. However, the challenge will be in ensuring that all sources provide similar information and not contradictory information. While the penetration of Government led systems is difﬁcult to be ensured, given the vast and geographically scattered placements of these hamlets, a combination of systems, working in synergy, needs to be adopted to ensure the last-mile connectivity.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

With the widespread use of computers and the internet, a lot of information is available on the government as well as other websites. However, the access by the community members is relatively poor except in the areas where knowledge centres have been set up by various NGOs such as MSSRF, DHAN, SIFFS and the Village Information Centres of the NCRC. When the information is transmitted through channels such as the media, the reach is much higher.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 3: Large scale interventions by NGOs as well as training programmes organized by the government (through the UNDP) and the high penetration of the visual media (Television) as well as radio has resulted in high awareness levels through multiple sources of information.

54 5.4.3 Education and Training

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Local schools provide education in DRR for children through curriculum • Community members and organizations trained in relevant skills for DRR • and DP Public trained on safe construction and retroﬁtting practices to protect • housing and property

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Inclusion of disaster reduction in relevant primary, secondary and ter- • tiary education courses Appropriate education and training programmes for planners and ﬁeld • practitioners in DRR/DRM and development sectors

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Extra-curricular activities and special training about disaster preparedness have also been taken up by the UNDP and other agencies in schools. This programme, however, needs to be implemented much more widely. In fact, one of the key informants felt that this aspect was one of the keys to preparedness of entire communities as lessons learnt in school are not easily ignored or forgotten.

Training

There have been different opinions expressed by experts in terms of awareness building. It was pointed out that the programmes run mainly by the NGOs were not so effective, and people gained confidence by merely going through the post disaster experiences. Nevertheless, trainings, either by the Government or by the NGOs did feature as one of the factors that had built up the community’s confidence in facing future disasters. Among the 20% of respondents who had claimed continued “lack of confidence” in facing future disasters, one of the major reasons stated was that they had not been given training.

Disaster Management Committees

Awareness on disaster management committees (Figure 5.6) is abysmally low at 10% in both the districts. This is a serious concern given the efforts and resources that have been spent on formation and training of these committees.

55 Awareness about DMT

25.00%

20.00%

15.00%

10.00%

5.00%

0.00% Cuddalore Nagai Male Female

Figure 5.6: Awareness about DMT

Cuddalore shows a high level of awareness mainly because of Samiyarpettai, which was taken up for an UNDP-led DM training even before the Tsunami. The locals claim that this training had them better prepared and even helped them save lives. However, this is not the same in the other places wherever Disaster Management Teams (DMTs) have been set up. Only those who are members in the various sub- committees or have relatives as members seem to be aware of the existence of such committees. These DMTs formed, either by the Government or by the NGOs, have lost steam and direction of purpose after the ﬁrst year of being set up.

Safe construction practices

A few organizations which involved beneﬁciaries in the post-tsunami construction of houses provided training to the community members on the materials and methods used. This was seen as necessary because of the move from traditional building materials such as mud, brick and thatch to cement-concrete. The UNDP along with several NGOs has organized a number of training programmes for construction workers including masons, and a database of such trained personnel is being attempted.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

The state educational system as well as the system at the national level has made it mandatory for inclusion of disaster preparedness as a part of the social sciences curriculum in schools for classes 8 to 10. Various aspects of disasters including topics such as vulnerability, resilience and preparedness are taught as part of the curriculum. Training programmes for architects as well as construction labour on quality work- manship and safe practices are organized on a regular basis.

56 Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 2 to 3: Progress has been made by including of DP in school curriculum and the establishment of DMT in some areas. But the momentum has to be sustained even in times of non-disasters.

5.4.4 Cultures, attitude and motivation

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Shared community values, aspirations and goals • Justiﬁable conﬁdence about safety and capacities of self-reliance. • Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Political, social and cultural environment that encourages freedom of • thought and expression, and stimulates inquiry and debate.

In the tribal communities of Kambilimedu in Cuddalore and Boom Boom Mattukar or Adi Dravidars of Nagapattinam, there is a clear understanding of the roles played by various groups in the event of a disaster. Youth groups have been formed and mandated with the responsibility of tracking the rising of the ﬂood waters and warning the community well in time for safe evacuation. Emergency rescue and relief operations are also well understood and internalized. There is also a clear hierarchy, with the Tribal head providing the single voice of control, minimising the risks of mixed messages and conﬂicting orders. This is visible and practiced in communities which are not traditionally covered by formal systems and are forced to be self-reliant. Practices evolved out of sheer need and built on experiences, a cohesive community and clear lines of authority with delegations clearly internalized seem to be contributing factors to the sustainability of community based DMTs at the local level. And it is high time that the external players, like NGOs, and even the Governments, took this fact into consideration. DMTs, either have to be organically evolved, or have to be aligned as close as possible to the cultural systems already in existence and strengthened based on the traditional practices and knowledge. Otherwise the external energies required to keep them going will result in an entropy destroying not only what was set up but also what existed, leaving them more vulnerable than before.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 2: Communities that are away from the mainstream and have to be self reliant in facing disasters are much more organized. This is a point of concern in areas where resettlement has resulted in the breakup and redistribution of households. It may take considerable time and effort to bring cohesiveness into such communities.

57 5.4.5 Learning and Research

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Documentation, use and adaptation of indigenous technical knowledge • and coping practices

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

National and subnational research capacity in hazards, risks and disaster • studies

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

The study and documentation of indigenous knowledge systems has been going on especially by those involved in the agrarian sector. MSSRF, for example, identified saline tolerant paddy varieties that could be used in areas where the soil salinization has happened. Other institutions including CCD and TOFARM have identified paddy varieties that survive floods and droughts. Organic farming practices, for example, promoted by a few organizations helped in quick recovery of paddy fields that had been inundated by tsunami waters.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

It is only after the 1999 super-cyclone and the 2004 tsunami that there has been a formal build up of capacity in the study of hazards and disasters. However, a number of these studies done by academic institutions do not ﬁnd their way either into policy frameworks or for use by the community.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 1, moving towards Level 2: This is still at a nascent stage. A number of organizations are working on documentation of indigenous practices, but there is not sufﬁcient dissemination of such best practices that could be used by others.

5.5 Thematic Area 4: Risk Management and Vulnerability Reduction

In the last decade, following a number of major disasters such as the earthquakes in Maharashtra and Gujarat, cyclones and ﬂooding, steps have been taken by the government and civil society organizations to improve risk management and vulnerability reduction. It is therefore, not surprising that some of these areas have received extensive attention.

58 The components of resilience included under this section are:

1. Environmental and natural resource management 2. Health and well being 3. Sustainable livelihoods 4. Social protection 5. Physical protection; structural and technical measures 6. Financial instruments 7. Planning régimes

5.5.1 Environmental and natural resource management This component was not speciﬁcally explored in this study and hence is not discussed. However, this has been recognized as of importance especially to those peoples directly dependent on nature and natural systems. Community based management of ﬁsheries and the establishment of water user associations are two examples where work is in progress in the two districts under study.

5.5.2 Health and Well-Being

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Food supplies, water supplies and nutritional status secure and managed • by the communities with equitable distribution system during crises Access to health care facilities • Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Planning and systems in place for buffer stocks of food, medicines etc in • crises Public health structures integrated into DP and prepared for emergencies •

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

As was seen during the floods and other small disasters in the State, the State Govern- ment has developed a standard protocol for disaster response which is both effective and functional. The Block Development Officers, under the guidance of the District Collectors, are kept on alert and swing into action for rescue and relief operations immediately when needed. The medical systems at the district level are also geared towards meeting the required demands. Despite heavy flooding in both districts studied twice after the tsunami,

59 no cases of water borne or other epidemics have been reported. Prophylactic treat- ments are well in place and the system of service provision smooth. Nagapattinam is also a faith-tourism district, with Velankanni, Thirukkadaiyur and the Nagore Darga drawing huge crowds every year. In spite of such crowding, Nagapattinam has never had epidemics. At the community level, people are aware of their rights and that it is the Govern- ment’s responsibility to support them during such times. They are, by now, comfortable with having to move into relief camps during times of heavy ﬂooding and moving back when safe. However, we need to move to the next higher level, where the community takes the decisions and are not helpless bystanders following orders. Decentralisation and involvement of the community at the grass-roots level will not only ensure optimum utilization of resources but will also cut down the time, effort and resources required by the Government to put its ofﬁcial system into motion to deal with any and all disasters.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

The medical coverage is good but the facilities available at the village level centres need more improvement. However, the system, which is the most difficult to set up, is already in place and only needs improvement in functional aspects. Post-tsunami, the District level facilities have been improved and upgraded with the support of UNICEF. At the National levels also, improvement of health systems as a part of DRR has been taken up in a focused manner during the last year as stated by Prof. N. Vinod Chandra Menon, Member NDMA. Critical care and Emergency services have been strengthened, access to the main hospitals have been made easier with helipads being constructed and bed capacities at nerve centre hospitals have been steadily being increased. Food security during the rescue and relief phase is also well in place with the Districts being given total responsibility and powers to handle crisis situations. The protocols for food security is also well established with standard guidelines on types and quantities of food that needs to be provided—cooked food for up to a week, depending upon the type and extent of disaster, followed by dry rations supplied through the public distribution systems easily accessed by the communities. This Public Distribution System is effective in ensuring equitable distribution as it is based on a ration card system which enumerates the total number of members in the household. As mentioned earlier, an effective mechanism, which is the most difficult to set up, is already in place. The difficulties mentioned by the communities are more operational glitches in nature, and can be set right through better monitoring systems. Emergency funds for disaster management and emergency responses are available both at the State level and at the National Level. If the State feels the need for additional financial support, they request the Central Government for support from the Central Relief Funds. Apart from the Tsunami, the State Government has accessed Central Relief Funds for compensation of extensive damages to the agricultural lands during flooding.

60 Return to Normalcy

0 Good/better No Worse Normal Nagai Cuddalore

Figure 5.7: Return to Normalcy

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: Level 3 to Level 4: However, community involvement and management probably needs to improve.

5.5.3 Sustainable Livelihoods

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

High level and stability of economic activity and employment, • Equitable distribution of wealth and livelihood assets in the community • Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

DRR seen as integral part of economic development, poverty reduction • strategies to target vulnerable groups

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Restoration of lost livelihoods is one of the most critical factors that determine the extent of recovery that the communities have achieved in the post disaster context. There has been wide variation in the way people perceived the level of livelihood restoration achieved (Figure 5.7) Most of the respondents in the study have apparently answered the related question from the post tsunami context though there may be responses that have considered the ﬂoods during the last year as well. The nature of the question was such that the

61 Gender-wise Return to Normalcy

140

120

100

0 Good/better (M) Good/better (F) Yes (M) Yes (F) No(M) No(F) Worse (M) Worse (F) Cuddalore Nagai

Figure 5.8: Return to Normalcy, Gender-based

Return to Normalcy, Livelihood-wise

140

120

100

0 ri. b. an ss er w or b. er er ed Ag La is ne n cre nd la ick ad ri i. rt si ow h- e er p tr la gr A Bu h- is v th n ty Sa A Fis F ish O aw et F Pr P Normal Worse No Good/better

Figure 5.9: Return to Normalcy, Livelihoods-based respondents would have answered it keeping the current state of their livelihoods in mind (Figure 5.8, Figure 5.9)

Fisheries based livelihoods

People depending on fisheries based livelihoods were probably the largest beneficiaries of an unprecedented rehabilitation programme that followed the tsunami, and, under- standably so, given the losses that they suffered. Agencies with decades of experience in marine fisheries such as SIFFS had been arguing from the very early rehabilitation stage against excessive distribution of boats. It was pointed out that the fleet size that existed before tsunami was barely sustainable and therefore any addition to the

62 fleet would raise serious problems for the sustainability of marine fisheries. It was also argued that the funds available for livelihood rehabilitation should be used only for replacing the lost assets, and not even for upgrading the implements. However, what actually happened in the field was uncontrolled distribution of boats, which led to substantial enhancement of fishing capacities, but not necessarily on the livelihood security of the fishing communities. ‘While the government was at its best during relief, rehabilitation was a lost opportunity’, said Mr V.Vivekanandan. He pointed out that the rehabilitation phase could have been best used to overcome some of the problems that had been plaguing the sector

Table 5.2: Perceptions on Return to Normalcy–Fishing Livelihoods

Category Good/Better No Worse Normal Total Fishing Owner 20% 16% 2% 62% 100% Fishing labourer 18% 33% 0% 49% 100% Fish Vendor 0% 20% 0% 80% 100% Prawn Pickers 0% 50% 0% 50% 100%

However, the responses in the survey do not reflect this trend (Table 5.2). Only 62% of the boat owning fishermen felt that they were back to normal. While 20% of the people felt that they were better off in terms of livelihoods, at least 16% of the respondents felt that they were not yet back to normal (The response ‘no change’ here means ‘no significant improvement from the immediate post disaster stage, or more clearly, they are not yet back to ‘normal’). These responses have also to be understood in a larger context of the livelihood sector. A case in point was the fisherman who lost a trawler but got a FRP boat in replacement, who considered himself as worse off after the rehabilitation. His response was reasonable considering the asset value. But it may not be true if one looked at parameters such as the age and the book value of the boat, the real earnings that the owner had been making, and comparing them with the potential earnings from fishing using a new FRP boat. The case could look altogether different when viewed from a sustainability vantage point to evaluate the gains and losses. Only about half of the respondents among the fishermen who work as crew members felt that they were back to normal. Clearly, fishers see the state of livelihoods as a combination of several factors. There have been complaints from the fishermen that the catch had gone down after the tsunami. But statistics on fish catches do not substantiate this complaint. Unlike the agrarian scenario, where an additional acre cultivated leads to a propor- tionate increase in produce, in the case of fisheries an additional boat does not translate into proportionally additional catch as the resources are finite and depleting. Thus the catch per unit seems to have decreased post-tsunami. This decrease would directly impact the crew who are paid in terms of “share of the day’s catch”.

63 However, the fluctuations in catch per unit effort do not impact the business of fish vending women. Hence the vendors consider themselves as being back to business. The responses from the fishers are also probably indicative of the ‘dole seeking’ mood which continues among the people. Whenever questions are asked by outsiders on their state of livelihoods, there has been a tendency to highlight the negatives. Several people do believe that projecting a bleak picture on the state of affairs was a precondition to get more doles. In many cases when the researchers approached people, they wanted to know what ‘follow up measure’ could be expected. Standard answers to certain questions given with practiced consistency were also not uncommon. Such responses have been recorded across all disasters where external help is visibly forthcoming.

Agriculture and other livelihoods

In the case of farm-based and other livelihoods, the picture looks different. Among the livelihoods considered here were the following:

Farming, irrespective of whether cultivation is done on own or leased land • Farm labour • Petty traders including small shops and small time businesses • Artisanal crafts and businesses • Other labour which includes all categories other than farm labour •

Table 5.3: Perceptions of return to normalcy–non-ﬁshers

Category Good/Better No Worse Normal Agriculturist 10% 28% 0% 63% Agri Lab 11% 19% 3% 68% Artisan 17% 17% 0% 65% Bus. 30% 50% 0% 20% Other Labourers 22% 22% 6% 50% Petty Traders 33% 13% 0% 53% Salaried 22% 22% 0% 57%

Petty traders form the category that thought their livelihoods had become better that what it used to be (33%), followed by other labour (23%) (Table 5.3). These responses should also be seen as given in the context of the current state of an advanced stage of post tsunami rehabilitation programme providing more job opportunities and disposable income. While 63% of the farmers and 68% of the farm labour reported that they were better or back to normal, those who felt that the situation had improved compared to the

64 pre-disaster stage was only a few in both categories—around 10%. Farm lands, are typically affected in several ways by disasters.

Box 5.2: Ways in which coastal farm lands are affected

Destruction of existing crops and farming support systems such as irriga- • tion tanks, implements, equipment, and materials. The systems had to be rebuilt and replaced in many cases, requiring substantial inputs and efforts. Debris left on the ﬁeld that required substantial efforts to clear up the • place Salinity caused by the intrusion of sea water leaving the soil unsuitable • for cultivation. High level of salinity is a common problem for coastal farm lands. Disasters cause much higher levels of salinity, which makes it necessary to do physical removal of the top soil layer after the disaster. Erosion takes away the fertile top soil containing larger proportion of • organic matter. Therefore land reclamation programmes had to address the issue of enriching the top soil which was time consuming and nuanced.

Land reclamation and rehabilitation is a long process. The farm land may take years to regain its fertility. Therefore the farmers are likely to record lower levels of productivity for several seasons after the reclamation phase is over. Between the districts studied, Cuddalore showed a higher percentage of return to normalcy than Nagapattinam. This could be attributed to the fact that Nagapattinam suffered far greater damages making recovery slower.

Table 5.4: Seasonal Migration

District Sex Location Agri Fishing Artisan Business Other Lab. Total Cuddalore Male Within District 1 1 Within the State 1 13 5 1 20 Within the Country 0 Abroad 0 Total 1 14 5 1 0 21 Nagapattinam Male Within the State 3 1 4 Within the Country 1 1 Abroad 0 Total 0 3 1 0 1 5 Grand Total 1 17 6 1 1 26

65 Table 5.5: Full-time Migration

District Sex Location Agri Fishing Artisan Business Salaried Other Lab. Total Cuddalore Male Within District 0 Within the State 3 1 1 5 Within the Country 1 2 3 Abroad 2 6 8 Total 0 2 10 0 3 1 16 Nagapattinam Male Within the State 1 1 2 Within the Country 1 2 3 Abroad 2 4 1 7 1 15 Total 1 2 5 3 8 1 20 Grand Total 1 4 15 3 11 2 36

Migration

The livelihood security of a place is generally reﬂected by the levels of migration of workforce. While both Cuddalore and Nagapattinam showed comparable number of people migrating for full time employment, these were mainly from the artisans or salaried class. The ﬁgures by themselves do not show a situation warranting concern about immediate livelihood security (Tables 5.4 and 5.5).

