Children orphaned by the tsunami in India refuse adoption offers as many don’t want to be uprooted from their communities

According to the government’s Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), children orphaned by the tsunami in India are refusing adoption offers, as many do not want to move away from their familiar surroundings. With Indian laws requiring the consent of children before adoption, adoption experts fear that this turn of events will disappoint hundreds of couples that are keen to adopt tsunami orphans.

Fourteen-year-old Kavidevi’s refusal to leave her village and live in an orphanage, let alone consider being adopted by a new family, is a case in point. Kavidevi, an orphan from a village in Nagapattinam, had to be taken back to her village when she broke down in tears and refused to stay at the government-run orphanage where her uncle had tried to register her and her three sisters.

“One of the most difficult things for a child is change. And children have had so much change right now that, naturally, an average child or even an average adult would not want any more change,” says Aloma Lobo who heads CARA.

Experts say they are not surprised at the children’s reactions as, they feel, the last thing orphans want, especially those above the age of five or six, is to be uprooted from the environment in which they have grown up. Adoption experts also fear that since most of the children affected by the tsunami are from southern India, they could face cultural difficulties if they are adopted by people from other parts of the country.

The cultural complexities of rehabilitation were starkly reflected when tsunami survivors in south India refused bread served by charities from wheat-eating northern India, preferring instead to eat their staple of rice.

“My first preference would be to let older children remain in their own community. And family care is any day better than institutional care,” says Lobo.

According to S Suryakala, head of Nagapattinam’s social welfare department, the authorities are only considering allowing the adoption of tsunami orphans by families from the same region as the children. No thought had been given to foreign adoptions. “We have to be very careful. We have to ascertain that there is no child trafficking or abuse,” says Suryakala.

According to government records in Nagapattinam, India’s worst affected district, 222 children were orphaned and another 879 left with only one parent. The government orphanage plans to provide younger tsunami orphans with regular education, while older boys and girls would be trained to work as computer operators, nurses and typists, or make pickles and knit clothes.

Source: Reuters, January 18, 2005

As Indonesia's death toll from the tsunami reaches 173,000 relief distribution improves, but a particularly heavy rainy season is worsening conditions in temporary settlements and hampering the delivery of supplies

The true extent of the havoc wreaked by the tsunami on the island of Sumatra has now emerged, as United Nations teams in the field painted a “truly staggering” picture of “enormous devastation” and the “enormous extent of human suffering” on the island, which, being the epicentre of the massive quake that triggered the tsunami, was the most ravaged.

“In some areas, fatality rates top 75%, with 100% of all homes and dwellings destroyed,” says Kevin M Kennedy, director of the Coordination and Response Division of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In one area “they’ve lost in excess of 90% of the population. That’s 6,500 people out of a pre-tsunami population of about 7,300,” he told a news briefing in New York. He added that although survivors were receiving assistance, they were “in dire straits”. In another area, 24 of the 28 villages were completely destroyed.

On January 19,Indonesia increased its official death count by a massive 50,000, as people formerly listed as missing were counted as casualties. The new data raises Indonesia’s toll to 173,000 and puts global deaths at over 234,000, making the tsunami one of the eight deadliest natural disasters in history.

Kennedy said there were some 700,000 uprooted people in 100 sites in Aceh, and he praised the work of the Indonesian government and the UN’s non-governmental partners, noting that the vast majority of those needing assistance have now received it.

“We are still seeking to find isolated pockets of people, which we continue to find on a daily basis, but those numbers are decreasing,” he added. “So I think we’re reaching the point where we’ll be able to say in a few days that we have basically reached everybody with at least an initial distribution assistance.”

Even as relief distribution improves, a particularly heavy monsoon is worsening conditions in temporary settlements and hampering the delivery of supplies, especially by road, the UN reported. The agency said many healthcare facilities north of Meulaboh -- a town where over one-third of the 120,000 population is feared to have died -- were not functioning.

Because of intensified concern over sanitation conditions for displaced persons in the area, soap and hygiene kits are now being distributed along with food, while four water-processing units have arrived in Meulaboh, in Aceh province, to provide clean water to hospitals and settlements.

Source: Reuters, January 21, 2005
             www.un.org/news, January 20, 2005
             www.un.org/news, January 18, 2005

At least 2.5 billion people have been affected by natural disasters over the past 10 years -- a steep increase of 60% over the previous decade. This number can be reduced if nations invest small sums on disaster prevention, says the United Nations

At the World Disaster Reduction Conference, held in Kobe, Japan, between January 18 and 22, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the world community to learn from the Asian tsunami, saying that spending now could limit the toll inevitable natural disasters took on lives and money. “It’s not enough to pick up the pieces,” Annan said in a video message, following a moment of silence for the tsunami victims. “We must draw on every lesson we can to avoid such catastrophes in the future.”

More than 478,000 people were killed by disasters such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes between 1994 and 2003. Floods and earthquakes are the deadliest natural disasters, accounting for more than half of the total casualties over the course of the decade, says the UN.

The people most vulnerable to natural catastrophes are those living in developing nations -- Asia was the continent most affected during this period, accounting for over half the casualties and more than 90% of those injured, left homeless or needing emergency assistance.

Numbers worldwide peaked in 2002, with millions affected by floods in Asia and drought in India, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

The five-day meeting in Kobe began a day after the 10th anniversary of a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that shook the city of Kobe, killing over 6,000 people. Thousands of government officials, experts and specialists from around the world discussed ways to reverse the growth in the number of people affected by natural disasters.

Ahead of the meeting, the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said he was convinced more attention should be paid to disaster prevention and preparedness. “I am acutely aware of how much is being spent on being fire brigades, putting plaster on the wounds…We need to be more than (just) a fire brigade.”

Technology, such as a proposed tsunami early-alert system, is only the first step. Other challenges are getting the warning out to remote areas in less developed nations, which may have only rudimentary communications systems, and teaching residents what to do when a warning is issued. Many people were killed, for example, when they went out to see the exposed seabed as the water drew back before the tsunami roared in.

Technology and funding alone are not the answer, said Markku Niskala, Secretary-General of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “Our experience is that communities are very much left alone finally,” Niskala said. “They should be trained and be prepared in advance.”

Source: www.bbcnews.com, January 19, 2005
             Reuters, January 19, 2005

The impact of the tsunami on livelihoods has been enormous. But, rapid and effective international assistance, including repairing infrastructure and replacing equipment, could see 50-60% of jobs restored, or new ones created, by the end of 2005

Over 1 million people have seen their livelihoods destroyed by the Asian tsunami, most of them in India and Sri Lanka. But effective aid could see more than half of them back at work within a year, says the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The UN agency has urged that “employment-intensive” job-creation strategies be integrated into the humanitarian and reconstruction response to the disaster.

The ILO claims that in the two South Asian countries that weathered the worst of the December 26 disaster, in terms of geographical area, around 1 million people were deprived of their jobs. The earthquake and resulting tsunami, which killed over 225,000 people around the Indian Ocean, also affected 10 other countries causing immense damage. “The flooding...has had a severe impact...(on) the predominantly poor communities where people mainly live off the sea and marginal land. (It) has cost people not only their incomes, but also most of their meagre possessions.”

Unemployment in Sumatra’s Aceh province, the worst affected part of Indonesia, has probably soared to 30% or more, from a little under 7% prior to the tragedy.

In its initial assessment of the disaster, the ILO found that around 600,000 people in Indonesia’s worst affected regions (Aceh province and the island of Nias) may have lost their sole source of livelihood. The majority of job losses are in fishing, small scale and plantation agriculture and unregistered small businesses. Before the tsunami, around 9.7 million individuals were unemployed in all of Indonesia. This means that the country’s total number of unemployed may have temporarily risen by as much as 6% as a result of the crisis.

In Sri Lanka, over 400,000 workers in affected districts along the country’s eastern, southern and western coasts have lost their jobs and sources of income, says the ILO. The majority of job losses in Sri Lanka have occurred in the fisheries, hotel and tourism industry (including eco-tourism, which was starting to expand), and the informal economy.

The unemployment rate in the affected provinces probably rose from 9.2% prior to the disaster, to over 20%, the agency estimates. Before the tsunami, around 725,000 individuals were unemployed in all of Sri Lanka. This means the country’s total number of unemployed may have temporarily risen by 55% or more as a result of the crisis.

Fast and effective international assistance, including repairing infrastructure and replacing equipment needed for work, could see 50-60% of jobs restored, or new ones created, by the end of 2005, says the ILO, adding that that figure could reach 85% in two years.

