When the people assert… Starving islanders kidnap officials A desperate group of starving survivors in one of the tsunami-hit Nicobar islands kidnapped the island’s top civilian official and its police chief in protest at the inadequate relief operation. The survivors from Great Nicobar Island spent four days without food before trekking through the jungle to the wrecked headquarters settlement at Campbell Bay. When they arrived they discovered the island’s assistant commissioner and deputy assistant of police eating a plate of biryani. “I’m very angry,” Suresh, 22, a welder from Great Nicobar Island, added. “We saw these people eating biryani. But we had nothing but rice soaked in saltwater.” The assistant commissioner was released after promising to provide more food. Kerala Speaker mobbed by irate fishermen Expressing resentment over the inadequate relief measures, a group of fishermen waylaid Speaker Therambil Ramakrishnan’s vehicle at the Ayikkara coast. The Speaker’s car was mobbed as he was about to return after visiting the coastal areas in the district along with MLAs K Sudhakaran, A D Musthafa and K A Chandran. The Speaker was allowed to go after he gave an assurance to the fishing workers that he would take up their grievances with the Chief Minister. |
There are some attitudes it seems even a tsunami cannot shake — the behavior of ruling classes at a time of grave crisis being a prime example.
Just three weeks after the world’s worst natural disaster in recent history hit, south and Southeast Asian governments in each of the affected countries were already displaying their true anti-people colors. Even as an outpouring of global solidarity among ordinary people brings in unprecedented amounts of relief and financial assistance, ruling elites everywhere are up to their usual dirty tricks.
Indonesian security forces in Aceh, where an estimated 105,000 people died, continue to clamp down on civil liberties on the pretext of hunting for Acehnese rebels fighting for national independence. In Sri Lanka the chauvinist Chandrika Bandaranaike regime is using aid and relief as a means of settling scores with the Tamil rebels in the country’s tsunami-struck north-east. In Thailand the Thaksin Shinawatra government turns a blind eye to the deaths of thousands of poor Thais and migrant Burmese fishing industry workers while going all out to woo Western tourists back to its beachside resorts.
Internationally the US regime of George Bush Jr. has tried to use this tragedy to send in its troops, in the guise of humanitarian work, into areas it would otherwise not have been allowed to enter. Bush even attempted to bypass the United Nations completely and unilaterally ‘head’ a coalition of the US, Japan, Australia and India to respond to the disaster, a move that, mercifully, was rebuffed completely by much of the world.
The Indian government too has dispatched its navy to Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia to help with relief work there, a move that was hailed by the Indian media as a gesture of regional solidarity. But given the insincerity of the government in helping its own tsunami-hit people, the entire exercise seems more like a public relations stunt by an aspiring junior partner in the business of imperialism.
The horrific damage caused by the tsunami in fact exposed once again the skewed priorities of our national elites, who spend billions on nuclear bombs and sending rockets into space but none at all on putting up simple disaster management systems that can save thousands of lives.
While no one could have predicted the great earthquake off the Indonesia coast on the morning of December 26 the failure to warn people about the tsunami it provoked is a different story altogether. The Andaman and Nicobar islands, the first part of Indian territory to be hit by the tsunami, were devastated by 7 AM in the morning, half an hour after the earthquake.
The surging seawaters decimated an entire Indian Air Force base in Nicobar and yet nobody in New Delhi knew about the event (or if they did, kept criminally quiet?). By around 8 AM the tsunami hit the Sri Lankan coast killing nearly 40,000 people in a matter of just ten minutes — and again the Indian government did not have a clue about the disaster in a close neighboring country to warn coastal populations in India about impending danger?
Even on the Indian mainland the first big waves hit Cuddalore and Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu at 8.30 AM and other parts of the coast only later. But in this age of mobile phones, 24-hour television, satellite technology and other means of public communication there was no one following up and warning people in different parts of the south Indian coast to be careful.