Alternate/ Additional Income Generating Activities

Almost all post-disaster interventions in Cuddalore and Nagapattinam have had elements of alternate or additional income generating activities. While alternate income generating activities are laudable and even necessary where the traditional trades are dying out, sustained hand-holding support is seen to be crucial for its success. Tailoring classes, pickle making, doll making, beauty courses etc have been some of the alternate income generation activities tried out. There has been no perceptible change in the income levels despite the heavy investments in such programmes, mainly due to the poor conceptualization. Wherever they have been linked to traditional livelihoods, these activities are seen to have a better chance of success.

Seasonal Calendar for Incomes

A seasonal calendar for incomes was developed based on the data collected. It was found that there was extensive seasonal vulnerability despite multiple livelihoods within a family. Such seasonal income ﬂuctuations have to be taken into account while promoting livelihoods. However, this is also not devoid of risks as shown by the study. While the common perception is that the larger number of income earners in a family, the greater the economic stability, the study revealed that when the additional income earners were also in some way linked to the main source of livelihood, the seasonal ﬂuctuations hit all income earners at the same time thereby negating the additional

66 numbers of income earners. Even having as many as three income earners in a family was not helpful during the lean seasons when there was no cultivation if all three were agricultural labourers or one was a cultivator but the other was a vendor of the produce. The same goes for fishing also—if the main income earner is a boat owner and the other a crew and the third a fish vendor, all three will be without incomes during the rough season when fishing becomes impossible. An understanding of these seasonal fluctuations is also imperative in designing loan packages, revisiting norms regarding repayments, redefining SHG norms to suit seasonal requirements and extending financial tools that are more contextually meaningful Conceptualization of livelihood promotion requires both a deeper understanding and better business plan development from the side of the promoter and the native understanding and local knowledge of the community for it to succeed. However, this requires time which is a luxury in a post-disaster scenario when everyone is pressurized into showing quick results, mainly in terms of fund utilization and target achievement.

Livelihoods Recovery and Livelihoods Security

Most of the rehabilitation measures taken post-tsunami have been just a “knee-jerk” response to tsunami based damages. While, at best, this can aid in livelihood recovery on a short term basis, this is not conducive to a disaster response or livelihood security on a long term basis, especially in a disaster prone area like the coastal belt. With the visibly depleting resources, both on sea and land, be it in terms of ﬁsh wealth or land productivity, long term solutions have to be sought for ensuring livelihood security.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

While most NGOs working on land reclamation concentrated on desalination alone, NCRC, with the assistance of some experienced NGOs, advocated concurrent improvement of soil fertility through organic methods in Nagapattinam. Similarly, when de- silting was done by most NGOs to clear the water bodies of the accumulated silt post- tsunami, NCRC and CCD promoted community based organizations for continued up- keep and maintenance of these water bodies to not only ensure reduction of future flooding but also to promote better water management, thereby, increasing the area under cultivation. CCD and Dhan also built up farmer organizations for better on-farm and off-farm support. These Farmer Organisations are currently operating seed banks, have adopted better farming practices and taken up collective post-harvest practices that will reduce their overheads fetching better returns. The same is the case in fisheries, where a sustained and long term intervention is required to build up the knowledge and practices of the fishing communities towards maintaining and sustaining the fisheries resource base. Unfortunately, the high impact nature of immediate livelihoods recovery through distribution of boats has far out- weighed the ecological concerns that can drastically affect the livelihood security of

67 the fishers, leading to indiscriminate fishing practices that can totally destroy the fish resources. South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies promoted formation of Fishermen cooperatives that resulted in an almost, immediate improvement on the sales value of fish caught. Most fishermen are now members of such societies, wherever they have been formed. Being membership-based cooperatives, the fishermen have already started taking lead in planning and decision making in their societies. Other security nets like compulsory savings and insurance has been built in as a part of the Society operations leading to better compliance and wider coverage. In both the above cases, the common elements leading to continued relevance and thereby, sustainability, seem to be:

Perceived day-to-day relevance for the community • Falling well within the comfort zones of the community, thereby accelerating the • process of acceptance and ownership from the community Thorough understanding of the sector and its needs for long-term development • by the external catalysts, in this case, the NGOs Sectorally dedicated back-stopping support of the NGOs • However, such interventions require a high level of sectoral understanding, a core competency and adequate funding support, which unfortunately, is generally not forthcoming once the ofﬁcial “rehabilitation period” comes to a close.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: 3: The Study has clearly revealed the need for the Government, well meaning donors and implementers to revisit their deﬁnition of post-disaster livelihood rehabilitation and eschew short term impacts for long term sustainability. It has also been brought out clearly that wherever alternate/additional livelihoods need to be aligned with traditional livelihoods if they are to achieve any success. Long term development requirements should not be set aside for short term gains/recovery processes.

68 5.5.4 Social Protection

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Community access to basic social services • Mutual assistance systems • Collective knowledge and experience of management of previous events, • hazards, crises

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Formal social protection schemes and social safety nets accessible to vul- • nerable groups at normal times and in response to crises External agencies prepared for partnerships with local groups for social • protection/ security/ DRR

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

It is well understood and accepted that in the ﬁnal reckoning, it is the Government that is solely responsible for the well being of its citizens. Within the broader understanding of development being seen as the reduction of its vulnerable population, it can also be argued that the social security nets in place underpins the general protection of the vulnerable communities, thereby enhancing the resilience factor of the communities in the aftermath of a disaster. It is with this understanding that the Study sought to assess the social security nets in place and the levels of access enjoyed by the communities. The major areas focused on were developmental schemes, public distribution systems and special subsidies and pensions for the elderly and disabled.

The Public Distribution System (PDS)

93% of the people interviewed had access to the public distribution system (Table 5.6). The indicator used was the possession of what is commonly called the Ration Card. This is a very high level of coverage reﬂecting the commitment of the Government. This geographical coverage, by itself, is meaningful, especially in the aftermath of a disaster as most of the relief rations are supplied through these public distribution systems. The ration card has details of the house, number of members and the quantities eligible for. This reduces duplication and ensures equitable distribution of emergency rations. However, they were a few operational level problems stated quite forcefully by the communities. High on their list was the complaint that no timely information was provided on the availability of the material, forcing them to make innumerable trips

69 Table 5.6: Possession of Ration Card and Election ID

District and Village Ration card, BPL Ration Card / APL Election ID Card No Yes No Yes No Yes Cuddalore 13 137 146 4 11 139 Kambali Medu 3 27 29 1 30 Kanda Kadu 1 29 29 1 1 29 M.G.R.Nagar 5 25 30 - 8 22 Samiyar Pettai 2 28 28 2 2 28 Sothikuppam 2 28 30 - - 30 Nagapattinam 17 133 148 2 5 145 Arcottuthurai 2 28 30 - - 30 Pappakoil 1 29 30 - 1 29 Pazhayar - 30 29 1 - 30 Prathabaramapuram 4 26 29 1 2 28 Sellur 10 20 30 - 2 28 Grand Total 30 270 294 6 16 284

to the ration shops. They frequently received less than, or sometimes even none of, the quantities they were eligible for, due to delayed information and subsequent “stock depletion” by the early birds. There were also complaints on the quality of the material supplied through the public distribution systems. A clever sales promotion technique by the traders, to insist on purchase of slow moving items for supply of critical items like rice, sugar and wheat, also led to wide-spread complaints. Thus, even a well planned and successful system set up by the Government, at a great cost, is unable to achieve its objective, mainly due to poor monitoring and control mechanisms. Despite the costs involved in setting up such mechanisms, these are seen to be inevitable until the public are capacitated enough to claim their rights and can act as monitors themselves. 95% of the respondents also were in possession of Election ID cards, ensuring their legitimacy, identity and details for accessing any interventions that require proof of habitation.

Welfare Schemes

Most of the people eligible for the various schemes have knowledge about the existence of such schemes and have accessed them. The schemes accessed in the study area are shown in Table: 5.7. The percentages shown are the eligible people covered by the scheme among the households surveyed. Cuddalore citizens seem to have been more successful in accessing most of the schemes they are eligible for, other than the agriculture based schemes.

70 Table 5.7: Social Security Schemes

District Schemes Beneﬁciaries % coverage Cuddalore Old age pension - 0% Widow pension 3 60% Unemployment grant 2 100% Support to Physically challenged 2 100% Fishing holiday assistance 78 93% Fishermen Saving Scheme 80 93% Support to pregnant women 7 58% Support to girl children 3 50% Farmers scheme - 0% Other Schemes 3 75% Cuddalore Total 178 86% Nagapattinam Old age pension 3 38% Widow pension 2 33% Unemployment grant 3 50% Support to Physically challenged 1 33% Fishing holiday assistance 61 97% Fishermen Saving Scheme 50 85% Support to pregnant women 15 71% Support to girl children 1 13% Farmers scheme 22 88% Other Schemes 9 75% Nagapattinam Total 167 79% Grand Total 345 83%

National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP)

The Panchayat is supposed to plan developmental activities involving a large manual labour component for their village on an annual basis, for which funds will be provided from the NREGP on the condition that local manual labour is utilized. This has great implications on post-disaster employment generation and the Study sought to check the perceptions of the communities on this. While the State government announced that all debris removal, pond and canal clearance, road constructions etc. will be done either as cash-for-work programmes or under the NREGP, the Study found that, on an average, only about 50% of the households studied could avail this opportunity as shown in Table: 5.8. 127 people out of 303 had availed of the opportunity, 12 were not interested in doing so but 164 who were interested in taking up work under the NREGP could not because

71 Table 5.8: Participation in NREGP

District Village Yes No No Job Grand Total Cuddalore Kambali Medu 13 18 31 Kanda Kadu 16 16 32 M.G.R.Nagar 30 30 Samiyar Pettai 22 8 30 Sothikuppam 19 2 9 30 Cuddalore Total 70 2 81 153 Nagapattinam Arcottuthurai 5 25 30 Pappakoil 22 8 30 Pazhayar 7 9 14 30 Prathabaramapuram 22 1 7 30 Sellur 1 29 30 Nagapattinam Total 57 10 83 150 Grand Total 127 12 164 303

of lack of adequate work. Also, being a rural employment scheme, this is not possible in areas like MGR Nagar, which is a Town Panchayat.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

A number of schemes are available such as the PDS system that distributes essential commodities are low prices affordable by the poor apart from its use in distributing emergency rations during times of disasters. The NREGP is a well conceived social security net designed to help the unskilled labourers ﬁnd gainful employment. This guarantees one hundred days of labour per year to a family in the BPL category and is operationalised through the local elected Panchayat level administration. There are some gaps as mentioned in the earlier section and these have to be analyzed further before one can make studied inferences. What is important, though, is that this is given serious thought at appropriate levels and corrections made before yet another well conceived but badly executed project bites the dust and is written off as “useless”. This is another example where open and non-threatening dialoguing between the planners and the beneﬁciaries would have gone a long way in clearing up operational glitches. Platforms need to be created for such dialoguing and communities capacitated to articulate their problems and concerns. A variety of welfare schemes including pensions are available and well accessed.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: 3 upwards: Despite the availability of a number of social security schemes, there are gaps which are often operational glitches as in the case of the NREGP.

72 5.5.5 Physical Protection

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Safe locations • Secure hazard resistant structures • Security of land ownership/ tenancy rights • Structural mitigation measures • Land use planning taking potential hazards into account • Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Compliance with standards and codes • Requirement of all public and private infrastructure system owners to • carry out hazard and vulnerability assessments Access to public health and other emergency facilities • Legal and regulatory systems in place and effective •

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Coastal communities, especially ﬁshing communities, have their habitations very close to the shoreline. Post tsunami, vulnerability mapping of some habitations were done6 to get an understanding of indundation patterns for various wave heights. These studies clearly brought out the fact that the nucleus of many of the old ﬁshing communities was located at an elevation and respected natural barriers such as sand dunes. It is only in recent times that such traditional safety measures have been disregarded. This tendency of the common man, to disregard the potential dangers, has been well understood at the National Levels and NDMA is advocating to build this into the curriculum of Architecture and Structural Engineering. Large-scale attempts have also been made, at the National, State and District levels to train the engineers, architects and Masons in disaster resilient construction. UNDP with NCRC has also set up a website which has the names of all masons, bar benders, plumbers and electricians trained in disaster resilient construction at Nagapattinam for future reference.

Infrastructure Created Post-Tsunami in the villages studied and current status

The Study tried to ascertain what the communities considered as precautionaery infrastructure. Nagapattinam appears to have high preference for safe buildings. These include safe houses (16%), other buildings (23%) and cyclone shelters (14%). Though

6 E.g. Habitat Mapping of Chinnangudi by Benny Kuriakose, published by SIFFS, 2006.

73 Safety Infrastructure of Choice

22%

20%

18%

16%

14%

12%

10%

0% s g s s n s er in g ie io er lt s in lit at th he ou ild ci rt O s H Bu fa po ne fe al s lo Sa ic an yc ed tr C M ad Ro

Figure 5.10: Safety Infrastructure people in Cuddalore attribute high value to safe buildings (20%), they also consider medical facilities (20%) and transportation (11%) as important factors. The overall responses, from both districts are as shown in Figure 5.10. The Government and the NGOs have constructed Cyclone shelters in quite a number of villages and the community members have been openly appreciative of this fact. Infrastructure, in terms of better roads and bridges, better potable water facilities and enhanced hospital facilities have been possible post-tsunami due to the unprecedented flow of financial support and both districts studied have immensely benefited from this largesse. Tables D1-D5 in Appendix D (pages 136-138) lists the infrastructure created in the study villages in Cuddalore district while Tables D6-D10 (pages 139-141) list the infrastructure created in the study villages in Nagapattinam district. In almost all cases, the infrastructure constructed and the assets created have been based on some participatory planning with the communities. Despite this, quite a few of the constructions are unutilised. In the case of a fish storage unit, the reason cited for non-utilisation was that while the unit was very much needed, it was built on an uneconomical scale, with a freezing capacity about 400 times the normal catch, making the operational overheads of running the plant too prohibitive for the community to bear. Community halls, meeting halls and Balawadis seem to be more commonly unused. The usual logic for construction of such halls is that it can also be used as a safe space in times of floods. And to that extent they are only to be considered as an insurance mechanism and not one of daily utility.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

The State Government, with the support of UNDP, swung into action immediately after the tsunami and developed technical guidelines for construction of disaster resilient

74 houses. These guidelines recommended the distances and elevations needed to safeguard houses from storm surges and floods, also taking the wind speeds and seismic zonations of the State into account. The technical reuirements and building strength was based on the water based disasters faced over the last thirty years. These guidelines were then widely debated across the State by well aclaimed institutions like the IIT, Anna University, experienced NGOs, construction engineers and architects. While there was a clear feeling that the houses were ‘over-designed’, the policy makers, like the Government, felt justified to be acting conservatively and by leaving nothing to chance. The construction of houses for the tsunami affected was taken up on a highly successful public-private-partnership mode with the NGOs meeting the cost of the construction and the Government meeting the cost of the land and the public infrastructure and public utilities. This successful partnership in shelter related activities was widely ac- claimed as a phenomenal success and opens up spaces for such partnnerships in the future in developmental activities as well. Apart from the construction of houses for the tsunami affected people, the Govern- ment has also decided on a second wave of construction, wherein all vulnerable houses, upto 1 km from the high tide line and upto 200 mts from the backwaters, would be reconstructed as safe houses at the Government’s cost. This indicates the commitment of the State Government in ensuring safe habitations for its citizens. The Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 1991 was also invoked by the State Gov- ernment, to ensure that no new constructions came up in the vulnerable zones. How- ever, the State Government could not insist on absolute compliance as the CRZ had provision for the fishing communities to continue to have access to the shore front and the water front. Hence, in the debate between safety and livelihood security, compro- mises had to be reached at between full compliance and practical measures. Compliance with the guidelines, at least in the houses constructed for the tsunami affected, was ensured with two rounds of external construction audit across the State on a partnership mode with NCRC, UNDP and the State Govt. This was followed by a formal regular monthly monitoring system, in Nagapattinam district, set up again on a partnership mode between the Local Administration, led by the District Collector, and NCRC. A Shelter Support Group, comprising of a multi-skilled group, would visit the construction sites on a monthly basis and present its report in a public meeting attended by the construction NGOs, the Local Administration and representatives from the State Level Tsunami Response Cell. The issues identified and the emerging concerns, if any, then would be discussed with the Shelter Advisory Group led by Prof. Santha Kumar, the chief author of the Technical Guidelines. The changes recommended by the Shelter Advisory Group would then be made mandatory for the NGOs concerned and the action taken on it would be reported in the next meeting. This regular monitoring system,

75 under the active ownership and guidance of the District Collector, ensured that the Technical Guidelines were complied with.

Box 5.3: Negative effects of Blue-print based Targeted Interventions

The Dalits work as messengers, labourers and unskilled support for the ﬁshing communities in most of the coastal villages in Tamil Nadu. While this may not be the ideal relationship in the social context, it seems to beneﬁt both communities and they generally manage to co-exist amicably.

The same was the case in a village studied in Cuddalore, comprising of mainly the fishing community with about just fourteen Dalit families, where the fishing community and the Dalit community had a good working relationship. However, post-tsunami, a well-meaning but ill informed NGO attempted blueprint based vulnerability reduction intervention, by constructing safe houses for only the Dalit families, totally by-passing genuinely affected families from the fishing community.