The tsunami disaster, one of the worst in living memory, has prompted unprecedented international assistance, with promises of aid exceeding $ 7.0 billion. It has also led to calls for the major economic powers -- the United States, the European Union (EU) and Japan -- to grant trade concessions to countries worst affected by the disaster, to help speed up recovery.

However, in a strategy paper presented to donors at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, the UN agency stressed that, “Employment is core at all stages of disaster management and response. It is an immediate as well as a development need, thus requiring that job-creation be an integral part of both the humanitarian and reconstruction response.”

The main elements of the ILO’s integrated response strategy are:

• Employment-intensive infrastructure reconstruction to quickly generate jobs and income while rebuilding basic infrastructure, developing technical and other skills and promoting social cohesion.
• Livelihood programmes through local economic development (LED), to promote rehabilitation and recovery and boost employment opportunities through developing and enhancing businesses and employment, social finance schemes and employment-friendly investments.
• Recovery of the labour market and emergency public employment services to replace or strengthen labour market institutions, public and private education and training institutions and employment offices.
• Projects aimed at protecting vulnerable groups, including children who have lost parents and who are exposed to the risk of being trafficked or exploited, young people who have lost work or are under-employed due to the disaster, women, especially widows and heads of households who may be more exposed to gender bias, discrimination, and abuse, and migrant workers, who are left out of social support and assistance programmes.
• Social safety nets and social protection catering to people in both the formal and informal economy as a way of ensuring social stability and improving prospects for recovery.

Source: www.ilo.org, January 19, 2005
             Reuters, January 19, 2005

While aid agencies are busy distributing relief material, school children and teachers in Pondicherry and Kerala are taking the more long-term approach of rehabilitation

Schools in Auroville, near Pondicherry, and Alappad panchayat near Kollam in Kerala are determined not to restrict their relief to the collection and distribution of aid in tsunami-hit regions in India. While teachers and students from schools in Auroville are busy visiting the affected villages and clearing up the debris, teachers in Allapad panchayat have set up special hostels for children who are appearing for their board exams.

Soon after the devastating tsunami struck Asian coastlines on December 26, schools in Auroville stayed closed as most students and teachers went around clearing debris from the fishing villages that were worst affected by the disaster.

Although, initially, they faced hostility from the villagers who were wary of outsiders entering their villages, distributing aid and then walking off, the enthusiasm of the students and teachers soon won the villagers over. Many joined in the cleanup operations, instead of simply waiting for the government to get into the act. “It felt good and we really thought we had done something to give back a little happiness to these people,” said Shelley, an American teacher, after helping an old lady clear the wreckage that was her home and find her lost jewellery box.

Another team of children, all aged between 10 and 14 years, helped clean up the beaches of Auroville that were littered with debris and plastic. They managed to clear around 250 metres of beach in a single morning. They also helped clear several schools in Mudiliarkuppam, another badly affected village; the Auroville Rehabilitation Team contributed notebooks, pens, etc, to the schools.

Many relief workers were quick to realise that it’s not just people’s material requirements that need to be addressed, but also their psychological needs. “We come because we care. We can give things to the villagers but we are also willing to hold their hands and look into their eyes,” says Bhavana, a member of Auroville’s Village Action Group.

Meanwhile, in tsunami-hit Alappad panchayat, in Kerala, teachers from the Kuzhithura Government Fisheries Higher Secondary School have set up a hostel for over 60 students who are appearing for their board examinations. They took the step after finding that the children did not have adequate facilities to study at the relief camp.

According to headmistress P K Baby Laila, who has been staying at the school since it reopened on January 10, eight students from the school were killed in the tsunami, many more orphaned and scores injured. Around 1,146 of the 1,232 students were affected by the disaster, including 138 of the 148 10th standard students and 148 of the 182 12th standard students.

Besides providing the students study material, the teachers help children overcome their fear and depression. The authorities are now planning entertainment programmes for the students.

Source: The Indian Express, January 21, 2005
             The Pioneer, January 20, 2005

Taking into account the failure of countries to make good aid pledges made during earlier disasters, the United Nations is urging the speed-up of aid delivery

At a donor conference for tsunami relief, held in Geneva on January 11, the United Nations urged delegates from the various donor nations to deliver on aid pledges worth billions of dollars swiftly, to help victims of the Asian tsunami disaster. The conference, attended by delegates from various countries and aid agencies, was called to discuss a practical timetable for the delivery of aid to the affected region. The UN wants guarantees that relief pledges worth up to $ 7 billion will reach millions of victims on time.

Relief pledges worth billions began pouring in after United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for urgent aid at a conference held earlier in Jakarta, Indonesia. Countries like Canada have increased their aid pledges from $ 66 million to almost $ 350 million.

According to Jan Egeland, the UN’s relief coordinator, the United Nations is worried that most pledges would not materialise into concrete measures. The organisation is therefore keen for donors to outline exactly when they will turn their pledges into hard cash.

The Geneva conference examined the fine print of the global relief effort, addressing issues like the diversion of money to countries desperately in need of assistance, how much aid was going to international organisations and aid agencies, not tied to bilateral deals, and how much could be delivered immediately in cash instead of in loans, or staggered over several years.

The scale of the global response to the tsunami disaster has prompted the United Nations to hire one of the world’s leading accounting firms Price Waterhouse Coopers to help track donations and investigate any allegations of fraud, waste or abuse.

Meanwhile Oxfam, one of the world’s leading charity organisations, mentions in its reports that United Nations humanitarian aid, funded by governments post-tsunami, is still underfunded by 26% and that there are fears that several countries might not make good on their pledges.

Oxfam also warns that rich country governments are not taking decisions on trade and debt reforms to help relieve poverty in the longer term. The charity expresses concern that rich countries have only temporarily suspended debt repayments, rather than cancel them. “Countries affected by the tsunami are going to have to pay all that money eventually, starting in 12 months. What we want to see are debt cancellations for the poorest countries affected. Otherwise we’re in a situation where, as we give some aid, we’re taking back the debt repayments, which is giving with one hand and taking back with another,” says Oxfam spokesperson Max Lawson.

UN and Oxfam’s concerns have been fuelled by the failure of donors to deliver the more than $ 1 billion pledged to help rebuild the city of Bam, in Iran, destroyed by a devastating earthquake in December 2003.

Source: www.bbcnews.com, January 17, 2005
             www.bbcnews.com, January 11, 2005

Legal services being offered by the state at relief camps in Tamil Nadu’s tsunami-affected districts are dealing with a variety of cases, from getting survivors copies of lost documents and helping them apply for loans to obtaining succession certificates

Three weeks after the devastating tsunami, the free legal aid being offered to Tamil Nadu’s survivors has had many takers, with petitions piling up with Tamil Nadu State Legal Services Authority (TNSLSA) offices across the state. Most people are seeking cost-free assistance to obtain copies of their lost documents.

The TNSLSA, which has been offering the free service from January 10, as part of a special campaign targeted at tsunami survivors at relief camps in the 11 affected districts, has so far received 15,713 petitions. Of these, 14,722 are of a ‘non-legal nature’, such as seeking duplicate fixed deposit receipts, insurance policies, passports, school certificates, ration cards and bank passbooks.

Most of the 1,009 petitions that are of ‘legal nature’ are for succession certificates, legal heir certificates, insurance claims and guardianship.

Many people have approached the TNSLSA for help in applying for interest-free loans, waivers of loans, free supply of fishing nets, catamarans and boats, allotment of house sites, construction of houses and financial assistance for their children’s education. The TNSLSA has also received petitions from a number of tsunami survivors seeking help in getting alternative employment.

On January 6, the organisation instructed 11 District Legal Services Authorities (DLSA) to arrange for free legal aid to the tsunami victims. “We have instructed all the principal district judges, who are the heads of the DLSAs, in the tsunami-affected areas to depute a judicial officer along with three of our panel advocates to each relief camp,” said a TNSLSA official.

According to official sources, as many as 390 villages and hamlets along the coast were affected by the tsunami; the TNSLSA has covered around 313. Around 162 judicial officers, including district judges, sub-judges and magistrates, have been involved in the campaign. Three hundred and eighty-seven lawyers from the TNSLSA’s panel and 154 advocate volunteers are also helping out.

On methods to deal with the huge number of petitions, TNSLSA sources say: “We are segregating them into different groups of similar nature and are nominating our panel advocates to follow up the claims of affected people by approaching the authorities concerned.”

The TNSLSA, in its communication with the principal district judges of the tsunami-affected districts of Chennai, Kancheepuram-Tiruvallur, Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Thanjavur, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Ramanathapuram, Kanyakumari, Villupuram and Pudukkottai has asked them to concentrate on pursuing petitions and seeing that all were disposed of properly. The judges have been asked to send in daily progress reports.

