The Ground Beneath The Waves
The HRLN Report
It has been two years since the tsunami washed over the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of its residents. Although the government made a lot of promises, and spent a lot of taxpayer’s money, very little actual relief and rehabilitation work has been done. Most islanders are still waiting for compensation. The shabby temporary housing built in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami has not been replaced by permanent housing. Instead of ensuring that people are able to return to farming or fishing or trade, the islands’ economy is being parcelled out to vested interests from the mainland. The environmental degradation is reaching crisis proportions. In this on-the-spot and analytical report, based on prolonged spells of painstaking research, we present a summary of the relief and rehabilitation situation in the Andaman & Nicobar (A&N) Islands: the hard realism of truth behind the rhetoric of illusions and lies.
Two years after the homeless survivors of the tsunami look for straws of hope in the once pristine, now devastated islands of Andaman & Nicobar. All they discover is that they have been brutally betrayed by a corrupt nexus even while the government plays footsie. As people struggle to survive in hot, subhuman tin sheds, with no food security, electricity, education, basic health or livelihood, the terrible question comes back: where have all the massive aid and big promises disappeared? What sense of importance did it give the government of India to reject offhand the offer by the European states to provide grants, materials and equipments for the victims of tsunami in India, only to thereafter approach the World Bank for a loan albeit with low interest? What drove the government to provide relief by sea and air to the tsunami victims in Sri Lanka, when the victims in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are without housing and clean drinking water till today? For how long will the central government hide the suffering of the tsunami survivors in India from the rest of the world?
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we deal with relief to the victims of disasters and their subsequent rehabilitation. In the aftermath of the Latur earthquake in Maharashtra, money poured in from all over the world. The state government forced its employees to make a contribution. Notwithstanding all this, the situation on the ground remained pathetic. A disquieting feature of all disasters is the reluctance of the administration to publicly acknowledge the specific details of the funds coming in, and the identity of donors. Leading newspapers invariably list their donors when they raise money for public causes, as after an earthquake. But the government is loath to do this. The reasons for this are to be found in the greed entrenched within the system, and the cruel attitude towards the poor.
When the tsunami broke in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on December 26, 2004, very few people from the mainland reached these remote areas. There was total confusion. Some policemen and government officials abandoned their posts and the people. Others made heroic efforts. A member of the Human Rights Law Network managed to land up on Kamota in the Nancowry islands. The people had been deserted by the administration. Were it not for the air force, many more lives would have been lost?
The government of India repeatedly promised the people that they would be given permanent housing, but as we publish this report, apart from the model houses constructed for display, not a single house has been built for the 10,000 tsunami survivors! Instead of allowing the people to construct traditional houses made of wood, a prefabricated model of tubular steel is being imported from the mainland, obviously for the benefit of contractors and bureaucrats. The people have no understanding of how this structure is to be maintained or repaired. It is frightening to think of what these beautiful islands will look like ten years from now with 10,000 prefabricated steel structures rusting and in disrepair.
Then the people asked for boats and nets so that they could resume fishing and get back to living as normal a life as possible. Their jetties had to be repaired so that the boats could dock. Cold storages had to be made so that fishing could become a commercially viable proposition. Two years after the tsunami, in many of the islands, the boats have yet to come, nets are yet to be distributed, jetties remain destroyed, and cold storages do not exist. There is fish in the sea but not for the tribals of the islands.
The other source of traditional livelihood are coconut plantations, but these have been destroyed. The seedlings planted will take seven years to yield fruits. There is no work or meaningful employment. This is why the administration provides free rations to the tsunami-affected. When we met with the people we found that kerosene had been discontinued. The supply of free rations was irregular in many areas. And then came the announcement that free rations were to be discontinued. The intervention of the high court saw better sense prevail. The stand of the administration now is that free rations will continue for some time. Unless alternative livelihood options emerge, free rations cannot and should not be discontinued.
For a country, which considers itself a super power, safe drinking water on the islands is not available in most places. People are still drinking from stagnant water pools and streams. They suffer all kinds of diseases as a result. Perhaps it is the remoteness of the islands that allows for such a colonial administration to flourish. The newspapers from Port Blair give details almost on a daily basis of cases of corruption. Nothing happens. Justices come on a rotation basis from Kolkata to man the high court functioning at Port Blair. They get to hear the administration’s point of view, but there are few NGOs or civil society groups who interact with the judges to give them the other side of the story. As a result, judicial intervention through PILs is hardly known. The operating at Port Blair are ineffective principally because they require individuals to travel long distances at considerable cost and come to Port Blair — instead of holding the in inaccessible and far-flung islands.
In the middle of all this confusion, it appears that the minister for tourism is pushing for these pristine islands to be opened up for “high value” tourism. Deals are being struck with a string of five star hotels. Bureaucrats support this initiative with talk of the tribals being backward. They, like our colonial masters, see their role as bringing primitive people into the “mainstream”. Globalisation has now reached the southern most tip of India. The result of the above is that a terrible scenario with awful consequences for tribals of the islands has emerged. Forty islands that have a fragile ecosystem, particularly after the tsunami, are to be opened up for tourism. It is craftily packaged as eco-tourism. But for the vulnerable islands — this means doom.
Tsunami affected families face discrimination in the distribution of ex-gratia relief. Such discrimination is visible in the enumeration process where a large number of families have been left out of the compensation schemes, and in cases where families have been provided wholly inadequate amounts of compensation.
In the Nicobars, there is an apparent discrepancy in the figures of the dead and missing. Compensation for family members who are missing or dead has not been completed to date. Instead of solving the problem, the administration takes refuge in the various guidelines from the Centre, compliance with which causes innumerable delays.
This Report was prepared by Human Rights Law Network (HRLN)