The hitherto amicable working relationship between the two communities was totally destroyed leaving behind mutual ill-feelings and mistrust. The physical safety of the “vulnerable” community has been ensured but at what costs? Increased social vulnerability? Is the donor driven stratagem so sacrosanct so as to sacriﬁce existing systems? Were there ways it could have been accom- plished without the negative fall-outs? Easy to raise questions but does anyone have the answers?

The State Government, with the support of UNDP, also released guidelines for the retroﬁtting of vulnerable buildings, both traditional and designed. However, till date, all these remain merely guidelines primarily meant for the houses constructed for the tsunami affected. There has been no move to make these guidelines mandatory for all buildings, including the private houses, being constructed in the vulnerable coastal zones. Guidelines have not, as yet, been released for houses built in zones prone to landslides. So, it is seen that while awareness on safe construction is fairly high not only among the professionals and the policy makers, but also the common man, these have not as yet been made a culture or a style of life and construction of private and other buildings in vulnerable zones still continue unchecked.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: 3 to 4: A number of physical structures that improve disaster resilience have been set up apart from the multi-hazard-resistant houses that are being built in coastal areas. However, what is coming through is a les-

76 son that has been learnt over and over again in all interventions requiring behavioural change and attitudinal change. Awareness creation, by itself, is not a strong enough motivation to bring in long term changes in practice and behaviour. Sustained and dedicated efforts at all levels, including legislation and legalisation, is required to bring in desired changes and sustain them till it becomes a part of the culture and lifestyle.

5.5.6 Financial Instruments

Characteristics of a Disaster resilient Community

Costs and risks of disasters shared • Existence of community / group savings and credit schemes and/ or • access to microﬁnance services Access to affordable insurance • Community disaster fund to implement DRR, response and recovery ac- • tivities

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Economic incentives for DRR actions (reduced insurance) • Microﬁnance, cash aid, credit through soft loans, loan guarantees, avail- • able after disasters to restart livelihoods

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community

Credit is essential for all livelihood activities. The informal credit system is well entrenched in rural life despite the increasing penetration of formal ﬁnancial institutions. This study tried to capture information about the sources of credit as well as the savings habit of the communities to gain an understanding of the how and why of operation of various credit institutions.

Sources of Credit

Figure 5.11 shows the sources of credit in general in the study area. The informal sector including money lenders and pawn brokers continue to be the major source of credit for the coastal communities (>60%). Self Help Groups (SHGs) have emerged as important sources of credit (23%) while banks still remain fairly inaccessible to coastal communities. Years of intervention by several agencies and intensive programmes following the tsunami have not been able to substantially reduce the dependence of the people on informal sources of credit.

77 Figure 5.11: Sources of Credit: Overall

Credit Sources: Occupation-wise

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% Informal sources Banks SHGs Moneylenders Pawnbrokers Farmers Farm Labour Artisans Petty traders Other Labour

Figure 5.12: Credit Sources: Occupation-wise

78 Figure 5.13: Credit Sources: Fishing Sector

Data shows that farmers are the only segment to report a higher access to bank credit, probably due to the fact that they have tangible assets, in the form of land, that can be shown as collateral. Among all other categories, the lion’s share of credit comes from informal sources as shown in Figure 5.12. The common interest rates charged by the money lenders and pawn brokers are in the range of 36% to 120%. The average seems to be somewhere around 5-6% per month (60-72% per annum). However, there are instances when the interest rates go much above 120%. Informal sources also include small time borrowing from friends or relatives. This could be with or without interest. During seasons when there is no livelihood-related income, such sources are seldom available and people tend to take loans from money lenders. Even in places where the money lenders are not necessarily connected with trade, such as in villages where fishermen cooperatives support marketing of their catch, dependence on money lenders continues as shown in Figure 5.13. This is mainly because the fishermen have access to credit mainly only for productive or livelihood related activities from the cooperatives. For domestic/ consumption needs such as marriages, housing and education, they still access informal sources. It is to be noted that most of the credit is availed for purposes for which standard lending products are available with banks and formal financial institutions, yet coastal communities resort to informal sources where they end up spending much more. People pledge assets, mostly gold jewels, with pawn brokers for loans. The same facility is available with banks, but involves processes that make coastal people unable to access them. The data shows presence of pawn brokers as credit sources across livelihood categories. There is a need to develop customized loan products that cater to different businesses. The products that are presently available do not take into account the specific requirements of businesses. For instance, the loans that SHGs extend to fish vending

79 women are standardized and sector neutral. They do not consider the diverse credit requirements in terms of loan size, duration, and repayment pattern. Fish vending is not a ‘single’ business activity. Instead, what is known as ﬁsh vending comprises a varied set of activities. An indicative list of different types of ﬁsh vending businesses that the women of coastal villages are involved in are given in Box 5.4 for better understanding of the need for customized loan products.

Box 5.4: Activities that comprise ‘ﬁsh vending’

Buying fish at the auction centre, either by direct payment or on credit • – informal credit as in the case of individual fishermen selling their catch, – institutionalized credit as in the case of primary fish marketing societies conducting auctions Taking the fish to either the local market or small town markets which • are 20-30 km away, or icing and storing for subsequent sales in distant markets. In this case the women may be buying a lot which has different quantities of various species. Buying specific species at the auction centre, icing and storing them for • sales in distant markets including export markets. Here working capital requirement is high compared to the first business type. Dry fish trade involving procurement of specific or assorted species in • different volumes as per the carrying capacity of the business—thus making it different types of businesses—and selling them in local markets, or packing and sending to distant markets, or selling in bulk of bigger merchants, on different terms of payment.

Consider the business types described above. It is in fact a continuum from the ’woman next door’ selling the ﬁsh, that her husband has caught, at the nearest street at one extreme, to a smart business woman negotiating for bulk deals of multiple species and exporting them, at the other. Each category consists of businesses with varying investments and working capital requirement. Revenue realisation is also not standard. Therefore, the credit requirements of different categories are also different. Stan- dardised loan products delivered by SHGs cannot address the complex requirements of ﬁsh vending business. This is the case with most of the coastal livelihoods. Unless this problem is addressed, the dependence on informal sector is bound to continue.

80 Figure 5.14: Pattern of Savings: Gender-wise

Savings

It is widely believed that the fishing communities among coastal populations do not have the habit of saving. This belief has been true for most of the areas. However, the advent of SHGs has really changed the scenario. A majority of the respondents of the survey have reported savings, at least small savings. Figure 5.14 shows that people are saving not only with the SHGs but also with the banks. Compare this with the low level of bank credit available to the coastal communities. This proves that it is not the lack of access to the banks that prevents people from accessing bank loans. Nor is it due to behavioural issues as believed by many about the fishing communities. It is just the lack of availability or the lack of access to the loan products promoted by the banks that causes the problem. Even those who have regular savings with banks are forced to depend on informal sector to meet their credit requirements. The figure also shows that a large number of female respondents have reported savings with SHGs. Some of the fishermen societies also have savings schemes. The habit of investing in gold ornaments has also been reported widely. People see gold as a good means to save money as the value of gold keeps appreciating regularly and reliably. As mentioned above, contrary to popular belief, the data shows a high level of savings habit among the fishing communities. While on the one hand it can be reflective of the progressively decreasing returns from agriculture, on the other hand, it could also mean that provided the right channels, savings is a habit that can be cultivated. A case in point would be in the case of the fishing communities where most of the fishermen are members of the fishermen societies because of the various benefits provided like subsidies, better prices for the catch, rough season allowances etc. Simultaneously, these societies also insist on compulsory savings thereby leaving the fishermen with no option. This compulsory form of savings has slowly become a given in their scheme of daily transactions and they have come to accept it as such. Similarly the SHGs are also

81 Figure 5.15: Pattern of Savings: Livelihood-wise promoting savings as a compulsory condition to continuing their membership, driving up the habit of savings among the women, however poor they may consider themselves to be. The farmers, on the other hand do not have any such formal mechanisms thereby making “savings” a function of their perception of personal disposable income. Figure 5.15 shows the livelihood-wise savings habit. The credit and savings pattern among the coastal communities definitely make them more vulnerable to any shock in their lives—disasters being prominent among them. Small loans taken from money lenders develop into lifelong burden. In the case of disasters where the livelihood activities are interrupted and restoration takes time, the loan burden keeps rising as the state of livelihoods is not accounted for in private loans. In an economy where loan waivers and moratorium on interest have become regular phenomena with formal institutional credit, the coastal communities continue to bear the burden on private loans even through disasters like the tsunami. This has serious implications on their ability to fight back after disasters. Of the districts studied, Nagapattinam showed a much higher level of savings than Cuddalore (Figure 5.16). While the presence of NGOs per se did not seem to influence the specific village-wise figures, the enhanced abilities of the communities of Nagapat- tinam to engage with the external world due to their interactions with a larger number of NGOs may have led to this high level of collectivization as SHGs/ cooperatives etc. leading to better savings as an off-shoot. However, this needs to be studied in greater detail before strong conclusions can be drawn on causal factors.

Insurance Coverage

Insurance, as a safety net, is fast gaining credence at the village levels. Figure 5.17 has three axes—the overall response district-wise and livelihood-wise.

82 Figure 5.16: Savings: District-wise

Figure 5.17: Insurance Coverage

83 Table 5.9: Penetration of Insurance

District Type of Insurance Total Cuddalore Assets Life 73 Livelihood 9 Cuddalore Total - 82 Nagapattinam Assets 4 Life 89 Livelihood 20 Nagapattinam Total - 113 Grand Total - 195

Nagapattinam shows a higher level of Insurance coverage, whereas livelihood wise, both Nagapattinam and Cuddalore show a higher level of coverage among the ﬁsh- ing communities as shown in Table 5.9. The only common factor among the ﬁshing communities of both districts is the presence of Fishermen Cooperative Societies and SHGs. Bulk of the insurance seems to be for covering lives, with Nagapattinam showing a marginally better performance on livelihood and asset coverage. There was also a point raised during the last consultative workshop, by Mr. Hari Krishna that, if NGOs have provided the assets and the insurance for those assets like boats and houses, then there is a likelihood of larger coverage which the communities themselves are unaware of. While this is likely to be the case, as all boats and houses provided were covered by insurance, lack of knowledge about the coverage is as bad as no coverage as they are unlikely to access it. This clearly brings about the need for an aggressive drive on awareness creation on insurances already in place.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

Formal ﬁnancial institutions are there offering credit in the form of loans for various purposes. However, the sources of credit for most people seem to be the informal sector. Insurance in the case of the farming community is still low. One of the reasons mentioned by farmers for low coverage of their livelihoods was the lack of appropriate packages, customized to suit their speciﬁc needs. While the insurance companies are looking for economy of scale, advocacy or demand generation by individuals will not be conducive for change in packages. This requires a larger level of advocacy and will have to be taken up at district level or State level platforms. The Collectives and livelihood based SHGs can play a major role in dialoguing with the service providers for changes.

84 Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: 2: There is a slow increase in the availability of ‘safe credit’ as well as security packages such as insurance. However, they need to be tailored to the needs of the people.

5.6 Thematic Area 5: Disaster Preparedness and Response

This is another area where considerable work has been done and interventions made to improve the capacity of the people. The components of resilience under this theme include:

1. Organisational capacities and co-ordination 2. Early warning systems 3. Preparedness and contingency planning 4. Emergency resources and infrastructure 5. Emergency response and recovery 6. Participation, voluntarism, accountability

Since these components are extensively inter-related, they are discussed in toto. EM-DAT7 defines a disaster as a situation or event that overwhelms local capacity, as any unforeseen or sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering. Thus it is mainly large scale events that are considered as disasters. One of the important findings of the study is regarding the very definition of disasters. The study revealed that for a common man, anything that impacts his livelihood is a disaster. People in both the districts spoke about several events, big and small, that they would call a disaster. These included fire, floods, cyclones, riots, tsunamis, tidal influx, and diseases.

5.6.1 Disaster Preparedness 78% of the women in Cuddalore and 76% of the women in Nagapattinam claimed that they were better faced to prepare disasters and the response levels were higher among the men with 89% in Cuddalore and 85% in Nagapattinam responding in the affirmative as shown in Figure 5.18. Experience seemed to be the single largest factor that increased the confidence levels of the communities to face another disaster followed by trainings in DP conducted by the NGOs and the Government. Infrastructure also played a key role in assuring the flood-prone of safe getaways in times of need as shown in Figure 5.19. Interestingly, both Cuddalore and Nagappatinam credited the NGOs with helping in building up their confidence levels. While Cuddalore ascribed 43% to NGOs, Nagap- attinam toned it to 39% which is not in keeping with the presence of NGOs in both

7 Emergency Events Database: www.emdat.be

85 Figure 5.18: Disaster Preparedness

Figure 5.19: Factors Building Confidence the districts. Nagapattinam ascribed 21% to Government led initiatives, whereas Cud- dalore said 20%, again not significant enough to draw conclusions. The “others” largely relates to own experience, presence of youth groups and availability of infrastructure. Figure 5.20 shows the different confidence building agencies.

Indigenous forms of Disaster Preparedness

One of the tribal hamlets studied in Cuddalore is prone to frequent ﬂooding. They, as a tribe, are both geographically and culturally out of the main stream and do not have any formal support mechanisms, either Government or NGO led. The Tribal community has evolved their own indigenous methods for tracking the rising of water levels. They have deputed a group of youth to monitor the rising levels

86 Figure 5.20: Confidence Building Agency with pre marked sticks. Once the water reaches levels seen as dangerous they sound the warning to the rest of the tribe to evacuate and move to higher spaces. They also have a Disaster Management Fund, into which every family contributes some amount every month. This accumulated amount is their fund to tide them over till they floods recede and they can pick up their lives and livelihoods as before. Such forms of practice have evolved through sheer survival needs and they are very conscious of their roles and responsibilities. The Tribal Leader, being a highly revered and respected person within the community, provides the single voice of authority and decides the future course of action, thereby minimizing mixed messages, superfluous activities and cross purposes. This is a Disaster Management Team, as it is known to the outside world, complete with even dedicated responsibilities and a disaster management fund. The disaster management experts need to study the simple but effective systems that ualready exist before trying to introduce alien practices and cultures that will not stand the test of time.

5.6.2 Disaster Response The study was expected to cover disasters in general and not just tsunami. However, the study team during the initial discussions expressed a feeling that people would be too preoccupied with the memories of the tsunami to speak about other disasters. Therefore techniques were discussed to make the responses focus on disasters in general. However, the way the respondents deﬁned disasters made this concern unten- able. Responses to some of the questions were clearly about the tsunami. But this was more because of the fact that some experiences were only applicable to the tsunami. The overwhelming presence of NGOs during the post disaster stage is a case in point. Neither of the districts had witnessed such an NGO presence in case of any past disas-

87 ter. Such long drawn and nuanced rehabilitation process has also been unique to the tsunami. In order to understand the nature of disaster response better, the gestation of a disaster and its aftermath were divided into five phases in this study. Even though some aspects are distinct in this classification, these phases overlap. The following were the five phases that the study attempted detailing on.

Box 5.5: Disaster Preparedness as an inverse function of available support mechanisms Two villages, similar in nature and vulnerabilities, were seen to have different levels of disaster preparedness. One village was close to a semi-urban area and the other away from any such developed areas. The villagers close to the semi- urban area nonchalantly moved into this area and lived in shelters on relief material provided by Govt. or other well-wishers till the floods abated. How- ever, the village which had no recourse to such support made arrangements well ahead of the rains to avoid being caught unprepared during the floods. This inverse relationship between supports available and inherent capacities of the communities needs to be studied much more before inferences can be drawn. However, this does give rise to speculations on what does “capaci- tating” a community really mean. Would the communities of the first village have been better prepared if they had been given the responsibility to fend for themselves?

Phase 1: During the disaster That is when the disaster actually unfolds, whether it is the wave of a tsunami as it hits the coast, torrential rains as they fall, or the swirling wind as it blows in a cyclone. The time period here is measured in ‘a few hours’.

Phase 2: Rescue This is when people seek help from others to escape or mitigate the impact of the disaster. The phase overlaps with the ’during the disaster’ phase. The time period here is measured in ‘one to seven days’ after the onset of the event.

Phase 3: Relief The phase when the survivors are dependent on others for survival, measured as ‘one to three months’ after the event. Survivors would need material and psycho-social support at this stage.

Phase 4:Rehabilitation This phase, measured as ‘from five months to one year’, is about restoration of lost livelihoods. In the case of fishers this would mean repairing and replacing damaged or lost fishing equipment while for farmers it could be de-silting of saline affected land and support in resuming cultivation.

88 Phase 5:Reconstruction Mainly about housing and other infrastructure, may last ‘beyond one year, up to a few years’. While this study was being conducted, the post-tsunami reconstruction phase was still on in Nagapattinam and Cuddalore districts.

Here it is important to understand the difference between the elected panchayat and the traditional panchayat. Elected panchayats are constitutional bodies entrusted with local self governance in India. The 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India made it mandatory on the state governments to make laws for local self governments and to hold regular elections to the panchayats. The panchayat system exists in most of the Indian states, even though their degrees of power and entitlements differ across states. These local government institutions are called Panchayat Raj/ Nagar Palika Institutions, or ‘PRI’. As against these, traditional panchayats (TP) are informal governance systems that are village or caste based. According to Mr V.Vivekanandan, Advisor, South Indian Fed- eration of Fishermen Societies (SIFFS), though there is no law backing their existence and functioning, these are local governance structures that played central role in the lives and livelihoods of the people. According to him, any long term programme in marine ﬁsheries on the Coromandel Coast for instance, could not succeed without the support and involvement of the Pattinavar Panchayats, the traditional panchayats of the Pattinavar sub-caste, the main ﬁshing caste of the Coromandel Coast.