District judges were instructed to persuade the authorities -- district collectors, superintendents of police, registrars, passport offices, education department and electricity board offices -- to relax their procedures, if required, and provide clarifications to officials, to allay fears over legal complications.

Source: www.newindpress, January 19, 2005
             IANS, January 5, 2005

In what’s being called a small ‘silver lining’ to one of Asia’s worst ever natural disasters, food aid packages being provided to over a million tsunami survivors could end up improving the nutrition levels of thousands of people

The massive drive to feed hundreds of thousands of tsunami survivors could end up reducing malnutrition in a region where it is fairly common, says the United Nations’ food aid agency, the World Food Programme (WFP).

The WFP has been feeding around 1.2 million of the approximately 5 million tsunami-affected people living in countries ranging from Sumatra, Indonesia, to Somalia in East Africa. A majority of food aid recipients are displaced Sri Lankan survivors; this island nation was the second worst affected by the disaster.

James Morris, executive-director of the WFP, is confident food aid is reaching most people in need. “It’s a very small silver lining. The problem is enormous, but we’re very focused on seeing that everyone at risk here has a calorie diet of 2,100 calories per day, and that may be a little more than some... have had traditionally in their diet.”

The UN agency is currently feeding around 750,000 people in Sri Lanka, many of whom lost everything when giant waves battered the island’s southern, eastern and northern seaboard on December 26, killing around 31,000 people.

Weeks after the disaster, hundreds of thousands of people are still dependent on food handouts, with children being among the most vulnerable.

“The percentage of malnutrition among children here is very high -- 35% in the general population -- and in places where the poverty is greater, malnutrition among children goes up, so it’s a considerable problem,” says Morris.

The WFP’s food aid package includes rice, wheat flour, pulses, beans, legumes and vegetable oil. The agency also hands out high-protein biscuits and a high-energy blend of corn and soya. Morris is considering adding canned fish to the list, as many Sri Lankans are wary of eating fresh fish, a staple part of their diet, for fear that the fish may have scavenged on the remains of tsunami victims.

“There are no examples so far of serious large numbers of people being affected by health problems,” Morris says.

The World Food Programme was already feeding around 1 million Sri Lankans before the tsunami struck, in other projects, so it already had stocks in place. Other food was made available on ships diverted by the United States and Japan.

The WFP is also feeding between 300,000 and 400,000 people affected by the tsunami in Indonesia, between 25,000 and 50,000 people in the remote Maldives island chain off the toe of India, around 15,000 people in Myanmar and 20,000 people in Somalia.

The death toll in the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami has now risen to over 220,000 people, most of them in Indonesia. Thousands more are still missing.

Source: www.alertnet.org, January 16, 2005

The Indian government puts out figures for relief and rehabilitation in states affected by the tsunami disaster

In a major rehabilitation initiative for tsunami-hit states, the Indian government has announced a package of Rs 2,731.04 crore (Rs 27 billion) for the fisheries and housing sectors --the first phase of the government’s rebuilding measures, according to the Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

From this, Rs 861.82 crore would be released for immediate relief measures.

The Union Cabinet approved the package for the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the union territory of Pondicherry on January 19. The government was working out a separate package for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which would be finalised after Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar visited the islands, said Chidambaram while briefing the media after a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

The second phase of the rehabilitation and reconstruction package would focus on the recovery of agricultural land damaged by the floods and reconstruction of infrastructure, said the finance minister.

Of a total of Rs 2,731 crore, Rs 1,093 crore has been allocated for the fisheries sector. An estimated 80% of people affected by the devastating tsunami in India belong to the fishing community.

Rehabilitation measures for this industry, which was hardest hit by the tsunami, include loans and grants for fishermen who have lost their vessels and the rehabilitation of fishing harbours, said Chidambaram.

Fishermen who lost wooden catamarans would be given Rs 32,000 as a subsidy; to fishermen who lost fibreglass boats, which cost Rs 1.5 lakh, 35% of the amount would be given as a subsidy and 65% provided through a bank loan at 7% interest. In the latter case, there would be an interest subsidy of 2%, a moratorium of one-and-a-half years and a repayment period of seven years.

Fishermen who lost wooden catamarans and wished to upgrade their vessels would also be eligible for the second category of assistance.

Owners of mechanised boats, which cost upto Rs 20 lakh, would receive a subsidy of 35% from the government, with a ceiling of Rs 5 lakh. The rest would be given to them as a loan.

In the case of mechanised boats that need repairs, a subsidy of 65% would be provided, with a ceiling of Rs 3 lakh. A subsidy of Rs 10,000 would be provided for repairs to all other categories of fishing vessels, said Chidambaram.

Rs 22.13 crore would be provided for the rehabilitation of fishing harbours.

An estimated 170,500 houses were damaged in the tsunami; their repair would cost Rs 752.30 crore, the finance minister said, adding that the total expenditure would be treated as a central grant. The money would be released when administrators provided details of projects, said a government spokesperson.

This latest financial package is in addition to the Rs 500 crore announced on December 27 for immediate relief and rescue work. Earlier this month, the government put the cost of the tsunami at $ 1.6 billion on the mainland alone, with reports of another $ 600 million on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Chidambaram emphasised that money was not a constraint and that the government would not put a cap on spending for reconstruction -- any proposal that came from the affected states would receive the government’s immediate consideration, he added. He reiterated the prime minister’s stand that the Indian government would accept multilateral assistance only as a long-term measure, saying, “We are talking to the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UN and the European Community”.

Source: PTI, January 19, 2005
             www.ndtv.com, January 19, 2005
             www.bbcnews.com, January 19, 2005

As tsunami survivors on the outlying islands go hungry there are reports of aid being appropriated by local officials. With Indian and international aid agencies denied the right to distribute aid, angry tribals say local voluntary agencies are in the best position to assess their needs

Aid agencies involved in tsunami relief efforts in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have alleged that local authorities are “hijacking” aid supplies, using the Indian government’s official line that relief material would be distributed only by the local authorities. Red Cross officials say its relief material, seized on the islands, was found to be with government workers.

The islands’ administration has stopped local voluntary groups -- who are most familiar with the needs of the islands’ indigenous people -- from conducting relief work in the worst affected Nicobar region.

Basudev Dass of the Indian Red Cross Society said IRCS supplies shipped to the islands’ capital, Port Blair, were seized at the docks on January 13, apparently for distribution by the government. “They hijacked our relief material. They robbed it. They want to take all the relief material and distribute it. We are very clear that we will go and distribute it to the real beneficiaries,” he says.

Relief material has still not reached people on the most remote islands, and, as they become more desperate, they turn their ire on the Indian government and military for not doing enough to help them.

There have been continued complaints from the more remote areas of shortages of relief material, and reports of hungry people looting supply trucks from at least four areas within the last one week.

Non-governmental organisations, both Indian and international, have demanded access to the worst hit islands. But the Indian government is yet to allow them to operate beyond the capital, Port Blair, citing security reasons.

The Indian branch of Rotary International says its offer to build 1,500 homes for the displaced islanders was rebuffed. Ram Kapse, administrative chief of the islands, said the government would welcome the offer of building material from aid agencies but would undertake the construction work itself.

Dass said the Andamans authorities had informed them that all non-governmental agencies -- Indian and international -- would be barred from working on the islands. The authorities have insisted that relief supplies from aid agencies be distributed only through it. So far, only the United Nations children’s agency, Unicef, has been given permission to operate outside the capital Port Blair.

The Indian authorities and the military have so far been managing the entire rescue and relief effort on the islands. Visitors are banned from much of the Andamans as the islands are of great military importance to the Indian government. In addition, the government has sought to restrict outside access to a number of endangered aboriginal tribes on the islands.

Tribal organisations on the islands have severely criticised the local administration, accusing it of refusing to carry relief material from local voluntary groups to remote islands that were devastated by the tsunami. The Tribal Council in the Nancowrie group of islands, the area in the Nicobar chain worst affected by the tsunami, has accused the local administration of being insensitive to local relief requirements.

In a statement on January 17, the council stated that the administration had stopped local voluntary groups from carrying out relief work in the Nicobar area. Chairperson of the council, Ayesha Majid, said this was most unfortunate as local groups were aware of the needs of the Nicobarese people, which is not the case with federal officials working on the islands.

The local administration maintains that it has supplied enough relief to all communities affected by the tsunami, so there was little need for assistance from voluntary groups. A government spokesman also claimed that foreign voluntary organisations were using local groups to get across huge quantities of relief material, and asking the administration to transport it to the islands. The spokesman said the government would give priority to shipping its own supplies around the islands.