Where tragedy is an opportunity... As soon as the tsunami disaster hit the multinational vultures were eyeing reinvestment opportunities in tourist resorts and beachside hotels in the region. The FAO was also talking of raising funds offering credit for this business of reconstruction. The mega insurance companies were breathing a sigh of relief that not much of the lost property had been insured. At the same time, making use of the tsunami fear, they were intensifying their propaganda. The aquaculture big businesses were also eying the land vacated by the relocation of fisherfolks. The environmental degradation because of the destruction of the coral reef and the mangroves contributed to the intensification of the loss due to tsunami. The green capitalists are also looking for a new opportunity for themselves in the tsunami aftermath. Most of the tsunami-hit nations also happen to be heavily indebted nations. Indonesia’s external debt was $82.1 billion in March last year. The Transnational Institute and many other organizations have demanded cancellation or rescheduling of the imperialist debt. The imperialist agencies have sharply reacted that commercial debts would not be rescheduled. IMF came forward within a few days to offer fresh credit to the affected countries, of course, with its usual structural adjustment conditionalities. Sri Lanka entered into a loan-for-reforms deal with the Fund in April 2003. Indonesia and Thailand signed up for IMF loans after the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis. These deals have lapsed. The IMF wants to renew its grip over these countries. The World Bank also came up with offers of loans to the affected countries. |
The result of course was that literally thousands upon thousands of people along the coast were caught completely unawares when the tsunami hit them leaving little time to escape, save their lives or rescue their property. Even a few repeated warnings over a few television channels could have saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives. While in the case the Andaman and Nicobar islands it can be said they were too close to the epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami, most of the over 9000 people who died in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Kerala were as much victims of government incompetence bordering on criminality as that of a calamitous natural disaster.
Tamil Nadu, with its 1,024-kilometer long coastline, is the Indian province worst affected by the tsunami with 7814 dead and 690,895 people affected in over 362 villages — a majority of whom belong to the fishing community. The Indian government estimates damages of over Rs 8000 crores due to the tsunami in four states of southern India, of which Tamil Nadu alone accounts for more than half.
After the disaster happened, the state machinery in Tamil Nadu was totally paralysed for several days. While in Kanyakumari the relief effort was initiated by various civil society and community groups; in Nagapattinam, where the death toll was the highest, for the first three days the local people were left to fend completely for themselves.
Finally when the state machinery tried to carry out relief activities the lack of coordination and skills to deal with disasters was apparent, resulting in wastage, poor targeting and in some cases even diversion of relief materials to the wrong people.
Local media showed roadsides littered with tons of donated used clothes, cooked food turned stale piling up in garbage bins and private do-gooders rushing about from village to village in the affected areas, often duplicating work already completed.
Amidst all this confusion there were also reports of some people completely unaffected by the disaster trying to corner supplies, while some tsunami victims belonging to the Dalit community got nothing at all due to caste discrimination.
As in the case of other large natural disasters, like the Gujarat earthquake four years ago, the post-tsunami rehabilitation exercise also promises to be a big money spinner for contractors, bureaucrats and politicians. With both the state and central governments announcing large financial packages for providing compensation, reconstruction of houses, replacement of fishing equipment and so on there is already a race among politicians and bureaucrats, to divert funds to their private or party bank accounts.
A case in point are the temporary shelters that the Tamil Nadu government has been constructing all over the coastal region as an interim measure till the over 300,000 displaced fisher folk are provided permanent housing. These shelters, measuring as little as 8 by 10 feet in some places, are made of cheap tar-coated cardboard and are a health hazard.
Contracts for putting them up have gone to people associated with the ruling AIADMK party while the private leased land on which they are sited also often belong to the same party members. In the days to come, with several thousand crore rupees to be spent on rehabilitation, the issue of who gets the contracts is bound to become more and more contentious as there seems to be no mechanism to account for how the money will be actually used.
The worst aspect of the so-called rehabilitation plans are that they are being formulated with very little or no consultation at all with the affected population — a bulk of whom belong to the traditional fishing community. Rehabilitation schemes are being rushed through without giving people the time or space to get over the terrible trauma they have undergone or think out their future options carefully.
For example, right now many of the fishermen are afraid of going out to the sea or living near the seashore and are even talking of taking up other professions to survive. However, in a few months time there is a good chance that they will go back to fishing, particularly in the absence of any great choice of alternative professions.
But instead of being given the chance to make up their minds at their own pace government officials are already talking of ‘relocating’ fishing settlements away from the sea and the coast in the name of providing ‘safe’ habitats and ‘protecting’ coastal ecology. There is a growing fear that once the community is ousted from the seashore the land will be grabbed by real estate developers and tourism operators who have always seen the fishing folk as a ‘nuisance’ and ‘eyesore’ on the coast.
On the livelihood front there also does not seem to be sufficient thought given to the long-term measures that need to be taken to make traditional fishing an economically viable means of income. Even before the tsunami struck, fisher folk have had to deal with dwindling marine resources, unregulated competition from large mechanized trawlers, poor marketing infrastructure and falling prices for their catch.
In other words the rehabilitation problems facing the tsunami-affected people are complex, multi-faceted and long-term. A few government officials and politicians cannot formulate the solutions without equal participation by the people themselves. But in order to make themselves heard, the people will need to organize for battles in the future as hard as the one they faced with the tsunami last month.
— Sundaram