5.6.3 Crisis management during disasters Nagapattinam district, being the worst affected by the tsunami, had the best team deputed by the Government during the immediate relief stage. The team consisted of around 15 members of the Indian Administrative Service, handpicked by the state Government for the purpose. The team was led by senior officers. The team enjoyed unprecedented levels of autonomy and powers. Vivekanandan, Advisor, SIFFS pointed out the importance of a crucial order that the Government of Tamil Nadu had issued which exempted the expenditure at the early relief stage from regular audit processes. This step was taken with the intention of supporting the high level team and to en- dorse all their decisions in the field. The state Government’s message was clear: ’The team has been formed and deputed for the task. It has complete backing of the state Government. Go ahead and do the job’. Several experts interviewed for this study mentioned that the method adopted by the Government of Tamil Nadu during the relief phase was highly effective. The team was free from all possible administrative and bureaucratic hindrances in accomplishing their task. The team, along with the district administration decided for a larger NGO and civil society involvement in the programme. This led to a situation where a large number of NGOs were working in the field. The NGO Coordination Centre established at the office of the district administration functioned as a coordinating forum, providing an effective interface between the communities, the NGOs and the Government.

89 Table 5.10: Crisis Management–Nagai

District Flood Tsunami Phases Phases Players 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Insider 7 10 - - - 59 34 3 2 Nearby Village 2 - - - 14 10 - Self 8 1 - - - 11 1 - Outsider 2 1 - - - 7 17 - Nobody 3 23 16 35 39 22 36 14 53 71 NGO 1 4 4 1 26 81 83 57 Govt 6 24 3 2 45 115 46 35 Indl. & pol 1 - - - 10 2 1 Assns & rel. Gps - - - 2 4 - 1

Table 5.11: Crisis Management–Cuddalore

District Flood Tsunami Phases Phases Players 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Insider 22 1 5 - - 86 55 - 1 Nearby Village 4 9 - - 45 60 - - Self 11 8 - - 13 12 - - Outsider 4 2 4 - - 3 52 2 - Nobody 1 9 8 42 43 1 3 - 24 94 NGO 11 - - 2 135 110 43 Govt 6 26 4 2 63 108 82 11 Indl. & pol 4 14 - - 2 18 - Assns & rel. Gps - - 2 -

In Cuddalore, the impact was lower than in Nagapattinam. The district administration under a dynamic Collector was active. NGO and civil society role was limited. The district administration was able to make major strides in rescue and relief quickly. The Government’s leadership and initiative shown during the relief phase would go down in history as some of the best examples in crisis management. However, when the same questions were posed to the communities, their responses were as shown in Table 5.10 for Nagapattinam and Table 5.11 for Cuddalore The communities across villages were categorical about their belief that it was village “insiders” who helped the most during a disaster and the rescue stage. Insiders include villagers, village youth, traditional and elected Panchayaths. They were able to recollect their experiences of up to three past disasters in order to answer the query on the source of primary support. While in Cuddalore people felt that it was villagers and youth who offered help during these phases, villagers, traditional panchayats and elected panchayats played signiﬁcant roles according the people of Nagapattinam.

90 Figure 5.21: Decision Makers: Cuddalore

There is a definite pattern seen to the support provided. The initial supports during both floods and tsunami, was from “insiders”. The “outsiders” like the Government, NGOs come in during the relief and rehabilitation phase. The “insiders” start losing visibility by this stage. Toward the reconstruction phase, there is a sharp decrease seen among all players. The above analysis provides a cause for reflection: all disaster responses seem to be mainly just “responsive actions” by the “outsiders” and not “pre-emptive”. There are few sustained attempts at long term efforts in building up of disaster resilience. While, it is logical to have fewer players with the passage of time, the blue print for disaster response should ensure that either the Government or donors, with DM experience, should invest more effort, time and energy into building up of a resilient community in the aftermath of a disaster, especially in disaster-prone areas like the coastal belts. Some of the NGOs that have stayed behind, have started working on long term disaster resilience through strengthening of traditional livelihoods like agriculture, water management, coastal zone management, fisheries management and skill building and placement for alternate livelihood development.

5.6.4 Decision Making at Critical Junctures Preference for traditional panchayats was clear in Cuddalore as appropriate agencies to take critical decisions during a disaster as well (Figure 5.21). Respondents of Naga- pattinam however, saw a larger role for government at all phases (Figure 5.22). The exposure that the communities in Nagapattinam got to the decision making processes within government appears to have enhanced their trust in government. It also reﬂects the extent to which the government decisions could be inﬂuenced by communities and civil society organisations in the district. Communities also see government as the agency to address larger issues and implement projects of long term implications.

91 Figure 5.22: Decision Makers: Nagapattinam

Figure 5.23: Ideal Responder: Nagapattinam

Clearly, communities see only government and traditional panchayats as long term agencies. All others would withdraw from the area after some time. According to Benjamin Larroquette, Manager, United Nations Team for Tsunami Recovery Support (UNTRS), this was the way things should be as the government was the only long term player and all others should withdraw from disaster related programmes after a short period. However, Anil Das, Livelihoods Consultant for the Asian Development Bank for its post tsunami projects did not agree with this. He saw a case for the various agencies to engage with the communities for a longer term. He felt that three years was too short a period to make any substantial change.

92 Figure 5.24: Ideal Responder: Cuddalore

5.6.5 Ideal Responder The Study also tried to elicit information from the communities on who they thought were the ideal responders during disasters based on their experiences across three to four disasters. The ideal responder in Nagapattinam is overwhelmingly the Government (Figure 5.23), which can be safely translated as both the District Administration and the State Administration. The Village level elected and traditional Panchayaths are seen as their next choice for ideal responders. In Cuddalore, on the other hand, the Government is seen as a third choice after the Traditional Panchayats, the elected Panchayats and the insider youth (Figure 5.24). Interestingly, despite the larger than life presence of NGOs, the choice of NGOs as ideal responders comes last in both districts. The reasons stated for the first preference of Traditional Panchayat and Elected Panchayats in Cuddalore and the local Government in Nagapattinam are the same: better knowledge about the people, equitable distribution of benefits and most illuminating reason was a simple “It’s their responsibility”. Inferences can also be drawn from the comparison of responses across village types. For instance, traditional panchayat ranks high as an ideal agency in fishing villages, while farming villages have their inclination towards PRIs, police and government. This can be explained by the presence of strong traditional panchayats among the fishing communities of the Coromandel Coast.

Characteristics of an Enabling Environment

The citizens have made their choice and reasons clear and did not need even an awareness building on the Hyogo Framework of Action to state the most pressing reason for unequivocally stating that the Government, either as the state, district or local gov-

93 ernment or the traditional governance system was finally responsible to safeguard its citizens. So, while the world at large is still talking about “public-private-partnerships” the people have brought in another element that needs to be considered as serious players requiring strengthening—the Traditional Panchayats and the local village level elected Panchayaths. Given the fact that the village level elected Panchayats were totally kept out of the loop for tsunami response, this vote of confidence by the people needs to be taken seriously and acted upon . One of the reasons for the high level of confidence in the District Administration at Nagapattinam could have been the platforms created for free flow of ideas and information between the district administration, the NGOs and the communities. The role played by NCRC in the creation of such platforms where the communities felt free to meet with, question and demand their rights from both the NGOs as well as the District Administration has been acknowledged at many levels. While the role played by a body like the NCRC is significant enough to have made a difference, what is more striking is the fact that, given the right tools and opportunities, the communities can rise to the occasion and play central roles in deciding their own lives rather than waiting for external bodies to decide what is good for them. This has been proved by a case seen in Kambilimedu, one of the villages in Cud- dalore taken up for the Study. Basically a village that depends on agriculture for their livelihoods, this village did not have irrigation facilities and thus were forced to a mere single-season cultivation of paddy during the rains. The rest of the time they could only grow low-cost cereals and were thus facing financial problems. Losing their precious monsoon crop to the tsunami would have been the final straw, but for the smart thinking of an elected panchayat representative. Being an agriculturist himself, he motivated the community to pool in some of their relief compensations to leverage additional funding support from NGOs for borewells. The community agreed with his reasoning that any other form of compensation, in cash or kind, would have limited impact whereas the borewells could transform their entire lifestyle. They collectively approached some NGOs with this plan and managed to get funding support for 6 bore wells. This has completely transformed the face of the village and is reflected in better quality of life, better nutrition for the family, lesser drop-outs from school and better health seeking behaviour. No external agency would have been able to provide them with this perfect solution. It took just one man, with his innate knowledge about his village and its needs and a credibility due to his office, to mobilize an entire village for its collective good giving credence to the fact that the communities are not wrong to place their trust in local leaders for the mere reason that they know the village and its inhabitants better. The lesson here for the external players is clear: the adage of “trust the community and help them make informed choices” has never been more true. The external players need to unlearn and relearn every new community they seek to help. Mutual respect and trust with truly participatory decision making processes will lead to better return on investments and better sustainability. However, as stated in the Workshop in Chen-

94 nai8 by the Key Speaker, Sri. G Padmanabhan, Emergency Analyst of UNDP, this comes at a price as such processes will take time and time is one luxury that is not available during post-disaster responses. Target driven approaches, pressure to spend money with high-visibility impact and need to prove oneself in a short period of time eschews such participatory approaches and the communities are left holding sewing machines and solar driers that nobody wanted in the first place. While people appreciate the good intentions of the NGOs is post disaster functions, they also maintain that government is the most reliable as it is their responsibility to look after the citizens. Governments were accountable directly to the people, while NGOs were not. However, NGOs rank high in equity and inclusive nature of support. The work of NGOs and voluntary groups highlighting issues of equity and gender seems to have paid off. People interviewed as part of the study had pointed out that the government system had developed new sensitivities during the post tsunami period. These were mainly attributed to educational programmes and interventions highlighting equity, gender, and the problems of the marginalised sections. Such a change, it was argued, was visible in the way the district administration handled issues during the rehabilitation phase. According to Mr C.M. Muralidharan, Fisheries Coordinator, FAO/UNTRS, improvement could be seen in government in terms of programme efficiencies, integrated approach, and sensitivities on equity concerns, livelihoods and sanitation. Overall coordination from Government had been good, and might be better in the case of future disasters. According to him, regular analyses, reviews, media presence, civil society interventions—all contributed to improving government sensitivities. Mr Muralidha- ran expressed hope that at least 50% of such changes would get institutionalised. Mr Vivekanandan of SIFFS saw enhanced capacities in government in facing similar events. New sensitivities developed would definitely improve the responsiveness as well as the performance of government.

Progressing Towards Resilience: Rank: 3: Disaster preparedness and response has deﬁnitely improved in the last few years, more so after the 2004 tsunami. Earlier, it was the governement’s standard operating procedures that were brought into play in the event of a disaster. The move now is to promote preparedness within the communities and it must be mentioned here that the NGOs and civil society organizations have played an important role.

8 Workshop report is available as Appendix A on Page 117

95 Chapter 6 Conclusions and Recommendations

I have seen mile after mile of desolation, where once vibrant communities have suddenly ceased to exist. I have looked into the eyes of ﬁshermen whose silence expressed their loss as no words could. I have seen families torn asunder, mothers inconsolable, livelihoods gone. But I have also seen examples of the best that humanity has to offer. Governments of the affected countries moved quickly to do their part, with civil society and the private sector joining forces with them. Communi- ties organized themselves spontaneously, reaching out to their neighbours, without waiting to be told what to do. I hope we will seize it as an opportunity and a reminder to address other emergencies. (Excerpt from the Address made by Mr. Koﬁ Annan, UN Secretary General to the UN General Assembly immediately post-tsunami 2004)

The hopes voiced by Mr. Kofi Annan, UN General Secretary, in his address to the UN General Assembly proved prophetic. The 2004 tsunami was indeed utilised as an opportunity and the Study reflects this. Whether ‘build back better’ was achieved can be debated, but what emerges very clearly is that the Governments did take this as a wake-up call to accelerate their progress on making Disaster Management an agenda to be reckoned with. Where do the communities stand in this accelerated movement and have the communities benefited from this? This study used the guidance note by John Twigg to analyse the status of communities in the Nagapattinam and Cuddalore

96 districts of Tamil Nadu, India, with reference to the Hyogo Framework of Action’s ﬁve thematic areas for disaster resilience. The Study shows that in some areas they have, in some areas they have not and in some areas they have shown a great ingenuity which can support the Governments, provided they are recognised and strengthened.

6.1 Governance

The National level machinery is in place and working on several fronts simultaneously, trying to set up National-State-District-Community interfaces, strengthening disaster response mechanisms, developing guidelines and policies for effective disaster management, drawing up legislations and trying to ensure compliance, integrating disaster management into school, college and professional course curricula and building up awareness among the populace on disaster management. The State level machinery was also quite committed in its attempts at setting in place systems for disaster management. Social security nets are in place, protecting the vulnerable like the elderly, single women, physically challenged the pregnant women, children and the unemployed. Although there is a deﬁnite slow-down after the rehabilitation phase of the tsunami, their efforts have been in the right direction. While there exists a highly effective ‘response mechanism’ for routine disasters like ﬂoods, efforts are still required in scaling this up and setting up seamless systems that can not only upscale disaster responses but will also integrate DM into development. At the community level, the awareness of disaster response mechanisms are better than before but community involvement in, ownership of and access to the systems being put in place are still at less than desirable levels. Lack of ‘Last-mile connectivity’ is glaringly obvious and this gap needs to be taken up, preferably by new, or hitherto uninvolved structures that are community based and localised. Community mobilisation, in terms of awareness creation and involvement right from the planning stages and greater roles and responsibilities for the community has to be consciously built up. Interfaces between the service providers and the communities have to be smoothened and strengthened if accountability and transparency have to be promoted in governance. While the communities are quite strong in their understanding of the Government and its role in DM, they have marked preference for their local elected Panchayats, traditional Panchayats or even local youth groups for taking on more responsibilities pre and post disaster. This stated preference needs to be acknowledged, respected and factored in all future DM interventions. Taking the above stated points into account, it is time that the well publicised and successful ‘public-private partnerships’ model was expanded and adapted to factor in all these players, including the PRIs and the CBOs.

97 6.2 Risk Assessment

A classic case of “. . . and never shall the twain meet. . . ” Varied understandings, multiple approaches, mixed messages, sporadic interventions delivering “sound and fury signifying nothing” or at least, not anything much. Perhaps the Study Team is being highly critical in its assessment, but makes no excuses. A lot has been done, at various levels and by various players ranging from the highly technical scientiﬁc institutions, to the least technical tribal communities. A myriad of institutions involved in science and technology, academics and research, social sciences, medical sciences etc., have studied, amassed information and learned valuable lessons in the last four years, post- tsunami. This repertoire has not been amalgamated to produce a coherent approach to risk assessment, so much so that ‘vulnerability indicators’ still remain a well debated theoretical exercise. Unless there is an attempt at shared understandings and percept right from the grass- roots to the highest levels, these will continue to remain parallel entities. It is now upto the State to step in and bring all these various players together for sharing knowledge and developing a consistent Risk Assessment Model for the State.

6.3 Knowledge and Education

The awareness on disaster risk and management has improved tremendously thanks to the trainings and the experiential learning at the community level. The Samiyarpettai community based experiment has reaped rich rewards and should be scaled up and replicated. Cognisant of the intense efforts required, this is best done as partnerships with local NGOs/ CBOs/ PRIs. However, care should be taken to ensure similarity of messages, approaches and deliverables. The channels of effective communication have been largely informal channels, traditional and local elected Panchayats (PRIs) and the government machinery. Mass communication and awareness building approaches should build on these channels and formalise the mechanisms of communication. Having said that, the Study Team also feels quite strongly about the lack of space provided for indigenous knowledge that the different communities are far more comfortable with than the latest buzz-words in social or technical sciences. Knowledge and Education should be a serious attempt at developing content that recognises and respects traditional and indigenous knowledge and practices before rolling it out for mass dissemination. Deﬁnite focus on disaster preparedness education at the school and college level is essential. Awareness of natural and man-made hazards, practical adaptation and mitigation strategies and a culture of safety needs to be inculcated right from a very young age.