Local correspondents allege that the Andaman-Nicobar administration is determined to prevent foreign voluntary groups from joining in the relief effort, even if it is by proxy. They say the local administration is trying to stop local voluntary groups from receiving foreign support. Earlier, the administration had said that while overseas groups would not be allowed to join in the relief effort, any material they could provide would be welcome.

Source: www.bbcnews.com, January 14, 2005
             www.bbcnews.com, January 17, 2005

Countries that were making good progress in providing quality basic education for all children have suffered a major setback as hundreds of schools were destroyed in the December 26 disaster

With over 1,000 schools destroyed and thousands of teachers and students losing their lives in the devastating tsunami that swept Asian shores on December 26, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) estimates that it will take at least six months to repair or rebuild schools and health centres and assess all the missing and separated children. Counselling children and getting them back in school could take years.

While schools in India and Thailand officially opened this week, following the seasonal break, the governments of Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia are hoping to reopen schools in the affected areas by January 20, 25 and 26, respectively.

According to preliminary government estimates, the number of severely damaged or destroyed schools in Indonesia -- one of the worst hit countries -- ranges between 765 and 1,151. In Sri Lanka, 51 schools were completely destroyed and an additional 100 were partially damaged. In the Maldives, 44 schools were destroyed or damaged. The tsunami’s impact on education was less in Thailand and India where fewer schools were damaged or destroyed.

Relief agencies say that getting children back into classrooms is the key to larger recovery efforts. “There is no better way of helping children regain some normalcy than (by getting them) to return to school. A learning environment allows children to be children again; it gives them a friendly space to escape from the nightmare they have endured. When a school opens in a disaster zone, everyone feels a sense of hope, including parents,” says Carol Bellamy, Unicef’s executive-director.

Meanwhile, Unicef is shipping in tonnes of educational material, including 2,000 school tents, 2,000 school-in-a-box kits (each containing learning material for 50 students) and 2,000 recreation kits (each with sports and games for 50 children) for over 100,000 school children and 4,000 teachers in the affected areas of Aceh. Similar efforts are also underway in Sri Lanka, where over 500 school-in-a-box kits have been provided for over 40,000 children.

In an attempt to speed up the recovery process, the Indonesian government is recruiting and training around 2,000 new teachers; assistance is also being provided for the emotional recovery of teachers who survived the tsunami. According to authorities in Aceh, 1,592 teachers in the province were killed or are missing.

In Sri Lanka, the destruction of classrooms has affected 71,928 children and 2,673 teachers. Around 240 schools are still being used as temporary shelters for displaced families.

“This is going to be the hardest part, understanding their feelings and the psychological as well as physical damage… Some of these children have lost one parent and their homes. Some have also lost their minds. We have to get the specialists in as some of these children just stare at us when we ask them their names,” says J U Navaretnam, a senior teacher from one of the schools recently reopened in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.

Schools in affected coastal provinces are being supplied with cooking utensils, school material, textbooks, uniforms and sports equipment; temporary schools are being constructed in place of completely destroyed schools. Community volunteers are also being enlisted to clear the affected schools of debris, and public announcements are being made to inform families that children would be allowed to attend school without uniforms and birth certificates.

Source: www.unicef.org, January 14, 2005
             The Indian Express, January 13, 2005

As is the case with dalits, the tsunami has emphasised the low socio-economic status of many of Tamil Nadu’s smaller tribes who have still not received aid

In the rush to hand out relief and compensation to members of the fishing community, which in terms of numbers was the hardest hit by the tsunami, relief and rehabilitation efforts in Tamil Nadu have bypassed the needs of people from lower castes, ethnic minorities and smaller tribes.

Like members of the Kattunayakan tribe, who, according to their leader, have lived for decades in the village of Melavamchur, along Nagapattinam coast. Fortunately, while no one from the hamlet’s 80 Kattunayakan families was killed by the tsunami, they did suffer substantial damage to property. Over 45 poor families have still not received compensation, while others have received only partial redress.

“Once we were hunters,” says D Ramalingam, one of the tribesmen. “Now we’re sweepers and cleaners.”

Unlike in the case of dalits, who have also been deprived of relief, the partial exclusion of tiny groups of tribals appears to be accidental -- they are at the bottom of the social order and are unused to lobbying for their rights. They are now being helped by social activists to petition for their rights.

Filmmaker Revathi Radhakrishnan was appalled by the condition of another ethnic minority, the Mattukkaran, who moved to a park in Nagappattinam after facing hostility at the relief camps. According to Radhakrishnan, differences in cultural values and levels of literacy may have played a part in their departure. And, she says, “these people like open spaces, they don’t like to be crammed in a place, culturally”. The authorities have responded by temporarily moving the Mattukkaran into a school.

Source: www.bbcnews.com, January 15, 2005

Aid agencies operating in tsunami-hit Indonesia are concerned over the growing number of tetanus cases coming to light in regions worst affected by the disaster

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a medical aid agency working with tsunami victims in Banda Aceh province in Sumatra, has reported over 67 cases of tetanus -- a potentially life-threatening disease. Aid agencies operating in various parts of Indonesia fear that, besides contracting malaria, tsunami survivors are at risk of being infected with tetanus as they have been walking through the debris, handling corpses and scavenging among the rubble.

Tetanus, which has a high mortality rate of around 25%, has found 45 victims in Banda Aceh, 15 in Meulaboh and six in Sigli. Since the disease has an incubation period of between two and 60 days, health experts fear that most cases are only now starting to show up and that many more people could develop the disease in the days and weeks to come.

“People are being contaminated with tetanus while looking for corpses and useful objects in the rubble, even just walking through the mud,” MSF coordinator Loris De Filippi said while explaining that tetanus was caused by a certain type of bacteria which lived in the soil and entered the body via a break in the skin or a wound.

In its effort to control the disease, MSF is distributing boots and gloves to people searching the rubble and is dispatching vehicles with loudspeakers alerting people to the danger. Tetanus can lead to respiratory paralysis and tonic spasms, rigidity of certain muscles -- especially those of the lower jaw and neck -- and is often fatal. People who have the infection usually need to be treated in intensive care in hospital for a month.

“We have set up a mobile clinic in one of the areas where a lot of people are digging in the rubbish, and have already started providing medical consultations and dressings for the wounded… we will distribute protective clothing, including 500 boots and 1,500 gloves. We will use a car equipped with megaphones to drive around the area and inform people about tetanus and to explain how to prevent it. We will also treat the disease and start giving vaccinations,” said Loris De Filippi.

While the authorities are relieved that threats of cholera and dysentery seem to be diminishing, with clean water reaching tsunami survivors in Indonesia, the danger of malaria and dengue fever continues.

According to Richard Allan, director of the Mentor Initiative, a public health group that fights malaria epidemics, pools of salt water created by the tsunami have been diluted by seasonal rains into brackish water, creating the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. “Over 100,000 people could die of malaria in the Indian Ocean region if quick action is not taken,” he stressed.

The Indonesian government has taken the threat seriously and has launched fumigation operations in at least eight relief camps in the provincial capital Banda Aceh. The cornerstone of the anti-malaria offensive is an insecticide-spraying operation with fumigators going house-to-house in the city.

Source: AP, January 17, 2005
             www.msf.org, January 15, 2005
              Reuters, January 15, 2005
             AP, January 13, 2005

It should be possible to put the system, which will cost US$ 30 million, into place by next year because of an already existing meteorological network

According to the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), a tsunami early-warning system for the Indian Ocean could be operational as early as June 2006. A global one should follow a year later.

The system, which will cost an estimated US$ 30 million, could be up and running within a year-an-a-half, said Unesco’s Koichiro Matsuura at the Small Island Developing States meet in Mauritius in the second week of January. The system will alert people in coastal regions within the path of a tsunami to evacuate hours before devastating waves strike the shoreline.

Experts believe that an early alert system, which already exists for the Pacific Ocean region, would have prevented many thousands of deaths in India and Sri Lanka, in the December 26 tsunami. Seismologists knew almost immediately about the earthquake off Indonesia that triggered the tsunami. But there was no way to relay the information to people in coastal regions.

“We have learned some important lessons and gained much experience in the Pacific, and this will prove invaluable in setting up a new global system,” Matsuura added, stressing the need for close cooperation with key institutional partners such as the UN World Meteorological Organisation, donor countries and national authorities.

The main expense of the system will be the cost of a number of deep water measuring devices on the ocean floor, which will relay wave movements to surface buoys and then to a satellite. This information, and data from an extended network of tide gauges, will be collated at a new Indian Ocean tsunami centre. When they receive the warnings it will then be up to each individual country to take appropriate action.

The system should be up and running as early as next year, as warnings can be disseminated by an already existing meteorological network that sends out cyclone and other severe weather warnings.

