Measuring Relief

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The Asian tsunami that affected a wide area encompassing Myanmar to Indonesia in the east, India and Sri Lanka in the west and the Maldives in the Arabian Sea, led to an estimated loss of 2,30,000 lives. There are also the many thousands now listed as simply missing. Rebuilding the devastated areas as well as rehabilitating the survivors who number in several hundred thousands still remain the driving concerns of governments and aid organisations. Given the magnitude of the disaster, the task was always an onerous one and progress needs to be measured not merely on what has been achieved but also what remains to be done. And while in very many instances, relief efforts have gone awry, the advisory issued by the Red Cross that a minimum time frame of five years is needed before rehabilitation efforts can claim satisfactory results, is a realistic one. There is also need to assess the short and the longer-term impact of these initiatives.

The tsunami’s aftermath saw a massive outpouring of relief. Two years on though, it is evident that donations given by individuals and governments have been inadequately spent while two-thirds of those who lost their houses still wait for them to be rebuilt. On December 19, the rapporteur for the UN Department for Aid and Development tracking $ 6.7 billion of aid money pledged, reported that half of this, i e, around $ 3.3 billion, has been unspent. The Red Cross promised to build 50,000 permanent houses in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives but two years on, only 8,000 have been completed.

Work has also been impeded by renewed civil war in the north of Sri Lanka, but many governments, such as France, Spain, China and the US, which had pledged aid money have been tardy in providing the funds. In India, where the coastline inhabitants and fishing communities of Tamil Nadu and Kerala suffered the most devastation, relief efforts show a similar twinned nature. Such efforts have been free from political bias, though there have been reports of discrimination on considerations of caste and class. However, a recent audit by the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) has pointed to certain irregularities and laxity on the part of relevant ministries. Inadequacy of effort has been compounded by a failure to understand ground level realities. In Tamil Nadu, 2,742 temporary shelters erected at a cost of Rs 2.58 crore could not be used as these were in low-lying areas, prone to waterlogging. The report pulls up the ministry of environment and forests for not enforcing coastal regulation zones rules that prohibit such construction. Relief efforts in Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been impeded by an ignorance of local conditions as well as corruption. Tin roofed shelters with no floors are unsuitable in the tropical heat and rainfall conditions, which these islands experience for most of the year. The mud seawalls being constructed have been criticised by local inhabitants for impeding water drainage.

Housing, though, constitutes only the more immediate of rehabilitation efforts. Moves to rebuild the livelihoods of the fishing communities in Nagapattinam and Cuddalore have succeeded to an extent, but makeshift schools and primary health facilities have come up in only a handful of areas. While the World Health Organisation has commended health workers in relief camps across south-east Asia who detected and successfully controlled 106 diseases that could have flared into outbreaks, psychological distress appeared very low in the priority of health professionals, especially those in India and Sri Lanka.

The other ramifications of the tsunami are only now being comprehended. A flurry of scientific discussions that followed in the tsunami’s aftermath focused on the urgency of installing a warning system, on lines similar to the Pacific warning system, that was expected to be operational by September 2007. With such sophisticated knowledge systems in place, the task of predicting, forecasting and issuing timely warnings has been facilitated, but it may yet take a generation or more before rehabilitation efforts can be deemed “satisfactorily complete”. Such efforts will continue to need careful monitoring and sustained coordination between nations and organisations.

Economic and Political Weekly December 30, 2006