98 6.4 Risk Management and Vulnerability Reduction

Social security mechanisms have been set up with appreciably high levels of coverage. The communities are aware of most of them and also access quite a few of them. The complaints voiced mainly relate to the operational management and unless these are addressed, the net effect is just as good as having no systems in place. Platforms for the inputs and feedback from the community on the accessibility, accountability, appropriateness, transparency and equity factors are sadly lacking and need to be set in place. This overlaps with the analysis of ‘governance’ and seems to be the weakest link in the entire approach. Community participation needs to be redefined at all levels, especially those of the planners and policy makers. Even NGOs, despite their high sensitivity to community-centric approaches, have attempted ‘community participation’ only to the extent it fits in with their overall framework, timeframe and other external factors. As mentioned earlier, it is time to look at ‘public- private partnerships’ with new players and structures. More spaces for local entities like the PRIs, traditional Panchayats, SHGs and other CBOs need to be created and formally brought within the system to safeguard local interests, strengthen local practices and pave the way for a stronger community and sustainable interventions. External players, like the NGOs, should be open to contextual requirements and have the flexibility to design approaches based on local needs rather than use the aftermath of a disaster as a platform for promoting alien concepts and ideas. While it is readily accepted that we should move on with the rest of the world and this is one way of bringing the global to the local, extreme care should be taken to ensure that there are adequate safety nets in place to contain the fall-outs or backlash, if any. Interventions should be planned based on the timeframe and the resources available. This will ensure that the promoters are also available as back-stopping support till the end of the intervention and its impacts. The only solution to a holistic approach is to have a well conceptualised ‘village development plan’ in place, developed and owned by the local community. Any engagement with external players should be contained to aspects falling within this development plan. The only entity that can ensure this approach is the State Government and this calls for a massive exercise on the lines of ‘People’s Planning Campaign’ done in Kerala under the Panchayati Raj Act. The interventions for economic restoration were seen to be most successful wherever they have been aligned with the traditional livelihoods. All Fisheries based and Agriculture based interventions with focus on long term sustainability have been seen as still active and, more importantly, owned and operated by the community. Any social security mechanism that is piggy-backing on such interventions like compulsory savings and insurance, have also been a success. Almost all such interventions have been carried out by NGOs who have sector expertise and experience, well developed understanding of the local context and effective operating procedures. Another com-

99 mon factor noticed among such NGOs was their focus. All of them are ‘long-term’ NGOs with a sectoral focus. Conversely, very few alternate livelihoods interventions have survived the test of time unless supported by networks for forward and backward linkages. It is generally noticed that the NGOs who promote alternate livelihoods are usually the generalists and they have short duration ‘disaster response’ projects. Their inputs are limited to training/ skill building and at times provision of inputs. While this is acceptable in terms of livelihood recovery wherein the NGO provides the supports for a short duration, till the affected community is back on its collective feet to restart traditional livelihoods, these interventions cannot be seen as leading to livelihood security Almost all the above mentioned factors will be addressed if the aim is clearly articu- lated in terms of Livelihood Security rather than mere Livelihood Restoration. However, this involves time, effort, resources and in-house skills from the part of the external cat- alyst.

6.5 Disaster Preparedness and Response

The post- tsunami disaster responses at the state, national and international levels have been unprecedented and have definitely driven up the standards expected in future responses. While the State was content to deal with the regularly occurring disasters like floods and had got their set protocols, the tsunami response has placed larger demands on them in terms of people’s expectations driven by greater awareness and capacities to claim. What this has also brought out is the lack of people’s participation in such exercises and with the recently developed sensitivities; both the central and state governments have been trying to remedy this gap. The definition of a disaster is also instrumental in ascertaining the responses. Unfortunately the definition of a disaster at the community level does not match with the definition at the macro level of bu- reaucrats, technocrats and the governments. The Study Team feels that it is the people and the governance mechanisms at the least divisible unit, say the panchayat level, which should be given the freedom to categorise an event as a disaster that requires or does not require assistance. Decentralisation of such powers and sufficient resources to meet the requirements at the village level will ensure that pockets of vulnerabilities will not increase due to certain disasters/ calamities not visible on the radar of ‘officially claimed disaster’. Disaster preparedness, on the other hand, is more to do with understanding the different vulnerabilities and taking pre-emptive measures for reducing such identified vulnerabilities. While the physical vulnerabilities are being addressed specifically like shelter and safe zones, the social and the economic vulnerabilities still have a long way to go to being addressed. Unless acknowledged and prioritised, this will continue to remain unaddressed. There is an urgent need to understand and for- mulate indicators for vulnerability and resilience in the local context and to ensure the integration of these into developmental schemes in a planned manner. Continuous

100 tracking of enhanced resilience capacities should be made a non- negotiable indicator of good governance, just like the tracking of MDG.

6.6 Recommendations

While the study has several limitations on account of its limited coverage and small sample size, it is sufﬁciently rigorous for conclusions to be drawn from its ﬁndings, and recommendations made.

1. DRR needs new structures and mechanisms other than the hitherto-existing top- down approaches. Existing community based structures need to be identiﬁed, capacitated and strengthened to transform them from being just ﬁrst responders to long-term actors, able to articulate their overall development requirements and engage with the service providers to drive the implementation

2. Traditional knowledge, community wisdom and indigenous practices to be respected and built upon for DRR initiatives

3. Strong community mobilization to capacitate them in accessing all available resources. Transparency, inclusiveness and accountability to be built in through appropriate dissemination processes

4. Contractual partnerships between all players, including the elected village level bodies, would be effective in ensuring synergy, transparency and accountability

5. Livelihood interventions need to be aligned with traditional livelihoods and should provide for spreading of risk

6. Long term support, both for the people and implementing bodies, is required for consolidation and stabilization of interventions.

101 10. While responding to disaster, there is a need for dynamic approaches and partners with ﬂexibility and adaptability

12. Implementing and funding agencies should ensure that DRR is built into all development projects

13. There are few governance-based interventions today. So, while programmes/ tools/ schemes that support disaster preparedness exist, their appropriateness, adequacy and reach need to be revisited and reshaped periodically, in keeping with the differing requirements. This iterative process can only be fruitful if the community is allowed to and capacitated enough to articulate their needs and partner in the process of designing and implementation.

14. There is a need for development of a suitable ‘resilience index’ on the lines of MDGs/HDIs and continuous tracking of community resilience through it

102 Chapter 7 Case Studies

7.1 Community Disaster Resilience in Kambilimedu

7.1.1 The Annual Flood Cycle In Kambilimedu, a rural village in the Nagapattinam district of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, disasters are annual occurrences. For three months every year, the village is isolated from the rest of the world by flood waters. “During the floods, our village looks like an island,” comments a young village woman. On an average, during the course of the year, residents are isolated in the village for nearly a month, and are without work for over three months. In a community where the average daily income is Rs 50 per day, or a little over US$ 1, and formal education levels are low, what does community disaster resilience look like? How does the village anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from the impacts of the annual floods? Kambilimedu villagers do not tend to view the flooding as an annual disaster, but rather as a way of life. Villagers structure the cycle of their lives to work in concert with—as opposed to in conflict with—the cycle of the seasons. The traditional livelihood in the village is agriculture, and over generations, local farmers have developed a two-phase growing cycle that incorporates the inevitable flooding. The first growing cycle occurs between January and March, and during this period, both rice and groundnut are harvested. The second growing cycle begins in August, prior to the flood season, and ends in January, after the flood waters have drained. Seedlings are planted in August as soon as irrigation water is available, because the crops must grow for at least three months before the flood waters arrive. If flooding occurs early, and the crops have not grown for at least 90 days, they will not be hearty enough to withstand the water and the entire crop will be destroyed.

103 7.1.2 Food Habits Village eating habits have also adapted to the annual “lean season” during the floods. During times of relative plenty, when work is available and the village has contact with surrounding communities, villagers eat polished rice and vegetables from the government Public Distribution Supplies. During the annual floods, Kambilimedu residents crush the coarse grains grown in the village fields prior to the floods; combine them with the green leaves of a tree indigenous to the village area to make a watery but nourishing porridge. This traditional meal, called kanji, serves both to nourish the villagers and to extend the food supply to ensure that it will last for the duration of the flood period.

7.1.3 Predicting Floods Predicting exactly when flooding will occur is essential for the village to be able to prepare for the floods and reduce their impact. This enables residents to safeguard their irreplaceable documents, such as government ration cards and educational cer- tificates, and to move their most vulnerable community members to the safest location in the village—the village temple. Kambilimedu families have lived in the village for generations, and over time, reliable, indigenous flood prediction methods have been developed. Residents pay close attention to the wind direction and temperature; the quality and colour of the river water; and the duration and severity of rainfall. If the wind blows from the south, a flood will not occur, but if it is a cold wind from the north-west, a flood is certain to follow. If the river water is red coloured or if branches and other debris float down the river, this is another sure indication that flooding is imminent. If rain falls for four days continuously, a flood is likely to come. In a more proactive prediction method, villagers place a bamboo pole in the river to monitor the water level. If the water reaches a certain height, it is time to begin preparing for floods.

7.1.4 Volunteering When flooding occurs, the water rises rapidly, and inevitably, each year at least a few community members need to be rescued. Young men in the community have formed an informal Youth Group which performs rescue operations during emergency situations, along with other community duties such as conflict mediation. During the flood season, villagers who are outside the elevated grounds of the Kambilimedu village area sometimes climb coconut trees to escape the rapidly rising water, or they become stranded in a remote location. In these dangerous situations, the Youth Group will rescue the villagers using ropes and kattumarams. Many villagers work in nearby towns and cities in order to increase their income—in these cases, the Youth Group will “rescue” the villagers back into the village, so that they can spend the duration of the flood with their family. This practice of “rescuing” people into the village area is a testament to

104 the cohesiveness of the Kambilimedu community. The Tribal Leader has the ﬁnal say in all their activities and this single voice of control is also useful during such emergency situations.

7.1.5 Coping Mechanisms Flood season in Kambilimedu is a time of suffering for the villagers: food is scarce, income is low, and access to education and healthcare is non-existent. If the flood is particularly large, electricity and phone lines may be damaged. To overcome these ob- stacles, villagers have developed coping mechanisms that are only possible in a highly cohesive community. A lending system has been devised to ensure that all community members have access to sufficient grains to feed their family. If a household borrows a cup of grain from its neighbour, the neighbour trusts that the cup of grain will be repaid after the flood season is over. If food is delivered from external sources, the village leaders ensure that the food is distributed fairly between all community members, beginning with the families that are most in need.

7.1.6 Poverty and Need for External Aid Despite the high social cohesiveness, elegant indigenous flood prediction methods, and effective coping mechanisms, Kambilimedu is still dependent on external aid during times of emergency. Residents of Cuddalore, a nearby town, deliver food by boat. If the flood is particularly large or severe, the government drops packets of prepared food by helicopter. The primary factor that prevents Kambilimedu from being a truly disaster resilient community is poverty. Low income levels prevent Kambilimedu residents from saving money, developing a community disaster fund, and purchasing insurance. One village woman, an agricultural labourer, said “In September, there is already no work. Then the floods come. . . how can we save?” Low income levels also contribute to the village’s lack of safe housing, adequate sanitation facilities, and other infrastructure such as life jackets, cyclone shelters and elevated meeting places. A member of the (elected) village panchayat explained that the villagers “have knowledge of traditional methods of how to be safe from disasters, but they don’t have the materials (such as boats, life jackets and rope).” He has petitioned both the state and national governments for flood relief and for funds to supply the region with infrastructure for the needs that he sees as the most urgent: sanitation facilities and flood resistant housing. Annual flooding is both inconvenient and dangerous for the village of Kambilimedu, yet most villagers would not consider relocating from the homes of their forefathers. An agricultural labourer poignantly stated, “My father and grandfather cultivated this land. I do not want to start a new life; I want to stay in this village and cultivate this land.”

105 7.1.7 Some Observations Indigenous capacities do exist but atrophy in inverse proportion to the external support systems available. In areas which are not generally accessed by formal systems like Govt/ NGOs, especially where there is a cohesive community with strong traditional governance mechanisms, like tribal communities, they have evolved their own indigenous methods of EWS, tracking the oncoming ﬂoods, rescue and rehabilitation! On studying two slightly more developed villages, with similar vulnerabilities but different support structures, we found to our surprise that the village closer to a semi- urban area where they could move during calamities, was ill prepared as far as coping mechanisms were concerned and nonchalantly replied that they move to the neigh- boring place and live on Government led relief systems till the ﬂoods recede. On the other had, the other village which did not have such support systems had their escape routes planned out and the traditional governance systems taking more responsibilities to safeguard their constituency. This led us to feel that in our haste to set up DRR systems, we do not pay attention to the existing traditional systems and practices, thereby not only eroding their knowledge and capacities, but also leaving them more vulnerable without our continued hand-holding support. NGOs working in DRR should make it a point to understand, respect and build upon traditional systems and practices and existing governance structures, before attempting something that could be totally alien to their style of life.

7.2 Nomads no more

7.2.1 Their ‘Existence’ is Accepted Kaliyamma could not hide her excitement while showing the colourful marriage invitation cards to the visitors. “These are from people from other castes”. She kept showing the cards one by one and asked her husband to take out a bunch that was kept behind a photograph ﬁxed on the wall. Maniyan took out the second lot. He was also happy to join his wife in explaining about the invitation cards. It looked as though they kept these ’other caste’ cards as a souvenir of the newly achieved social acceptance. “It is all about the beauty of the house, which are the best ones in the colony, and the cleanliness of the surroundings”, Maniyan became a bit serious while presenting his analysis. His daughter Valli also joined the discussion. Maniyan is the head of the caste panchayat of the Hindu Adiyan community that has got houses as part of the tsunami rehabilitation project in Nagapattinam. The community popularly known as ’Boom Boom Mattukar’, because of the tradition of men going around with a decorated bull (Maadu) and beating a drum, asking for money. While the men did this, women went begging assisted by the children. They are traditionally nomads. Their community keeps moving around in small groups, living in temporarily erected shacks. They used to shift places quite often and never had anything permanent about life.

106 Maniyan recollects an event that happened several years earlier. They were staying in shacks erected in an open area in Nagapattinam town. When the ground was cleared to make way for a new bus station, they were shifted out. But the then chief minister asked the district administration to allow them to have their thatched huts along a nearby street. Then they got ration cards as well. This made them very happy. Not just because they got cheap rice and kerosene. It was much more than that. It was the ﬁrst time that the state accepted their existence! Still their colony continued to be tentative. Thirty families lived there.

7.2.2 Tsunami Bounty: Quality houses They were still on that street when the tsunami struck. Along with others, they also lost what ever little belongings they had. Their huts. The rags that they had collected. Old clothes that they got in exchange for plastic utensils. The district administration of Nagapattinam, when they discussed the rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes took care to see that they also got permanent shelters. The forty two families living in thirty shacks got forty two houses. Plus a forty-third house for an orphan boy, ’not from our caste but he grew up with us’, Maniyan clariﬁes, thus making it a colony of 43 houses. YMCA built houses for them in Sellur, a small village on the outskirts of Nagapattinam where the Government acquired large areas of land and allotted them to seven NGOs to build houses for people from various parts of Nagapattinam town. “We got the best houses”, Maniyan says happily. It is evident that YMCA has done an excellent job. The 43 houses stand out from those constructed by other NGOs. The village now has got a variety of communities that had been used to living in their own exclusive settlements. There are ﬁshers, Dalits, Christians, and Muslims.

7.2.3 Reducing Vulnerability So, how are they, a community traditionally into begging, seen by others? Maniyan believes that their status has improved and they are being treated at par. “There are still women from this colony who are into begging”, says Kaliyamma. When Maniyan and others tried to discourage them from begging, they fired back asking whether he could provide them any other livelihood avenue. “We are still trying”, says Maniyan. The children are attending school. An NGO has built a school for children from their colony and another in Nagapattinam. The NGO has also provided a small bus for taking the children to the school. There are initiatives from the government’s side as well. Maniyan is the member of ’Bonded Labour Rehabilitation and Awareness Committee’ chaired by the Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO). The committee was constituted about five months back and has had one meeting already. The purpose is to work for the rehabilitation of bonded labour from all communities. Maniyan hopes that rehabilitation of beggars could also be taken up soon. The social stigma attached to beggary is not easy to do away. Kaliyamma and Valli experienced it when they went for the SHG meeting where women from other commu-

107 nities were also present. During the meeting, tea was served to everyone. “We had to wait till every one else from all other communities got tea”, Kaliyamma fumes when she recollects that incident. “When they offered us tea at last, we refused to take it. We questioned them. We complained to the chief of the NGO”. The issue was raised at several fronts. “Now in SHG meetings, when tea is served, every one is treated equally”, says Kaliyamma, pride lighting up her face. How do they feel about the change? “We developed a concept of family for the ﬁrst time”, says Maniyan. Family, the house, the surroundings, you have a place to go once your work is over. Maniyan pointed to the small vegetable garden near the house. “People are seeing the importance of family. And of maintaining the house. When I erected a bamboo wall around my house, all the other families in the neighbourhood did the same. We have started growing vegetables. We know we have a right to use its produce”.

7.2.4 Some Observations When the focus was mainly on rebuilding battered houses of the ﬁshing communities, chance observation and timely intervention by a senior government ofﬁcial resulted in this group getting quality houses as part of the tsunami rehabilitation programme. This small intervention has resulted in the reduction of their physical vulnerability as they moved from an existence in shacks and temporary structures to multi-hazard- resistant houses. This has also resulted in their climbing up the social scale and thereby a reduction in their social vulnerability as well.

7.3 Coordination in Kandakkad

7.3.1 The Importance of Leadership

“We were familiar with NGOs but it was after the tsunami that we realised their might”, says Thananchayan, a farmer from Kandakkad, a farming village in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu. He was the elected councillor in the Panchayat Raj Institution (PRI) when the tsunami struck. “From the third day after the disaster onwards, NGOs started coming in”. Thananchayan as the elected PRI representative of the area was expected to take leadership in providing relief to the affected people. And he did that. Immediate relief stage was like anywhere else. The difference showed up when under Thananchayan’s leadership a group of villagers started coordinating with the NGOs. The purpose was to ensure that the really needy were beneﬁted while avoiding duplication of efforts and resources. The small group of villagers was amazingly effective in ensuring coordination across NGOs, with the PRI, and the district administration. More than 300 houses were built by various NGOs for the affected families. Allotment of houses was decided mainly by the traditional panchayat. “More than enough has been done already. What we need is

108 counselling to change people’s dependency on NGOs”, says Thananchayan referring to the present state of affairs.

7.3.2 The Problem of Salinity Initially the farmers of Kandakkad, who were involved in relief activities for the affected fishing communities did not think of any possible intervention in their own village. Their fields had been affected by the flood waters. The land had turned saline. The village, according to village elders, had been affected by salinity issues in the past as well, with people waiting for rains to leach out the saline top layer. The 255 families of farmers and farm labour in Kandakkad were getting used to the fact that they would have to lose a few crops before they could cultivate the fields next when the proposal for a land reclamation programme came up through their discussions with the NGOs. The group worked closely with the NGOs to prepare a plan. The local office of the state government’s department of agriculture provided guidance and technical advice.