People also have to be educated on how to respond to warnings -- a process that Matsuura says will take much longer to implement than the technology. But, he says, $ 30 million is a small price to pay. “It’s peanuts compared to what happened. We learned this in a very costly way.”

In 1968, Unesco’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission initiated a successful International Tsunami Warning System for the Pacific, presently the only one in the world. This “has undoubtedly saved many lives over the past four decades of its existence,” said Matsuura.

Source: www.un.org/news, January 17, 2005
             www.bbcnews.com, January 12, 2005

The government’s attempt to compensate impoverished fishermen whose trawlers were smashed and equipment washed away by the tsunami could prove complicated as it first has to determine who the actual owners of the boats are

Most of the fishing boats destroyed by the tsunami in Akkaraipettai, Nagapattinam, were owned by powerful moneylenders in Chennai and other big cities in Tamil Nadu. This is complicating the government’s plans to compensate fishermen who lost their boats and equipment in the disaster, as the money could eventually find its way not to the poor fishermen, or even the registered owners of the vessels, but to the moneylenders. The men who the government believes it is helping are in fact just labourers who are given about 20% of their daily catch. The rest goes to the actual owners of the boats, as might the compensation.

Some 213 mechanised trawlers -- each costing around Rs 15 lakh -- were destroyed in Akkaraipettai, according to A Jaybal, chairman of the Nagapattinam Fishermen’s Panchayat Union. Only one was insured for Rs 15.16 lakh by the New India Assurance Company. Local banks say they did not give out any loans to fishermen to buy boats.

The only way the impoverished residents of the area could have raised the money for the 212 uninsured boats was from rich, influential moneylenders who sit in Chennai, Tuticorin and elsewhere. The registered owner, officials say, is usually a former fisherman too poor to own the boat but running it on behalf of the real bosses -- some had as many as five vessels registered in their names.

The real bosses, meanwhile, run their businesses from a distance. “We have taken note of this. The idea is that the affected fishermen should benefit. We will do the needful after the enumeration,” says M Veerashanmugha Moni, Collector of Nagapattinam.

Another problem with rehabilitation in Akkaraipettai is that the 45,000 poor families in this town no longer want to return to areas where they lived before the tsunami struck. They are simply too afraid. “When the waves struck they had to carry off, burn or bury their kin where their homes used to be. They say they can’t live over the remains of their own dead,” says a revenue official.

“Some 7,000 families have already told us that they don’t want to go back to their old villages. We expect as many more to say that by the end of our survey,” explains Shantasheela Nayar, state secretary for rural development, who is heading relief operations in the area.

The dilemma is that these people can’t stay too far away from the sea either. This means finding large chunks of land to settle them on, some 300 to 500 metres away from their earlier homes. In many crowded coastal stretches this could mean displacing the earlier residents. “We will approach temples, durgahs, individuals and every possible source to get the land. But it could be a problem if they don’t cooperate,” says Nayar.

Even offers from corporate bodies like the Tatas, the TVS Group and the Confederation of Indian Industry to adopt affected villages and rebuild them, could be a source of discontent. “If one village is rebuilt better or worse than its neighbour there will be serious trouble,” says a government official. As of now, the government wants to rebuild everything itself according to a uniform plan.

Source: The Indian Express, January 7, 2005

Besides the threat of child trafficking, young tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka run the risk of being recruited into the LTTE as child soldiers

The United Nations agency for children, Unicef, has expressed concern over cases of recruitment of child soldiers by the outlawed Tamil Tiger organization, from relief camps in Sri Lanka. The agency says it has monitored the cases of three girls, aged 11, 12 and 15, who were recruited by the rebels. Although child recruitment into the LTTE is not new, relief agencies fear that the tsunami disaster may have increased the vulnerability of many children.

Unicef reports confirm that one child, a girl, was recruited in Batticaloa, and two girls from the same family from a camp in Amparai in eastern Sri Lanka -- one of the regions worst affected by the tsunami. “We have enough proof that these children had gone missing from the camps and are now with the LTTE (Tamil Tigers),” says Ted Chaiban, the head of Unicef in Sri Lanka. Thanks to Unicef’s efforts, the girls in Amparai have now been reunited with their family.

The issue of child recruitment has been a sore point between Unicef and the Tamil Tigers since a ceasefire began in early 2002. “In the aftermath of the tsunami you would have hoped that recruitment would have stopped,” says Victor Nylund, project officer for humanitarian principles at the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Human rights groups have been accusing LTTE rebels of continuing to enlist boys and girls at a rate of over a hundred a month, in violation of promises given when a peace accord with the government was signed two years ago. Children are recruited mostly to fight in rebel ranks or to work in guerrilla camps.

A senior LTTE leader has however denied any such incident of active recruitment of children and says that any child who joins does so because of poverty or the loss of parents. Unicef estimates that the Tamil Tigers have some 1,300 child soldiers fighting for them.

While elaborating on the additional responsibility of keeping track of child recruitment, Victor Nylund says that having to monitor child recruitment is taking away resources that Unicef could be better using to help children affected by the tsunami. “All efforts are needed in the relief effort, especially for orphaned and separated children,” he says.

Unicef has also reported half-a-dozen cases of child abuse in relief camps, and two cases of attempted trafficking. In the wake of a warning by the UN and international organisations -- that child traffickers could take advantage of the situation and target children orphaned or separated from their parents after the tsunami -- Sri Lanka banned the adoption of all children affected by the tsunami until further notice.

“We are very concerned about the fact that there can be isolated attempts made to exploit the innocent in the wake of such a calamity,” says Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K Noble.

Source: The Guardian, January 14, 2005
             www.bbcnews.com, January 13, 2005

Landlords in Tamil Nadu are the latest to exploit the misery of tsunami survivors

Several tsunami survivors in Tamil Nadu, who were left with damaged homes and minimal possessions after December 26, are finding themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords who are forcing them to part with their compensation money.

“The authorities gave me a token sum of Rs 4,000 as relief to cover damage to my belongings. But my landlord literally snatched it from my hands,” says Parvathi, a domestic help from Srinivaspuram. Residents complain that they do not have their ration cards to claim relief, as the owners had possession of cards taken in their names. “While we have lost all our belongings and have been rendered homeless, our landlords are only adding insult to injury,” says Veni, another resident.

Tenants in Srinivaspuram, mostly workers from the unorganised sector, have also accused their landlords of refusing to return their rent advances, when, fed up with the harassment, they wished to move to other homes. “If anyone confronts the landlord he will be asked to vacate the house immediately and will lose the rent advance. Now, we do not have any documents as proof of advance payments,” says Sonia who lost all her papers when the waves swept into her house.

Although landowners are entitled to compensation from the government for damage to their belongings, their justification for making their tenants part with their relief money is that relief given to tenants should cover damage to their dwelling units as well.

“I have rented out four houses and all of them have been destroyed. While officials gave me relief towards damage to my other belongings, there was none to compensate for the damage to my houses. The only means I have to repair my houses is to ask my tenants to hand over at least half their relief money,” says Mukundan, a house owner.

Sonia, however, alleges that her landlord got relief money for each of the houses he rented out. She says he pocketed a hefty Rs 40,000.

Source: The Indian Express, January 12, 2005

Contrary to popular belief that rapid burial is essential to prevent outbreaks of disease, post-disaster, a report by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) says that dead bodies pose a negligible risk

As bodies continue to be unceremoniously buried in mass graves, post-tsunami, a report by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) attempts to break the popular myth that bodies need to be buried immediately to reduce the chances of disease outbreaks. The report calls mass burial a violation of human rights and says that dead bodies are unlikely to spread infection and disease.

Countries like Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand -- that suffered the most human casualties -- have been resorting to mass burials in the fear that dead bodies lying around could cause outbreaks of disease.

The report, released by PAHO in September 2004, addresses the issue of management of dead bodies in disaster situations. Its findings suggest that corpses from the December 26 disaster pose no serious threat to humans.

Trashing the popular belief that swift burial is the only way to prevent the spread of diseases such as cholera, the PAHO report says that cholera does not appear spontaneously in the body of a person who did not have it to begin with. And, although in theory rats, flies, fleas and other animals could spread harmful bacteria or viruses present in corpses, in practice that didn’t happen very often.

According to the report even the most resistant bacteria and virus die quickly in a dead body, as its temperature falls rapidly after death. “Past experience shows that unburied dead bodies pose a negligible risk to those who do not come into physical contact with them. The handling of bodies by relief workers does, of course, require protective clothing,” it adds.

The PAHO report also suggests that bodies be buried in a way that allows for later exhumation. The use of common graves should be avoided in all circumstances.