7.3.3 Community Ownership Bears Results Seven bore wells were installed in the fields under community ownership. Once the pumps were installed, the state government run electricity board provided power con- nection. People from the department of agriculture extended regular advice. Bore wells pumped out good quality water. Continuous leaching of the fields started with the water from the bore wells. A large farm area of 200 acres was desalinated and reclaimed within a short period of time. To the surprise of the NGOs, it was the farmers’ group that proposed a contribution from the beneficiaries. “This was necessarily to ensure ownership. Otherwise maintenance would have suffered in future”, says Thananchayan. Against initial resistance shown by the villagers, the small group could convince them to contribute a share. While the NGO funded the bore wells, pumps and pipelines were funded by the contributions from the community. The maintenance expenses for the pumps and pipe lines are being met by the participating farmers. According to the villagers, one bore well caters to 20 acres for regular farming. Most of the farmers are small holders, so almost every acre of land benefits a family. One acre of land provides farm labour to several families. With the intensive farming that they do in Kandakkad, and the extended cultivation of various crops across the year made possible by regular supply of water from the bore wells, the entire village stands to benefit.

7.3.4 Replicating Success in Other Places

Seeing their success over 200 acres of land, other NGOs also came forward offering help. The villagers of Kandakkad then directed them to farming villages that were not

109 attended to so far. According to them, two bore wells installed in two neighbouring villages—Suba Uppalavadi and Nanamedu—have helped the villagers to reclaim 40 acres of land. They are now using the water from the bore wells to cultivate. The change is visible in the farms. The water from the bore wells has made it possible to have three crops a year. Farmers are growing lots of vegetables and fruits. All these were possible due to the initiative shown by a small group of farmers under the leadership of the elected councillor and their efforts at coordination.

7.3.5 Some Observations The general tendency has been to take what is offered, especially if it is free. It takes vision and leadership to overcome such tendencies and look for practical solutions to a problem. The provision of borewells helped in reducing vulnerability by improving land productivity. Incomes went up so much that the villagers were able to hire a vehicle to take the children to the nearby school. When, because of their success, more funds were offered, the organizations were pointed to others who needed it.

7.4 Building Community Cohesiveness in Sellur

7.4.1 Reconstruction and Relocation After the 2004 tsunami, thousands of houses that had been damaged were reconstructed. In some cases, the reconstruction was ‘in situ’; in others, where sufficient land as a single plot was available, whole communities were relocated. In yet other places, where sufficient land was not available to accommodate an entire community, they were split into two or more new habitations. In Nagapattinam district, nearly 3000 individuals of diverse castes, cultures and traditions were relocated to a new, government-created village where they live as close neighbours. In a district known for a rigid caste system and diverse, deep-rooted cultural traditions, can a community created by the government thrive? The search for relocation sites was complicated by the need to address two factors— (1) safety of the new settlement against future disasters and (2) protecting people’s access to their traditional livelihoods. A typical case is that of the fishing communities. While safety in most cases required the authorities to look for elevated land away from the coasts, the distance from the sea had serious implications on the people’s livelihoods. And in some cases as that of the affected communities in Nagapattinam town, there was just not enough space to relocate the entire community. This is how the government finally opted to create a new settlement in Sellur, on the outskirts of Nagapattinam town, and make it the abode of a few socially and culturally diverse communities from different areas. Sellur is a farming area. It is at some distance from the sea. Sellur is also in close proximity to Nagapattinam town. Soon, over 700 new homes were built by six NGOs, and nearly 3000 people shifted to the Sellur village area.

110 7.4.2 A New ‘Mixed’ Village Sellur residents now comprise a plethora of disparate cultural and ethnic groups, each with their own unique values, livelihoods and leadership systems. These include tribal communities, ﬁshing communities, backwards castes, dalits, and nomads. Sources of livelihood are equally diverse: Agricultural labourers, ﬁshing labourers, salesmen, butchers, auto rickshaw drivers, mechanics, textile workers, coolies, and small business people reside in close proximity to one another.

7.4.3 Variations in Amenities In addition to the variety of cultures and traditions, houses were built by different NGOs, with different ﬂoor plans and amenities. While all homes are equipped with toilet/lavatory facilities, not all were provided with functional septic tanks. One community is provided with ﬁltered water, while others use government water that is available twice a day from a communal tap. Some communities received NGO interventions and programs, such as livelihood training; and facilities, such as marriage halls and meeting places, while others did not. In such a newly created village, how can the differences in culture and facilities be overcome and unity achieved? Added to the complexity of the context is the question of the relationship between the communities in the new settlement with the traditional inhabitants of Sellur, many of whom live near the new settlement in their simple mud houses with thatched roofs. Despite the differences in cultures, castes and living facilities, most villagers state that they are happy in their new homes, and with living in the new location. These warm feelings are most certainly helped by the fact that most of them have never lived in concrete homes before, complete with electricity, fans and toilet/lavatory facilities. One resident of Sellur described his new home as “a dream”.

7.4.4 New Neighbours but Old friends Still Preferred Some community members say that living in close proximity to their new, often very different neighbours is ’just OK’—not good and not bad. Other community members have found that the new mix of people has opened their social circle. For the most part, Sellur residents report that they remain most friendly with the people from their own community. One backward caste woman explained that while she goes to many social events with her new neighbours, her closest friends remained those from her original habitation.

7.4.5 Conflicts and Conflict-Resolution There had been one event when the people of the new settlement were at loggerheads with the original inhabitants of Sellur village. The original Sellur inhabitants were in the habit of celebrating an annual festival at a specific location for many generations.

111 A newly relocated community felt that the celebration would be held too close to their homes and stopped the festivities. The conflict was resolved by the traditional community leaders, but they fear that the clash will return in future years. Despite these conflicts, all groups expressed hope that in the future they would become a more unified community. In a community composed of several different cultural groups, how can community decisions be made? Can a consensus ever be reached among this large, relatively non-cohesive community? Some of the relocated communities have their own traditional leaders, while others do not. Some villagers report that their allegiance is first to their religious leaders, and only secondly to their traditional community leaders. A Muslim family, one of only ten Muslim families in the entire village, explained that they listen most carefully to the words of the local Muslim leaders, called the Jama ath. Traditional community leaders and the PRI representative report that they have found it easy to cooperate with the leadership of Sellur Village. In most cases, community members first turn to their traditional leaders if they have a problem or issue. Traditional leaders usually handle their community’s personal or social problems independently. If the traditional leader needs help accessing government programs or funds, he will approach the PRI. Conversely, if the PRI needs to disseminate information to the village, he will approach the traditional leaders and request that they transmit the information. Occasionally, the PRI will ask for the help of the traditional leaders in other ways, such as collecting annual house taxes from their communities. The government and traditional leaders also maintain social contact with each other, and often attend community functions and festivals together. The amiable relationships are made possible by the well-defined and distinct roles that they each serve within Sellur Village.

7.4.6 Glitches Even though all the residents of the new settlement would now be part of the local Panachayat Raj Institution (PRI), the families still have their ration cards (government issued permits that make them eligible for regular supplies of rice and kerosene from the Public Distribution System, through what are called ‘ration shops’) in their original locations. So are their voting rights. Shifting these to the new place would have to go through the regular administrative procedure. However, the local PRI has already started work in the new settlement—erecting street lamps and making a drainage channel for flood prevention. Despite the success of the village with regard to social integration and leadership roles, Sellur has some problems that need to be solved before the community can become truly functional. Transportation is a serious problem. There is no road to the village; without a road, bus service is not possible. This means that the villagers, many of whom are below the government-defined poverty line, must rely on expensive auto rickshaws for transport to and from the town. One fishing labourer noted wryly, “The school gave my son a free bus pass, but there is no bus to take!” As fuel costs rise, auto rickshaw fares are rising as well. Villagers must travel out of Sellur for employment, medical facilities, government services, schools and markets, which adds up to high transportation costs in each household. In addition to transportation

112 difficulties, disaster preparedness also leaves much to be desired. Sellur village occu- pies a low-lying area, and may be susceptible to floods during the rainy season. Most village residents have already endured at least one disaster, so adequate preparation for future disasters is essential not only for increasing community disaster resilience and community cohesiveness, but also to assure peace of mind for the people. The PRI representative expressed optimism that difficulties within the community could be overcome. According to him, a road would soon be built, and bus service would be started. Also, Sellur residents would receive disaster risk management training from the government in the near future. With increased government services and the positive attitude of the Sellur residents and their leaders, Sellur village appears poised to become a successful, thriving community.

7.4.7 Some Observations One of the strong points of rural communities, especially caste based communities living in any area is their cohesiveness. The traditional panchayat and village leaders are often democratically elected and play an important role in many aspects of the daily routine. When such cohesive assemblages that have developed over a long period are broken up, shaken and mixed, this cohesiveness is deﬁnitely lost. There is a lag phase when new relationships are developed. Leadership can play an important role and attitude of the people matters. In such areas, interventions have to be focused and inclusive so that nobody is left out so that the community’s cohesiveness is built up, and their vulnerability is not increased.

113 114 Appendices

115 116 Appendix A Report of the Chennai Workshop

Strengthening Local Leadership for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction A report of the meeting held on 26th November 2008 at Chennai

A.1 Background

It is almost four years since the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. Yet the memory of the tsunami is still fresh in our minds because of the extensive devastation it caused and also because of the extent of outpouring of humanitarian effort. This response after the tsunami also changed the way aid is perceived and the emphasis now is increasingly on enhancing community capacity to respond to disasters. A study was commissioned by Oxfam America to look into community’s perceptions of disasters, aid and their own response capacity. The ﬁndings of this study, carried out by BEDROC, and conducted in Nagapattinam and Cuddalore were presented along with recommendations and guidelines for sustainable program interventions to enhance local coping capacities at a meeting on the 26th of November 2008 at Hotel Breeze, Chennai. The meeting was inaugurated by Dr. J. Radhakrishnan, IAS, Commissioner (Prohi- bition and Excise), GoTN., and former District Collector, Nagapattinam. The Keynote address was given by Mr G. Padmanabhan, Emergency Analyst, UNDP. The presentation on the study was made by Mr Satish Babu, Team Leader for the study with Ms Annie George, CEO of BEDROC. The welcome was given by Dr Ahana Lakshmi. Others who spoke include Mr Benjamin Larroquette, UN Recovery Manager, UNTRS , Chennai and Mr N Hari Krishna of Oxfam America. The meeting was attended by about forty participants from Chennai, Cuddalore and Nagapattinam.

117 A.2 Inaugural Session

The participants at the meeting were welcomed by Dr Ahana Lakshmi of TRINet.

A.2.1 The context of the study: Mr N. Hari Krishna The welcome was followed by Mr N. Hari Krishna of Oxfam America explaining the context of the study. He said that exactly one month from now would mark the completion of four years of work done after the tsunami and it was an appropriate time to look at what had been done in order to sustain efforts and what could have done better. He said that the study being discussed was set in that context. It had to be looked at in order to understand the whole issue of strengthening local capacity which is very deeply intertwined with the whole framework of humanitarian aid and response. If one looked at the way humanitarian agencies had been responding to disasters over the decades, it was very clear that they were jumping from one disaster to another. The question was whether aid agencies had reflected on what exactly affected communities wanted. He narrated a personal experience to elaborate: in the initial days after the 2004 tsunami when along with many colleagues he had visited some badly affected areas, a woman told him (they were aware of what was happening in the outside world in terms of humanitarian aid) that they overwhelmed that so many people in this world were trying to reach out to them. What she was saying was that it is not important to get something—it was important to know that so many people were trying to reach out to them. There she was clearly not expecting any material benefit. She felt more content that people were thinking of her when she was in a crisis. Mr Hari Krishna emphasized that people did not want charity. They wanted dignified assistance. That is a very important underlining principle for any aid work. When there is that thinking at the bottom of our heart while doing aid work, the aid work will be completely different. This is unfortunately not so. If this thinking influenced aid work, the focus would be more before a disaster than after a disaster. That is where the whole context of the study came from. Mr Hari Krishna said that there had been plenty of talk about Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) for many decades but a lot more understanding had to go into what is DRR and how it is to be achieved. For some people it was conducting a mock drill while for others, it was providing training in first aid, or for some contingency planning. DRR was like an elephant and different people understood it in different ways. It was necessary to find answers to DRR from the perspective of who actually want to reduce disaster risk. There is no standard format for DRR. Without trying to know/understand what the DRR needs are of those with whom we want to work, designing DRR framework was bound to fail, as was seen failing in many places. Understanding DRR is also an important objective of the study from the point of view of those who need DRR. This study looked at some of the perspectives of the communities with whom we have been working with in the last four years in terms of what they consider as disasters, risk and risk reduction. It was definitely going to break some pre conceived notions of NGOs

118 on DRR. It was also looking at what is capacity—is it knowledge, skill, resources or opportunities or technology. He pointed out that local capacity existed and that the only advantage aid workers had was the luxury to plan and some ﬁnancial resources that could be brought in to add to the existing resources. He said that helping local communities to plan for the future, using their own capacities is what needs to be done and the study that was to be presented revealed exactly that. He concluded by saying that Oxfam was proud to be associated with BEDROC which for the last four years (including three years as NCRC) had been addressing DRR in their work.

A.2.2 Need to train the community: Mr Benjamin Larroquette

Mr Benjamin Larroquette, UN Recovery Manager, UNTRS , Chennai began by saying that he commended, recognized and appreciated the work done by NCRC, now BEDROC. This had been established time and again by international and national evaluators, with a number of visitors recognizing the excellent work being done there. He said that DRR and Capacity building were nice jargon used but as Mr Hari Krishna had pointed out, behind the jargon and words were people, some directly affected by floods and earthquakes. While tsunamis are not frequent, there are hundreds and thousands right now suffering from flood with houses and fields under water; and they did not have the luxury to plan. Every small stone added to building preparedness of people was crucial. This study was thus another milestone contributing to building preparedness. With climate change happening, it was clear that the number of disasters was only increasing. There was no way to prevent them, rather it was necessary to be prepared to cope with such disasters. He said that the UN’s reaction time was long, between six months to a year. On the other hand, the government and NGOs were much better prepared to react quickly. Since it was the people in the disasters who react first, if they could be provided with the tools and resources to be prepared and face disasters, it would be a great achievement.

A.2.3 The inaugural address: Dr J. Radhakrishnan, IAS Dr J. Radhakrishnan gave the inaugural address and shared his experiences and thoughts on relief and reconstruction after the 2004 tsunami. He said that it was important to learn from Nagapattinam, especially in the setting up of the NGO coordination where they had allowed locally based NGOs take over the function of coordination. The government was relief centric and what was need was proactive approach. The two approaches in disaster response are the blue print approach and the ﬂexible approach and this applied to NGOs, disaster managers and to the government as well. He said that there was multiplicity of declarations on DRR such as the Yokohama declaration, Hyogo declaration, Asian Ministerial Conference declaration, SAARC framework etc. With reference to that, he wondered if enough advocacy had been done to take the community through the very simple parts of the declarations. The problem was the inward looking nature of government plans where lakhs of houses were built every

119 year without even taking DRR as an optional consideration. This needed advocacy at the highest level. It was necessary to use limited indicators for assessment. He said that it was important that the community’s needs are understood. Giving them right information was necessary but it was also important to give them time to understand their needs. Agencies should understand that there should not be extreme pressure. When there was extreme media pressure on performance for relief, all other factors such as resilience are thrown to the back seat. That was the reason why there were a few colonies built after the tsunami that were located in water logged areas, a few where there was no sanitation. While internationally, time taken for successful recovery was said to be about 3.9 years, here it was expected to be done in one year. The media forced administrators to give commitments that were difficult to meet. Dr Radhakrishnan said that first responders should be involved in planning at the village level and called for avoiding multiplicity of approaches. There was a need to assign specific tasks to individuals and this was a dynamic process. He gave an example of alternate livelihoods being pushed for the fad of it and explained how symbolically it could be shown to be a good thing but if done just to please the officials who thrust it on them, it was of no use. It was possible to understand what people needed only after lot of brainstorming. Community confidence about the NGO had to be built up and he gave the example of participatory reconstruction by SIFFS, which though slow, was preferred by the community. The reconstruction programme was successful in Nagapattinam mainly because they were willing to share experiences and communities were ready to come forward to discuss issues with administrators.

A.3 Presentation of the Study

Satish Babu and Annie George made the presentation on behalf of the study team.

A.3.1 Overview of the study Satish Babu began the presentation about the study saying that the special feature was that a statistically rigorous methodology had been followed to capture points of importance. The study had four objectives: To understand and document multi-stakeholder perspectives on external aid, local coping capacity and disaster risk reduction, to review and document selected approaches of using external aid to make lasting impact on enhancing community coping capacities, to provide comparative analysis of selected approaches of local capacity enhancement and their impact on community coping capacities and ﬁnally, based on the research learning, to provide a set of recommendations for sustainable program interventions to enhance local coping capacities. It was important to understand the deﬁnition of disaster from the point of view of the community as it was not necessarily what is seen as a disaster from outside. The community sees things affecting their livelihoods in reasonable scale becoming a disaster. For e.g. pest infestation, even if only local, can become a disaster for the local community. The

120 study was restricted to the districts of Cuddalore and Nagapattinam because of three reasons namely: the difference in the impact of the tsunami, the fact that the reconstruction was government driven in Cuddalore compared to the NGO driven approach in Nagapattinam and the time constraints.