Besides being considered undignified, mass burials make it difficult for survivors to identify their relatives and friends. The report calls mass burials “a violation of the human rights of the surviving family members”. Although difficult to avoid in the event of a large number of fatalities, the report recommends that bodies be carefully reported and tagged before being placed into individual body bags.

“There are some areas where the resources are not available,” says Jean-Luc Poncelet, head of the Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response Association at PAHO, while admitting that not all guidelines can be followed in regions where there are many victims. However, he adds, in some places efforts are under way to take fingerprints or collect DNA samples from dead bodies so that relatives may at least receive confirmation of the death of a family member.

Source: www.nature.com, January 7, 2005

While the overall economic impact of the tsunami is likely to be minimal, the effects on those with low incomes is likely to be “enormous” due to loss of livelihoods, predicts the Asian Development Bank

Nearly 2 million people in Asia risk falling into poverty as a result of the tsunami that killed more than 162,000 people and affected around 5 million more along the Indian Ocean, says the Asian Development Bank (ADB). “Poverty is potentially the most important effect of this natural disaster,” the Bank said on January 13.

While the overall effect of the disaster on most economies will be minimal -- as cities and factories escaped damage -- and, in some cases, even beneficial, the Manila-based institution said its initial overview showed that the weakest in society would bear the economic brunt of the disaster.

“The poverty impact of the tsunami will be enormous,” ADB chief economist Ifzal Ali said in a statement. Already, there are 1.9 billion people in Asia living on less than $ 2 a day.

The report states that 1 million people could fall below the poverty line in Indonesia alone, most of them living in the northern province of Aceh where over 100,000 people perished. The number of poor in India could rise by 645,000, and in Sri Lanka by 250,000, the report adds. In the Maldives, where 43% of the population already lives on less than $ 2 a day, this could rise to 50%, with 23,500 more residents facing poverty after the tsunami. About half the island nation’s houses suffered some form of damage.

The economies of Sri Lanka and the Maldives are likely to be the worst affected by the tsunami, but other countries should be able to absorb the impact and even get a boost from reconstruction in rural areas that were hit hardest by the giant waves. “Reconstruction from natural disasters requires new investment that should have a positive impact. And investment should translate into jobs,” the report says. “Therefore, it is possible that the overall economic impact could well end up being somewhat positive,” the study notes.

Sri Lanka’s government has estimated reconstruction costs at nearly $ 3 billion. A government task force held meetings to discuss an emergency rebuilding plan with the ADB, World Bank and Japanese aid agencies, which it promised to publish within 10 days.

Private economists have also said that the impact of the tsunami on bigger economies such as Thailand and Indonesia would be minimal and probably less than the damage from SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), bird flu and terrorism. Although Indonesia’s northern province of Aceh had the highest death toll, the region’s oil and natural gas production facilities “have survived intact” the report says.

However, the Bank said it is still too early to assess the damage to poor people’s livelihoods in Aceh because that would depend on how much farmland had been flooded by seawater, destroying standing crops and rendering the land uncultivable for some time because of high soil salinity.

Donor nations have promised $ 717 million (£ 379 million) in disaster relief over the next six months, according to the United Nations. Ali warned that aid pledges must be promptly delivered, saying the number of people at risk of poverty hinged on concerns over sanitation and health conditions, and other basic needs being properly and quickly addressed.

Source: Reuters, January 13, 2005
             www.bbcnews.com, January 13, 2005

With most people focusing their attention on the losses suffered by the fishing community, in the aftermath of the tsunami, Tamil Nadu’s coastal farmers have to come to terms with destroyed crops, damaged soil and devastated livelihoods

A Thirunavukarasu is wondering when the Tamil Nadu government will turn its attention to the damage suffered by farmers along the coastline in his village of Vettaikaraneruppu in Nagapattinam district. Experts acknowledge that thousands of acres of farmland in Tamil Nadu will stay damaged for upto two years, due to excess soil salinity.

Around 1,000 residents in this village have partially or completely lost their crops (which were around 1.5 km from the coastline) to the tsunami. Even after the initial destruction, whatever was left standing is now dying because the soil is too salty. The damage in this village has been estimated at around Rs 3 crore.

Farmers here and elsewhere in Tamil Nadu claim they have been overlooked in the tsunami relief and rehabilitation efforts so far. “Some farmers have lost their livelihoods completely. Their condition is terrible. The government is looking at fishermen but nobody is looking at the farmers who have also lost their livelihoods,” says Thirunavukarasu, who heads the Sustainable Agriculture Farmers’ Association.

Most farmers in Vettaikaraneruppu cultivated groundnut, cashew and mangoes. Ironically, they say it was the fruit trees growing along the coastline that mitigated the impact of the tsunami in many places. “My village was saved by the trees growing near the coastline,” says Raj Shekhar. “(But now) my cashew and groundnut crop has been completely damaged. The salt water is killing my plants slowly.” Shekhar also had a prawn farm along the coast, which was ripe for harvest. But that too was damaged by the tsunami. He says he has suffered damage worth Rs 10 lakh. “This will take a few years to recover from. I don’t know what to do till then.”

The farmers insist they don’t want aid, which hasn’t reached them anyway. They want loans from the government. “We want the government to float a special scheme and give us a loan. We don’t want charity, we want the means to rebuild our lives,” says Raj Shekhar.

Apart from a few voluntary organisations working in the area, government relief has not reached this village. The farmers have submitted a petition to the district collector asking for quick loans to start the process of desalinating water in the area and providing drinking water.

Source: www.newindpress, January 12, 2005

Shelter becomes the number one priority, as people in the devastated Andaman and Nicobar Islands gear up for the five-month-long monsoon

Building waterproof homes for the over 40,000 homeless survivors in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands before the annual monsoon hits the region in the month of April is now top priority for relief workers in the area. However they admit that given the time and material constraints, it’s an ambitious goal.

At present there is no building material even to begin construction. The refugees, over 10% of the 350,000 residents of this tropical island chain, live in flimsy bamboo and plastic tents at relief camps dotted across the remote isles.

Meanwhile, the authorities are working on a plan in consultation with housing experts on the mainland -- more than 1,200 km away -- and the central government. Options include pre-fabricated fibreglass shelters or providing the islanders free bamboo, timber and tin sheets to build their own homes.

“There is some reason for scepticism. Time is a constraint but we have to try,” said an official on January 12. “It was mind-boggling to see the devastation that has taken place,” navy chief Arun Prakash said after a tour of some of the worst hit areas. “All human structures have been destroyed and many islands have been swept clear of vegetation.”

Five southerly islands, with populations ranging from 150 to 1,400, have been evacuated. The authorities have yet to decide whether they will be resettled or entire communities transplanted elsewhere.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, home to some of the world’s most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, were one of the areas worst hit by the December 26 earthquake and tsunami that killed over 15,700 people in India and more than 162,000 across Southeast Asia and East Africa.

Many of the almost 7,000 islanders dead or feared dead belong to the biggest and most advanced tribe, the 27,000-strong Nicobarese, most of whom are now crammed into refugee camps in the capital Port Blair and elsewhere. They live on straw mats under plastic sheeting and have salvaged little of their belongings. Many have no proof of identity, or whether they owned homes and land.

Other survivors on the islands are awaiting compensation so that they can rebuild their homes as quickly as possible, before the five-month-long monsoon sets in. “I can’t sleep thinking about where my family will stay. How long can we stay with friends,” asked a weary A C Ravi, a civil contractor who lost his home on Little Andaman island, as he was shunted from one government office to another trying to find out how to file for compensation.

Source: www.alertnet.org, January 13, 2005

While neighbouring towns and villages get regular relief supplies, villagers in Nambikkai Nagar have not received even food packets

Each time a vehicle loaded with relief supplies passes by Nambikkai Nagar, its 350-strong residents rush towards it hoping for some sustenance. For several days, even the promised food packets have failed to reach them. Three weeks after the tsunami, this village seems to have fallen off the government’s relief map.

Relief vehicles that routinely cover other hamlets in the neighbourhood, for some reason or the other don’t make it to Nambikkai Nagar. “How do we console the children who have gone without proper food for two days? The first week we were flooded with relief workers. Now it looks like we have fallen off the state’s map...we have been left high and dry by everyone -- right from the government to the NGOs,” says Muthu, a villager.

When policemen at a camp in neighbouring Nochikuppam were asked about relief not reaching Nambikkai, they did not now that such a village even existed!

When Nambikkai’s residents tried to join aid queues in nearby Sreenivasapuram and Nochikuppam they were shooed away. “The first few days we went and stood in the long queues in the two neighbouring settlements. But we were sent off saying that packets for us would be delivered to our village. But the wait has been in vain,” says Jai Prakash, a fisherman.