A.3.2 The process

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was used for used for village profiling. A quantitative sample survey was carried out for 300 houses. Some points that came up during the sample survey were followed up in the focus group discussions. Key Informant interviews were done with select people including government officials and a literature survey to collect secondary sources of information was also done. Data collection was done in ten villages, 5 each in Nagai and Cuddalore. A two-stage sampling procedure was adopted with an initial purposive clustering of villages based on predominant livelihood systems on the one hand, and NGO activity on the other followed by a randomized selection of villages from each cluster. The main livelihoods were agriculture and fisheries while people from other livelihoods were also represented in the survey. Village maps for each of the ten villages were prepared including information on common infrastructure and other facilities as well as areas of geographic vulnerability. A key challenge was the fact that the teams were not as familiar with Cuddalore as with Nagapattinam. In one village, the team was not allowed to interview women. Other issues included raising expectations at the community level and the difficulty in estab- lishing cause-effect in the case of soft interventions.

A.3.3 What the study looked at There was no clear information about the anterior situation in the two districts. The study found significant difference between Nagapattinam and Cuddalore in aspects such as preparedness, resilience and governance. In Nagapattinam, people were much better able to deal with government; they demand their entitlements from the government and see government as accountable to them. Within each district, some differences exist between villages dominated by particular occupational groups with vulnerability in agricultural livelihoods higher in Nagapattinam and fishing, higher in Cuddalore. The study looked at both tangible and intangible entities left behind by external interventions. These include infrastructure, organizational forms such as SHGs, livelihood options and social security mechanisms. The soft entities left behind by the interventions include better awareness of disasters, ability to engage with the government, and ability to collectively bargain with external entities. It was found that livelihood interventions were most successful when aligned with the traditional livelihoods, a point mentioned by Dr Radhakrishnan in his inaugural speech. Development of community based institutions for livelihood support was seen as highly successful and included fishermen societies and farmer organisations. Some panchayats have replaced their leaders with those who can bargain better. It was interesting to note that

121 this information on building awareness is better available with the leadership and there are informational gaps with people themselves. The perceptions of the households on NGO interventions appeared in variance with reality. A certain amount of information gap at the household level was seen especially vis a vis what the NGOs did. An ordinary member of the community is not necessarily aware of the presence of NGOs and what they did but the leadership is aware of all this.

A.3.4 Vulnerabilities and Coping strategies With respect to vulnerability, there were still villages with natural vulnerability in both districts. It was interesting to note that there are traditional coping mechanisms especially in places with low outside interventions for events like floods which happen regularly. While in some places, new infrastructure has reduced vulnerability, relocation of communities has caused new vulnerabilities and conflicts in some places. The creation of synthetic villages / non organic villages has creates tensions because they are cut off from their original communities—their temple is back there, their PDS cards are back there and hence the cohesiveness is absent. In other areas, the formation of groups has resulted in tensions because they were thrust in areas where there has been no history of group ownership. Annie George said that both Cuddalore and Nagapattinam showed high levels of DP and women more than men spoke about this. Looking at the factors building confidence, experience and self confidence ranked highest with trainings coming in second. Existence of appropriate infrastructure also has built confidence. Cuddalore shows marginally higher awareness about DP and this was probably to do with the UNDP training programme in Samiyarpettai. This could have introduced a bias in the results, and hence if only other villages are looked, the DP maybe lower than Nagapattinam. With respect to training, people have said that NGOs did come and give us training and that built up resilience. The distribution of free TVs had probably increased the penetration of TV,they were left on all the time in the house except during power cuts, said Satish Babu. There was something always happening on TV and hence it was a very powerful instrument to reach out to communities although it was probably not being used effectively. Word of mouth was also found to be a very effective way to spread information. There appeared to be a last mile disconnect in some cases regarding information dissemination. For example, the Cuddalore district website had extensive information on the rehab packages as well as information about beneficiaries after the tsunami but it was not accessed by the people, perhaps because of lack of access to the relevant technology. An important point in the disaster support scenario was looking at the ideal respondent versus the first respondent. It is clear that it is the first response is all by the local community—insiders, within the village, family members, youth of the village are the first to respond to any disaster; followed by people from the neighbouring villages. In either case, it is shown that roughly 60% of the initial response is from the community. Hence it is clear that these are the people who should be provided with training and

122 resources for first response during a disaster. There were reportedly some cases of the first response being from the government / NGOs but these were mostly in the last three years after the tsunami when there were still NGOs working in the area who were able to respond when the floods came (especially in 2005). But as we look at the different phases of response the picture changes and the initial responders appear less in the relief and reconstruction period when government and NGOs appear as key players.

A.3.5 Disaster Responses To the question of ‘who would you like to respond in the case of a disaster’, there was a difference in the way how Cuddalore responded and how Nagapattinam responded. In Cuddalore, it was found that during the early warning and the emergency phase, the TP is expected to play the major role, whereas in the rescue and relief it is NGOs and in the last phase, it is only the NGOs they look at during the reconstruction period. In Nagapattinam, it is the government that people expect to be the ideal respondent in all phases. TP and EP play a large role. Hence it appears that interface between panchayat and government is much improved in Nagapattinam than Cuddalore and hence the difference in expectations. The TP was seen as the preferred solver of problems indi- cating the first point linkage for internal issues which was to approach the headman. In Nagapattinam, they look up to the government primarily because of accountability or entitlement. There seems to be a general perception that traditional panchayat should take more responsibility in relief and rescue than what was seen in the tsunami response. There could be a potential information gap here because as outsiders, we know that the TP did play an important role in various phases but the perception of the community is that it was not sufficient. The most useful infrastructure in the case of a disaster appeared to be places of worship, mainly because they were usually located at an elevated place. Other in- frastructures of use were cyclone shelters and terraced houses. While Nagapattinam veered more towards safe buildings per se, Cuddalore felt the need for other support like medical facilities, roads, transportation and bridges. NGOs have contributed to infrastructure in both districts but it was seen that both NGOs’ and government’s infrastructure facilities sometimes remain unused. With respect to resilience of the community, it appears that since Nagapattinam was impacted much more extensively than Cuddalore, the time taken to return to normalcy in Nagapattinam is higher. Despite traditional coping mechanisms, vulnerabilities still existed in certain seasons. In other words, despite multiple livelihoods during certain months, less or no work was available. Informal credit sources ranked higher than formal credit sources. Organized financial services were higher in Nagapattinam. PDS has nearly 100% coverage whereas Voter ID card had lower coverage, the cause for which was not clear. Insurance coverage was weak in general. When the information generated on insurance was aligned with livelihoods, it emerged that savings, insurance and other safety mechanisms seem much more successful when aligned with their society or livelihood based activity. There was a good membership of fishing people

123 in the cooperatives run by government and by organizations such as SIFFS and they have compulsory savings and insurance mechanisms. Thus both ﬁshing owners and labourers had highest savings. On the other hand, the agriculturists, especially those with small holdings, did not insure the crops as the policies available were not suitable. Hence the study showed the clear existence of a problem that needs to be addressed at the policy level especially for agriculturists.

A.3.6 A Clear Improvement One of the key points that emerged from the study was that after the tsunami, the communities were better equipped to deal with government and other external entities. This was an unplanned outcome of the tsunami response. Communities now expect the government and NGOs to play major role in the post disaster scenario. It was also found that a simple intervention by a single officer could make the difference as in the uplift of the boom-boom mattukaarars, a nomadic group. In many cases, there was a visible link from programme implementation to awareness (for eg. awareness on housing policy was high in villages where housing reconstruction happened). It was also found that probably because of impediments, translation of enabling policies into action at field level has been weak (eg. social security mechanisms, DRR policy). The study showed that tsunami interventions have helped in strengthening local capacities to deal with the rest of the world. For example, the relationships between 1 TP-PRI /EP and TP- Government seem to have been enhanced. However, there are still informational gaps within communities pointing to the need for mobilization. The interface between the TP-PRI/EP, TP-Government was seen enhanced in Nagapattinam. The study also looked at the drivers of disaster response after the 2004 tsunami. Overall, it is known that there were many approaches in India. For example in the A&N Islands, it was totally government controlled; in Tamil Nadu, in Cuddalore some participation was seen but government had the upper hand whereas in Nagapattinam, there was very high participation by the NGOs. More specifically, the presence of the NCRC resulted in a horizontal relationship in Nagapattinam compared with the vertical relationship in Cuddalore. With respect to the NGOs, there were various approaches ranging from agenda driven interventions with no deviations as opposed to processes where communities had the opportunity to flesh out the interventions. However, it was difficult to specify anything as purely an NGO driven approach since there were different levels of participation by the community. There were subtle differences in approaches by different NGOs and input by the community had made some interventions more sustainable. An example was an NGO whose forte was agriculture. Discussions with the community brought out the fact that the community did not require any insurance or such interventions but wanted a drainage channel to be cleaned. In this particular case, the NGO was

1PRI: Panchayati Raj Institutions

124 able to take the priorities of the community into consideration and there was sufficient flexibility in the NGO’s programme and funding to allow cleaning the drainage canal first before going on to start a seed bank and then, an SHG. In the other case the community clearly told the NGOs that they wanted borewells. Now, their entire lifestyle had changed for the better in the last two years. It was also true that there are places where communities may not be able to decide what is needed/good for them—they may not have the skills or experience to contribute to decision making. But even here a blueprint based approach would not be the right approach. An initial pilot phase for testing to ensure fine tuning is essential as otherwise, the community would not be in a position to understand and respond appropriately.

A.3.7 Successful interventions Looking at successful interventions, it was clear that long term interventions are more successful where the NGO had at least one strong area of specialization appropriate to the area affected and were focused in their approach, had a standard operating procedure, had an institutional memory of action and also had strong long term back- end support (ﬁnancial/technical). The presentation concluded with recommendations that came up from the study. These include the need for alignment of alternate livelihoods with traditional livelihoods, and extensive community participation in all activities. Village Development Plans (VDP) should be developed using a bottom-up approach taking care of both long term and short term requirements of the village. Any NGO coming into a village should identify and take on one or more requirements of the community rather than bring something totally new. There is a need for development and strengthening of inclusive community based institutions for effective village development, including preparation of VDP. For e.g., SHGs need to be provided more skills or taught to think differently to help in drawing comprehensive VDP. The most impressive success story in TN during the tsunami reconstruction was the partnership in housing. The political leadership had taken a remarkable kind of stand with regard to the partnership. The clear contractual relationship took out ambiguity from the picture and made clear the rights and responsibilities of the various partners. Considering the likelihood of there being many more opportunities to work with the government in future, this method needs to be explored further. Public-Private-People- Partnerships (PPPP) need to be encouraged where the PRIs at the village level are as accountable and responsible as the other players. Annie George added that when it such relationships are informal, everyone was happy as long as the NGO was putting in money and doing the work. If the elected representatives / PRIs have to be brought in formally, there was a distinct need for spaces and accountability for each of these players. In this PPPP, the PRI are seen as formal individual entities with clear cut contributions. This method had worked well

125 in the PWRM2 project that had been taken up by BEDROC where the panchayat (repre- senting the PRI) is a signatory to the contract and has deliverables just like the other participants. The lack of micro-insurance was clearly felt and it was recommended that 3 advocacy / dialoging be done at higher levels with institutions such as NABARD .

A.3.8 Recommendations The study recommended that with respect to governance (quite different from government), it was seen important to have interventions focusing strongly on governance, where little efforts have been put in. Communities also need to be capacitated on their rights and entitlements as well as mechanisms for accessing them. Engaging with policy makers and implementers was seen to some extent in Nagapattinam but definitely required more work. DRR requires an adaptive approach with different communities and occupational groups, recommended the study. It has to be sustained because what happens is that for the two years when there is preparation, there are no floods, for example, and then one relaxes and of course that year, you are in the thick of floods. Long-term disaster-resilient development requires new institutions, structures and approaches and the government has to take the lead in setting up inclusive mechanisms to ensure effective implementation of existing DRR policies. All this fitted in with what was perceived as a disaster. The study started off by saying that disaster was a loss of livelihood as far as the community wass concerned. It was the community that understood it, who faced it and who responded to it. So these new structures, not parallel structures/institutions but community based institutions such as the TP, SHGs etc., needed to be strengthened to be good first responders. They needed to be empowered to feed into the larger VDP. For everything, it was clear that the starting point was the community. Disaster resilient development was the goal. It was not possible to think of excluding the government and setting up a parallel system without the government. Leadership had to be provided by the government in a larger kind of partnership. A mechanism had to be developed with the government playing the central role along with other CSOs in the form of a partnership to allow continuous assessment of the state of resilience. Indicators that were appropriate to context must be used to continuously assess the state of readiness / resilience. The central role is with the community and requires to be strengthened. Therefore the study proposed a model where the government and civil society form a partnership.

A.4 Discussions

Dr CJ Paul, independent consultant was happy to note that the study also reﬂected the importance of moneylenders. He said that they had done a 13-district baseline

2Participatory Water Resource Management 3National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development

126 survey which also showed the same trend. He said that the tsunami relief had created a lot of good and people are now better prepared. But it was not clear how quickly people could recoup from recurrent disasters. This, he felt, needed different solutions and approaches. He pointed to the indicators in the last slide (MDG, HDI etc) as being the right indicators to use especially in the backward districts and said that the backwardness was highlighted by the tsunami. Hari Krishna wanted to know if it could be concluded from the data generated that awareness about insurance was there but coverage was not there. He said that the two were different things and coverage need not necessarily be an efficient indicator as insurance products are marketed on the perspectives of the insurance companies and not the buyers. He also wanted to know why the coverage was lower in the agriculture sector. Annie George, responding to Dr C.J. Paul, pointed out that there was a subtle difference between money lenders and pawn brokers with only those having gold going to pawn brokers. With respect to insurance, she said that there were insurance packages for agriculture but they were not always relevant. For example, insurance was available for paddy and not for green gram. The dialoguing with NABARD is to look at getting packages that are more relevant. Satish Babu pointed out that institutional mechanisms existed in fisheries, such as the fishermen cooperatives; but small farmers are not part of such collectives. Hari Krishna said there was also a scenario where fishers had insured boats which came as part of the package when buying the boat but the fishers did not know about it and did not renew the insurance letting it lapse. He said that DYFWA had recently brought out a booklet in the vernacular providing simplified information on all the insurance products promoted by the government for fishers as part of welfare schemes in Andhra Pradesh. This was a good example of strengthening local capacity in accessing relevant information rather than giving insurance as a subsidy and people not knowing where it was coming from. C.M. Muralidharan (FAO/UNTRS ) pointed out the issue of multiplicity of SHGs in the village and wondered if that did that not give rise to complications while repaying loans. He also wanted to know about the move by Dhan and others, apart from the traditional thrift and credit, on going the occupational credit way, rather than the consumption type of credit. He also wanted to know if any mechanisms had been built regarding the sustenance and the dynamism of task forces and preparedness of the DMT. Sheela Jones (CASA) said that post tsunami recovery phase activities had taken a reactive approach. But now a proactive approach for building resilient communities in terms of disaster resilient development was commendable. What was striking from the study was that the people’s perception of the local government was encouraging in Nagapattinam. She referred to CASA’s work in Cuddalore and opined that it was not the same traditional panchayat of earlier times as there had been several changes in the leadership. She wondered if the study had gone deeper into that—whether it was the old hierarchical relationships that were being referred to or the new people-centric leadership that was being referred to. In Nagapattinam, she wondered if it had got

127 something to do with the role of the district administration and their participation in recent panchayat elections and who had been elected and asked if such insights been taken in as part of the study. Saulina Arnold (TNVHA) wanted to know when the study was completed. She was told that it was done in August 2008. She said that study table on information dissemination indicated that information dissemination through NGOs was very less. But NGOs had disseminated a lot of information through SHGs etc. So what exactly was the question that was asked in the survey? Was it before the tsunami or after the tsunami? Regarding the SHGs, most of the funding agencies told the NGOs to ensure the full details of women so there was not duplication. They (TNVHA) had had a big exercise in Tarangambadi where they were working and she felt that the situation was similar in other areas. Satish Babu responded to the questions about duplication in SHGs that it was not just post tsunami but also dealt with other disasters and other places. It was well known that in Kerala, for example, that each woman may be a member of ﬁve SHGs. In the study, SHG as a coping mechanism was only looked at. With respect to DMT, the general awareness was low (<10%). Regarding the Cuddalore experience about the change in leadership, the study was considering TP as a platform, and the question had not asked about the recent change in the nature of the TP; hence it was not possible to comment about the preference about TP. However, it did not appear that it was a recent change. It was known that even in earlier times, the dependence was on the TP. About the awareness of policies, Annie George said that the question was “Are you aware of government policies and which are the policies you are aware of and how did you get to know about these policies”. Satish Babu went on to explain that the household survey was just one instrument of ﬁve or six instruments including key informant interviews. He said that outsiders were aware that NGOs did play a big role but at the household level the answer was different and this pointed to an information gap. At the household the information might have come in from the media or by word of mouth. But that word-of-mouth information could have come from an NGO and the respondent may not have been aware of this. Dr K.M. Parivelan said that the study was comprehensive covering a number of issues. He wanted to know about feedback on coastal resource management issues including access to resources; and about community linkages to last mile connectivity. In Cuddalore, he said there was a UNDP-government system which was well appreciated and replicated elsewhere while in Nagapattinam, there were village information centres that play a similar role. He wanted to know about the impact of EWS in the study. Dr Thamizoli said that the study correlates facts regarding who to approach in a disaster. Correlating with what was done after the tsunami—Cuddalore dominated by the government and Nagai dominated by NGO-partnership, one could infer that the partnership aspect was important. In the recommendation there could be an articulation about this partnership. Secondly, if DRR was to be mainstreamed with development, it had to be done at the higher level. In the coastal districts, TP plays a bigger role. Some

128 kind of thinking was required to mainstream the whole Village Level Plan to make it legitimate and on arrangements that need to be promoted. Hari Krishna raised the point about dealing with external elements and said that more articulation was needed in the report about what is meant by dealing with external elements—was it dealing with or coping with external elements. In the current context, the source of the disaster is usually external. So how was that to be dealt with—as in those who provide EW, dealing with those who have resources in control during disasters, dealing with NGOs who come in uninvited. He said that this was an important insight that they had come across in many studies conducted in different parts of the country on leadership where people see the characteristic of a leader as being the ability to deal with external elements. Satish Babu said that the study considered coastal resource management to be a longer term process, whereas the study looked only at livelihoods and hence it was out of the scope of the study. With respect to the last mile connectivity and EWS, he said that people had complained that it was located in a school, and the school was shut down on Sundays and non-working hours and that they were not able to access this. Annie George added that quite a few people seemed to know about EWS—when asked, they say they have safe houses, a cyclone shelter and an EWS—so the mental linkage was there wherever the facility existed and where the awareness has been created. But the effectiveness part of it had to be looked at. Regarding the cause —effect relationship between the NGO coordination platform and the fact that Nagapattinam was better developed, Satish Babu said that as already said in the limitations part of the study, it was difficult to pinpoint but it was definitely necessary to document this. One of the points was to explain the horizontal relationship in Nagapattinam, the platform to which anyone could come into and share and hence the whole NCRC approach required tagging at least as a case study and as a potential causative agent of how Nagapattinam is today. With regard to the need for harmonization between EP/PRI and TP in order to make VDP a reality, he agreed that it was an action point and the need to work towards its realization. In Nagapattinam there was a much better relationship between TP-EP and PRI today and hence it was a step ahead of Cuddalore. He agreed that it was not possible to create or maintain a VDP without the active cooperation of the TP and the PRI. Mr John said that there were statements regarding communities’ level of awareness, ability to cope etc and wanted to know if the study team had a benchmark or was it just a comparative study? He also wondered about the statement that Nagapattinam taking more time to resume normalcy especially since general points say that Nagapattinam is far better than Cuddalore in many indicators of resilience. He wanted to know if all the respondents were stakeholders of Nagapattinam and Cuddalore and whether their responses were based on experience only with tsunami. Annie George said that it was based on experience across disasters—about five disasters of which Cuddalore has experienced floods and tsunami as major ones whereas Nagapattinam had experienced floods, cyclones, tsunami, riots and fire. The responses were based on “what are the disasters you have personally gone through in the last 10

129 years and for each of these, who were the first responders, what did you do”? With respect to the question on benchmark, the related questions were—“what are the elements of DRR that you are aware of”. With respect to why there was still a percentage of people in Nagai that had not resumed normal life, it was probably because the impact was much stronger in Nagapattinam, i.e., the degree of damage was higher in Nagapattinam than in Cuddalore. There were some interesting pieces of information that came through in the question on changes. They had tried to analyze why it had become worse—some of them had been due to NGO interventions such as the promotion of group ownership of boats. For example, a person who had owned a kattumaram was not given a kattumaram to replace his lost craft but given a share in the group ownership in another boat. He could not manage it and was bought out for about Rs10,000 instead. With this money, he could not buy a kattumaram, so his livelihood was lost and his situation had become much worse than earlier. So an external intervention had actually worsened his life. Similarly some alternate livelihoods had not worked out the way they had been expected to. A question was asked if children were considered as respondents to the study. Satish Babu said that the study was confined to adults above 18. Suresh Mariaselvam wanted to know how much the local community had developed capacity on health hazards especially after a disaster. He also wanted to know if DMT awareness included social equity aspects so that rehab operations are meaningful and successful. Satish Babu responded that that there was one question on health services which indicated that in Cuddalore people are aware of the need of health services and in Nagaipattinam, the services were already there and so it is not a priority. The issue on how much the community itself was prepared regarding health services was not covered. With regard to DMT and social equity, this had come out in the statement that for relief they wanted the TP to coordinate materials distribution because the TPs are aware of the whole issue. With regard to the DMT themselves, there was no indication of their awareness of social issues. Marie Banu wanted to know if the dependency rate has increased after the tsunami and whether there been an increase in the security of coastal issues. Annie George answered that they had not done anything specifically with the fishing community but they had found that where similar vulnerable situations exist, the access to external support is inversely proportional to the coping mechanisms that have developed over time. G. Padmanabhan wanted to know if the study looked at community participation in the reconstruction process and whether it had led to any impact in terms of sustainability or any other factors. Satish Babu answered that it was a very central finding that the success of any intervention is related to the extent of community participation. G. Padmanabhan wanted to know whether there was there a difference in this between Nagai and Cuddalore. Annie George said that the study was slightly focused on NGO approaches and the way they had taken up community participation. The study had worked backwards—starting with asking the community as to who helped them.

130 It was interesting to see that in the relief phase they would say—an NGO but would not mention any names; but when the discussion about long term activities came up, the NGO names were clearly remembered. Only those NGOs that were named were interviewed to find out what were the approaches used. The consistent finding was it was heavy community involvement with high level of flexibility to adapt to what the community’s needs. All these NGOs had one core competencies and had good Standard Operating Procedures—many of the NGOs worked in both districts. G. Padmanabhan went on to say that he had wondered if the slow recovery was due to community participation because this normally would be a slower process and long term. Saulina Arnold of TNVHA said that when the Disaster Preparedness programmes were done, they were training the people even before the new houses were ready. She wanted to know if there anything question related to coping in the new houses? Annie George said that this came across in the question on “what is the infrastructure that would save you”, and safe houses came up as quite a good point. When they spoke about elevation and terraced houses, it was only the tsunami they were thinking about. Now that they are experiencing floods, if a study was done, it is possible that their requirements may change. The habitat as whole was not considered, added Satish Babu. They may have very good houses but in low lying areas prone to flooding. A question was asked about case studies and successful models. Annie George answered that three models came across as successful and all of them were based on the agriculture field. CCD, Dhan, ADRA (for DRM4) were well remembered for the work they had done. All of them had worked in relief and then came back during rehab because they were not happy with what was happening in the intervening period. Their core competencies were in area affected—agriculture—so they moved back. Hence, knowledge about the field was the second important thing, and the third was long term approach. Long term back end support was seen coming across as quite relevant.

A.4.1 The Changing Scenario of DM: Mr G. Padmanbhan Mr G. Padmanbhan spoke about the changing scenario of Disaster Management in the country and some of the factors that inﬂuenced the changes. Till about the early nineties, the approach was different. The focus was on strengthening response capacity. Preparedness was before ﬂood seasons with district collectors calling all the departmental people and asking if preparedness measures were in place. There was no involvement with the community, asking if any measures had been taken to overcome the problems that had surfaced the previous year. Thus, preparedness was only response oriented and limited within the government machinery, a mechanical thing that needed to be conducted by the state or central government. In the nineties the UN initiated the International Decade of Disaster Reduction. It was just a platform where various countries came together and discussed the importance of natural hazards and followed it with large scale awareness building including

4DRM: Disaster Risk Management

131 on aspects of disaster management. India participated very strongly and the first vulnerability atlas (which was more of a hazard atlas) was prepared for which a revised version is now available. DM was not really a priority area even for UNDP with the first project coming in after the Latur earthquake. Subsequently the Orissa cyclone and the Gujarat earthquake happened. Slowly more and more importance began to be given to this sector by the government as well as within the UNDP. In 2001, when they planned a workshop on disaster preparedness (which is when the term ‘community preparedness’ was introduced), there was great difficulty in persuading the government (the Ministry of Agriculture ministry was then the lead ministry) to include it in the agenda. That, to a certain extent laid the foundation for the DRM programmes. The focus shifted to train communities in Disaster Risk Management as opposed to Emergency Management and thus emerged the largest community based risk management programme. This needs to be built upon, else it will collapse. He felt concerned that it appeared to be collaps- ing in TN. It was working well in some other states where every year some disaster or other reminded them of the need to do something. The concern with TN was that the memories of tsunami were fading and there were no big disasters subsequently. The awareness that we must be prepared for a disaster is definitely improving but the nitty-gritty needed to be taken care of, he explained, citing an example of even though one may carry an identity card with a blood group, if the information given is wrong, it was of no use. The awareness of what a ‘disaster’ is had gone up. In many places, the DRM programme was taking place at the community level; more importantly, at the government level, there was awareness, both at the state and the central level. The governments are demanding that the states should be included in the DRM programme. There are also small initiatives on being prepared. Currently there are institutional structures being put into place with the NDMA5, SDMA etc. He felt that if there is ‘good’ development, there would be no need for ‘mainstreaming’ disaster risk into development. It was necessary to look at the existing institutional structures and continue with building their capacity. The second thing was to look at risk reduction—many times when risk reduction was talked about, it was done without knowing what the risk was and hence clarity had to be provided on what disaster risk entailed. It was necessary when any developmental activity was done, to look at the activity and reduce the risk, or at least ensure that the risk was not aggravated. The planning commission’s new approach was that any activity should include disaster management. There was need to develop guidelines so that the planning commission while approving developmental projects would include disaster management. He commended the study’s definition of what is a disaster which is from the point of the community. He mentioned a study on DRR and poverty linkages which was done in TN and Orissa that came out with the findings that the lifestyles in the disaster-prone areas had improved. A lot of external funds had gone into those places and they had better access to many things. This study also brought out the need for household level data and the nuances shown by the analysis of such data. Mr Padmanabhan felt that

5National Disaster Management Agency, State Disaster Management Agency

132 the current study had a lot of things that could feed into future programmes. On his part he said that he’d like to disseminate the study, to look at it in greater detail to see if any further work was to be done especially for information on finer elements, and how in their next programme that is being formulated, some of the recommendations need to be included. He felt that the recommendations were a little general and some of them would need action points to take it forward. Saulina Arnold of TNVHA said that they would like to use the study and give feedback if wanted. Mr Padmanabhan said that the WB and NDMA thought it was good to replicate the EWS in other states under the cyclone mitigation programme and have asked UNDP to help with the community capacity building programme. One of the things that they had insisted on was a community team that is well trained. In response to Hari Krishna’s question regarding the next phase of the programme, Mr Padmanabhan said it would probably be in 2009 February and that list or the number of states had not been finalized. John wanted to know about the statement made regarding a school being closed— Annie George said that she would look back in the data sheets to locate the school. Suresh wanted to know about studies in other districts to which Dr Paul answered that it had been done for all coastal districts. Hari Krishna wanted the report to define ‘capacity’ on the basis of the data got in the report. Annie George said that once the study was completely written up and presented to the two organizations—Oxfam and DFYWA, it would be made available to a larger audience. With regard to whether there were plans of doing the study in other districts, she said that the macro things appeared similar in both districts though the intensity may vary. So if this study could be strategized, it would be better than doing many more similar studies to generate information.

A.5 Vote of Thanks

Annie George, in her vote of thanks, pointed out that what was special about today’s discussion was the non-threatening way in which it was done. It was not a ﬁnger pointing exercise, as everyone willing to acknowledge that mistakes had been made and need to be corrected. The willingness to share, reﬂect, introspect was what made the study successful.

133 Appendix B List of Resource Persons for Key Informant Interview

1. C.V.Sankar, IAS,GoTN

2. Prof. N. Vinod Chandra Menon, NDMA

3. Dr. Radhakrishnan, IAS

4. Anil Das, ADB

5. Benjamin Laroquette, UNTRS

6. CM Muralidharan, FAO

7. Alok Patnaik, UNDP

8. John David, UNTRS

9. V.Vivekanandan, SIFFS

134 Appendix C

List of NGOs Interviewed

1. ADRA

2. PMSSS

3. SNEHA

4. CASA

5. CCD

6. NCRC/BEDROC 7. Dhan Foundation

135 Appendix D Current Status of Safety Infrastructure

Table D.1: Samiyarpettai (Cuddalore)

No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 Cyclone Centre GOVT In use 2 High School GOVT In use 3 High School Compound wall Rajasthan Govt Good Condition 4 Primary School GOVT In use 5 Children Resource Centre Save the Children Locked 6 Library GOVT In use 7 Health Sub Centre GOVT In use 8 Temple Community In use 9 PDS Centre GOVT In Use 10 Community Hall GOVT Rarely Used 11 Community Hall NGO Not yet opened 12 OHT GOVT In use 13 Net mending Centre - 2 GOVT Work in Progress 14 SHG Building ROAD In use 15 Shopping Complex GOVT Occupied by MSSRF 16 Disaster Information Centre ROAD Not in Use. Locked. 17 Public toilet Life Help Not in Use. Locked 18 Elders Meeting Hall GOVT Not yet opened 19 Public Addressing System Help Age India Locked. 20 Public Addressing System CASA In Use 21 Water Puriﬁer MSSRF In Use. Loudspeakers have been placed on OH Tank

136 Table D.2: MGR Nagar (Cuddalore)

No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 School building Round table India In use 2 Balwadi GOVT(ADB) Not handed over. 3 Community hall - 1 GOVT , Occupied by MSSRF - for Information centre purpose. 4 Community hall - 1 Discipline NGO under construction 5 Road GOVT Good 6 Temple - 2 Community In use

Table D.3: Sothikuppam (Cuddalore)

No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 Primary School Round Table Functioning 2 Middle School GOVT Functioning 3 Balwadi Bless Functioning 4 Bridge GOVT Work in Progress 5 Temple Community In use 6 PDS Centre-1 GOVT Functioning 7 Community Hall GOVT Not in Use 8 Community Hall UELCI In use 9 OHT GOVT In use 11 Net mending Building Red Cross In use 12 Information Centre PMSSS In use 13 Early warning system NIOT Work in Progress 14 Public toilet PMSSS Not in Use 15 Elderly Meeting Hall Help Age India Locked 16 Public Addressing System Dhan Locked 17 PA System & VIC PMSSS In use

137 Table D.4: Kandakadu (Cuddalore) No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 Elementary School Compound ICCW - TN In Use 2 Balwadi Govt In Use 3 WSHG Building Government In Use 4 Computer Centre World Vision Functioning at SHG Building 5 TV Room Government In Use 6 OHT - 2 Government In Use 7 Meeting Hall- Elder Group Help Age India Not yet handed over 8 Dry yard Agri Dept In use for agri products 9 Temple Community In use

Table D.5: Kambilimedu (Cuddalore) No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 Eco San Toilets -2 ADRA Not in Use 2 Community Hall ADRA Work not yet completed 3 Road Facilities GOVT Good 4 Overhead Tank GOVT In use 5 School Buildings GOVT In use 6 School Drinking Water Tank ADRA In use

138 Table D.6: Arcottuthurai (Nagapattinam)) No. Infrastructure Constructed By Current Status 1 Fishnet Mending Centre Acts Ministerial Working 2 Fish Auction Cente Acts Ministerial Working 3 Ladies Toilet Acts Ministerial Not in use 4 Fish Society Building SIFFS Working 5 Dry Fish Storage World Vision Locked 6 Fish Storage & Processing Unit Create Plan Locked 7 Solar Power Dry Fish Yard Karnataka Red Cross Not in use 8 Fishnet Mending Centre Govt Working 9 Fishnet Storage Govt Locked 10 Toilet Govt Not in use 11 Boat Watching House Govt Working 12 Marketing Shed Siffs Working 13 Multipurpose Building Redeen Kind Working 14 Child Care Centre Create Plan Working 15 Community Hall RDT Working 16 Multi service Building PCI Working 17 Elementary School Building Govt Working 18 Cyclone Centre Renovation Navy - Govt Working 19 Early Warning System Govt Working 20 Community Hall Govt In progress 21 Library Govt In progress 22 PDS Govt In progress 23 Balwadi TERT Locked 24 Lab in School Govt (RGRP) Working 25 School and Library Intel Community Project Working

Table D.7: Sellur (Nagapattinam) No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 Community hall TMSSS Locked 3 Coir making industry YMCA Functioning well 4 Temple Villagers Good 5 OHT Government Good 6 Road Government Good - Cement road 7 Street light Government Good 8 Drinking water Government Better 9 Common ponds

139 Table D.8: Papakoil (Nagapattinam) No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 Community hall SAPI Locked 2 Balwadi Mala india Working 3 Home for Orphans Rotary club Working 4 Darga Jamath Good 5 Primary School Government Good 6 OHT Government Good 7 Road Government Better 8 Street light Government Better 9 Drinking water Government Better

Table D.9: PR Puram (Nagapattinam) No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 Community hall Government Working 2 Cyclone building Government Good 3 Balwadi NISSAN Working 4 PDS shop Government Good 5 High school Government Good 6 SHG training centre Yusuf Meharally Centre Working well 7 ITI PDA Working 8 Bio mass centre Government Locked 9 Common pond Government Better 10 Temple pond Government Better 11 Temple Villagers Good 12 Hand pump Government Better 13 Tap Government Better 14 OHT Government Better 15 Well Government Better 16 Modern brick making centre Government - DRDA Locked 17 Street light Government Better 18 Drinking water Government Better

140 Table D.10: Pazhayar (Nagapattinam) No. Infrastructure Constructed by Current Status 1 Community hall Rotary club Working 2 Balwadi SASTRA Working 3 Information centre MSSRF,DHAN Working 4 Fisheries Department Government Working 5 Middle school CII Working 6 PDS shop Government Working 7 Library Government Working 8 Fish auction centre Metro beisum Working 9 Fishnet mending centre Rotary club Working 10 Desalination plant Care plan Locked 11 Fish storage unit Care plan Locked 12 Ice plant Rotary club Working well 13 Citizen Information Centre CII ACC Locked 14 Early warning system Government Working 15 Temple Villagers Good 16 OHT Government Good 17 Road Government Better 18 Street light Government Better 19 Drinking water Government Better 20 Toilet Government In Tsunami nagar only 21 Telescope tower Government Not in use

141