Madima Mary, a mother of six, says she pleaded with the other villagers for a place in the queue. “But how many times can I do that? We are surviving on the foodgrain that we were given some days ago.”

Children in the village have not yet started going back to school. “How do we send them? What food will we pack for them,” asks 50-year-old Annamma. After watching her grandson go hungry the whole day, Annamma went to the chief of a local political party, who had earlier visited the village, begging for food. A peanut-seller on the beachfront, she makes hardly any money as people are reluctant to visit the beaches after the tsunami.

The only positive development in Nambikkai Nagar has been that most villagers have received Rs 4,000 in compensation from the government. “How long do they expect the villagers to survive on this money,” asks Sudarshan, who works at a women’s polytechnic in Taramani.

Source: The Indian Express, January 11, 2005

The two international banks will do a "needs assessment" on the basis of which they will develop a programme of support for reconstruction and recovery in areas affected by the tsunami

India has approached the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for financial assistance in rebuilding infrastructure and restoring livelihoods in areas devastated by the South Asian tsunami, which killed thousands of people and damaged property worth around $1.6 billion in the country. The government has also asked the two multilateral agencies for assistance in developing disaster prevention and management systems for the future. This is the first instance in which India has asked for outside help, in the aftermath of the disaster.

In a joint statement, released on January 11, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank said they had received a request from the government for assistance in rebuilding infrastructure, both public and private, and for the rehabilitation of livelihoods.

The two international banks say they will work with the government to organise “needs assessment”, on the basis of which they will develop a programme of support for reconstruction and recovery. “Our first priority is to ascertain the extent of the damage and then work together with the government on a programme of reconstruction and rehabilitation to help affected people rebuild their lives,” said World Bank Country Director Michael Carter.

While there were mixed reactions both within the country and elsewhere to India declining international help for its tsunami relief efforts, even as it acted as a donor and provided assistance to countries like Sri Lanka, both institutions have been unequivocal in their support of India’s stand. “It is truly impressive to see the way India has responded in providing basic necessities to the affected people,” Carter observed.

ADB Country Director Louis de Jonghe joined the World Bank in praising India’s initial response to the tragedy. He said: “The ADB stands ready to contribute to the rebuilding of infrastructure and rehabilitation of livelihoods of people in the affected states of India.”

Justifying his government’s stand in not seeking international assistance, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh said on January 12: “Our response was not shaped by false pride or by chauvinism. We are happy to be part of a global community and to work with it. We will seek international assistance in our reconstruction effort.”

Singh added that the national response to the tsunami tragedy was not only heartening but also showed that in the face of a crisis “we have the national will and resources to meet the challenge head on. The people of India have shown their generosity in a time of distress”.

“I submit to you that the do-it-ourself mood of the nation is not an index of our isolationism. Far from it, it is an index of our resolve to turn adversity into an opportunity. I hope we can all join hands to do just that and give the nation a new sense of hope and direction,” he said.

The PM said the country seeks partnership for development even as it has demonstrated to the world its ability to stand on its own feet. “That, I believe, has been India’s message to the world. I sincerely believe that the world appreciates this and values the contribution we have been able to make to global peace and prosperity,” he said.

Source: www.newindpress.com, January 12, 2005
              PTI, January 12, 2005

Unicef vaccinates 1,000 children in tsunami relief camps around Banda Aceh after two cases of measles were confirmed in Indonesia’s worst affected region

Health workers in Indonesia have begun vaccinating people against the spread of measles, as two unconnected cases of measles were confirmed by Unicef in the tsunami-ravaged Aceh province of Sumatra. Meanwhile, fearing possible outbreaks of dysentery as torrential rains continue across the region, aid agencies are struggling to improve sanitation facilities.

“Two cases (of measles) have been reported in two separate villages,” said Moira Connolly who tracks outbreaks for the WHO. Both villages were outside the regional capital of Banda Aceh. One case of measles was confirmed near the capital, while a second case was detected in Bireuen, 150 km southeast of the city.

“There have been no signs of an epidemic, but we treat this very seriously. Measles is a major worry for us,” said Unicef communications officer John Budd on January 11. Budd said preventing dysentery had also become a priority in Aceh, where most of Indonesia’s 104,000 deaths from the earthquake and tsunami occurred.

According to Budd, Unicef and the Indonesian government had immediately vaccinated 1,000 children in the area surrounding the confirmed case, while a broader programme was underway to immunise 575,000 children in the province. Measles outbreaks have been frequent in Indonesia over the past few years, as most children have not been vaccinated against the disease. The WHO recommends immunising 90% of the population against measles to prevent an epidemic.

Budd added that aid agencies were moving quickly to put portable sanitation in place in makeshift shelters around Aceh housing thousands of the estimated 600,000 people left homeless when giant waves crashed ashore following the underwater quake.

The World Health Organisation has said that there is an urgent need to assess the health needs of people in Aceh who have not yet been reached by outside assistance. Many are reported to have injuries that could become seriously infected if not properly treated, causing permanent disability or worse. Already, in many places, there have been reports of doctors having to amputate badly injured limbs. “It’s a life or limb decision,” said anaesthetist Paul Luckin, an Australian navy lieutenant who has operated on 25 people in six days in Banda Aceh.

Most of the roads and bridges along Aceh’s coastline, from the capital to Meulaboh -- another severely damaged town -- have been destroyed, making access to these areas difficult weeks after the disaster. Reports from groups that have made contact with people in these areas indicate that, in some places, the death toll from the tsunami was as high as 50% of the local population.

The WHO says that though sporadic relief has reached some of these people, aid agencies have been unable to meet their basic needs of clean water, food and shelter in a sustained manner.

Source: Reuters, January 11, 2005
              NDTV, January 11, 2005
              www.who.int, January 11, 2005
             Reuters, January 7, 2005

Fishermen in tsunami-affected Kanyakumari are being forced to return to their devastated villages even before proper rehabilitation gets underway

Over 300 families in Manakkudi, one of the worst affected fishing villages in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district, have been forced to return to their dilapidated houses as the schools they had taken shelter in, following the devastating tsunami, are scheduled to reopen on January 17.

Relief camp managers complain that government officials are pressuring them into sending survivors back to their damaged houses without providing them any kind of temporary shelter. “For the past three days, Manakkudi priest Rev Benoraj has been asking us to send back people whose houses are safe. The government stopped supplying food after December 30. Officials said it was for the people to manage on their own as the government had given them interim relief of Rs 4,000. We are running the show here with donations from NGOs and some locals,” says S Rajan, who has been coordinating the Ilamkadai church relief camp.

Rajan claims he spends around Rs 2,400 every day on shamianas (cloth tents) and cooks alone. Despite this, government officials blame them insisting people will leave the camps only if they are denied food.

“Sir, do you believe we are safe here? This is a graveyard. Will anybody come forward to rehabilitate us,” asks Pushpakala, a survivor forced to return to her damaged home. Every other building around her house has vanished.

However, district collector Ramesh Chand Meena insists that government officials are not forcing people back to their houses. About camps being run by private agencies he says: “Now that it has been brought to my notice I will make alternative arrangements. We have to shift people before the schools reopen on January 17. Fireproof huts are being set up in various parts of the district for the purpose. Till then we will accommodate them in some marriage halls.”

Source: The Indian Express, January 8, 2005

The prime minister’s aid package will cover the provision of food for those affected, construction material for temporary housing and the setting up of wage employment programmes

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has announced a Rs 200 crore package for the tsunami-ravaged Andaman and Nicobar Islands for “immediate rehabilitation measures”. Touring the area to see firsthand the extent of the devastation caused by the disaster, Dr Singh also announced an ex-gratia amount of Rs 1 lakh to each of the families whose kin had died in the devastating tsunami.

The package will include the provision of food for affected families (to cost around Rs 60 crore), construction material for temporary houses, the allocation of Rs 10 crore for wage employment programmes and a grant of Rs 10 crore to tribal councils to restore the social infrastructure. And a telemedicine programme by the Indian Space Research Organisation. Around 10,000 houses will also be built for survivors at a cost of Rs 25 crore.

After a daylong trip to the devastated Car Nicobar and Campbell Bay islands, on January 9, Dr Singh said the entire amount of Rs 200 crore would be released to the Andaman and Nicobar administration.

The islands, a union territory of India off the country’s eastern coast, were the hardest hit by the December 26 tsunami. Upto 10,000 people are feared killed in this region alone, though these numbers remain unconfirmed.

“These beautiful islands have undergone an unprecedented wave of death and destruction. I can see sorrow and pain written on the faces of so many citizens. The Government of India will spare no resources to come to the aid of all families that have been affected,” said the prime minister, who also visited relief camps in the capital Port Blair.

Dr Singh said mobile telephone connectivity would be provided in major islands. “We will build a new pattern of life which would be both environment and economy-friendly. If there are any areas where we need international aid, we will take help,” said the PM.

Source: The Indian Express, January 10, 2005
               The Hindu, January 9, 2005

The initiative provides for initial assistance in the form of emergency food aid, access to water, sanitation and healthcare, shelter and non-food supplies and the restoration of livelihoods of those displaced by the tsunami

Nearly US $1 billion will be spent over the next six months on humanitarian emergency relief for people in the tsunami-affected areas of south and southeastern Asia -- from the massive cost of feeding 2 million people to relatively more modest goals such as replacing lost fishing boats. This was announced by the United Nations’ Secretary General Kofi Annan, when he outlined the global agency’s biggest and most expensive aid effort ever.

The appeal covers a six-month period for the relief and rehabilitation needs of 5 million affected people in Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles and Somalia who were left without access to basic services, following the tsunami disaster that occurred on December 26, 2004. This will supplement aid commitments that have already been made by a number of countries and organisations independent of the global agency.

While the US$ 977 billion is a fraction of the overall pledges of aid to both the UN and other organisations -- said to total around $ 6 billion -- Annan noted that the appeal provides for “a focused set of programmes” that can now begin.

“As we grieve for the dead and pray for those still searching for loved ones, we have a duty to the survivors,” Annan said at the emergency global summit on the tsunami crisis in Jakarta, Indonesia, on January 6, calling for a concerted effort to prevent a second wave of death from preventable causes (due to the polluted water) and a third wave of despair where people cannot recover their livelihoods, homes and communities.

Sectors covered include $ 229 million for food and agriculture, $ 172 million for healthcare, $ 61 million for water and sanitation, $ 222 million for shelter and other urgent non-food items, and $ 110 million for the early restoration of livelihoods.

A major chunk of this appeal, the largest ever by the UN for a natural disaster and three times the previous record, comprises the US$ 256 million sought by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), $ 185 million of which will go towards providing crucial assistance for 2 million people, providing them with food aid for a period of six months.

The remaining $ 71 million is to boost logistics, transport and communications for the entire humanitarian community, given the huge difficulties of reaching remote areas in a region where much of the infrastructure has been destroyed. “This is more than just a disaster for those countries directly concerned, it is a truly global disaster,” said WFP Executive Director James Morris.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is seeking $ 26 million to finance emergency rehabilitation projects over the next six months for farmers and fishermen, such as replacing lost boats and fishing gear and repairing damaged installations. “To enable both their rehabilitation and livelihoods, the best assistance we can offer them is an early opportunity to repair their boats and their fishing nets,” Annan told a news conference held to announce the appeal and outline its objectives in Jakarta. “If we give them quick financial support, building materials and other resources, they will make their own recovery.”

Meanwhile, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is requesting $ 28 million to help meet urgent health, hygiene and protection needs for women and youth in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives -- the three countries hardest hit by the tsunami. Targeted goals include medicines and supplies to enable pregnant women to deliver safely, emergency obstetric care and hygiene kits including soap, wash cloths and sanitary napkins for tens of thousands of women.

Source: The Hindu, January 7, 2005
              www.un.org/news, January 7, 2005

First the tsunami, now government apathy. Survivors in Nagapattinam are forced to shift to temporary tin-roofed shelters

As the deadline for the evacuation of all relief camps in Tamil Nadu draws to a close, thousands of survivors in Nagapattinam -- the worst affected district in the state -- are being forced into temporary tin-roofed shelters. Faced with complaints, officials claim there isn’t much they can do as the shelters have to be set up quickly leaving schools and marriage halls, currently serving as relief camps, free to reopen by January 13.

Fishermen in Serthur, Pattinacherry and Akkaraipettai complain that they are simply not used to living under tin roofs. With temperatures in the region rising to 38 degrees Celsius by noon, the hastily constructed shelters are proving extremely uncomfortable for the fishermen who have moved into them. “They become extremely hot during the day,” says S Raju, a fisherman from Akkaraipettai. They also say the tin roofs could easily be blown away by strong winds that sweep the Nagapattinam coast this time of year. Many of the fishermen have approached cooperatives and unions to fight on their behalf, starting with representations to the government.

According to S Jaibal, chief of the Nagapattinam Fishermen’s Union, the government, in its discussions with voluntary organisations, had agreed to provide cubicles for each family inside big shelters, and small individual huts in smaller shelters, with roofs made of light wood or artificial pulp material.

“Thatched roofs were suggested but were struck down because of the fire hazard. Senior officers present at the meeting assured us that the roofs would be of light wood. But they have suddenly changed their decision. It is not acceptable,” says Jaibal.

Justifying their stand, Shantasheela Nayar, secretary, rural development, who is looking after relief and rehabilitation, says: “A large number of tin and zinc sheets have been donated by people, which are probably being used. We had issued specific instructions that only light material or corrugated pulp material should be used for roofs. But we are in the process of acquiring them.”

A government resolution issued on January 6 gave collectors in various affected regions specific instructions that the design of temporary structures and their location must be acceptable to the fishermen in each habitation and should not be seen as a plan to forcibly relocate them.

With over 11,000 shelters to be constructed before the January 13 deadline, the district administration has begun construction with material that’s easily available. Already, 131 shelters with tin roofs have been erected in Nagapattinam.

“First, we have to shift the people out of the relief camps. We are also providing toilets and clean drinking water facilities in the shelters. There will be privacy for families too. If the beneficiaries feel uncomfortable in the shelters, we will change them,” says Veerashanmugha Moni, the district collector of Nagapattinam.

According to official sources, there are 88 relief camps housing over 60,000 people in Nagapattinam alone. The government resolution suggested that while the state would provide shelters for 50% of the beneficiaries, the rest could be provided by non-government organisations.

Source: The Indian Express, January 11, 2005

Media investigations in Nagapattinam have unearthed a scam involving the distribution and use of ‘relief tokens’ needed to get government aid of Rs 4,000 in cash, three litres of kerosene, clothes and 60 kg of rice promised to every family who has lost a home.

In one instance, a local official was seen signing away a wad of tokens -- requiring only the tehsildar’s (local official’s) signature and seal -- to groups of rice traders. Trucks were on standby to make a quick getaway with the rice, which was no doubt later sold in the open market. The official, who had been claiming that tokens were being distributed door-to-door to victims, refused to comment when the fraud was brought to his notice.

Many aid recipients too are selling off sacks of rice to unscrupulous traders, as they’d rather have the money than the rice. They have no place to store the sacks, nor the means to cook it.

Another roadblock in the distribution of supplies is the action of local strongmen posing as victims to appropriate aid. At the arrival of a relief truck at a transit camp in Velankanni, groups of men elbowed women and children out of the way to make place for people who were not in the queue. “This happens every day. These are men with political clout, who had been terrorising us even earlier,” says Selvi who has been living on bread for four days. “If these things happen at government-run camps, it could be worse when we move back to our villages where the panchayat More and more cases of child trafficking are being reported from regions affected by the tsunami disaster, raising fears about a thriving illegal trade


The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) has confirmed a case of child trafficking in Indonesia, fuelling fears that children are being taken out of the country for illegal adoption, forced labour or to work in the sex industry. Reports of orphaned, separated children being picked up by touts have been regularly surfacing since the tsunami disaster. This has led to many countries, including Indonesia and Sri Lanka, imposing restrictions on the movement of children outside their borders.

According to Birgithe Lund-Henriksen, chief of Unicef’s Indonesia child protection unit, the Indonesian police have confirmed that a four-year-old boy was taken out of Banda Aceh, capital of the devastated province of Aceh, by a couple claiming to be his parents. The two, who took the child to a hospital in Medan, 450 km southeast of Banda Aceh, were caught when several non-government organisations became suspicious of their story and alerted the local police.

“We’re absolutely concerned about the trafficking. This is something that existed prior to the tsunami. And with syndicates in place, it’s clear they will take advantage of the chaos that’s going on now,” says Lund-Henriksen, who expressed concern about reports of several possible child trafficking cases, including a sighting by an NGO worker of around 100 infants being carried away in a speedboat in the middle of the night in Aceh province.

As part of its anti-trafficking operations, Unicef has set up a children’s centre in Aceh. The organisation plans to build 20 shelters to accommodate unaccompanied children, to prevent them from being taken away to neighbouring countries like Malaysia and Singapore.

Following Unicef’s reports, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has warned affected countries to be on high alert against the trafficking of orphans and other vulnerable people. The organisation claims it already has child trafficking experts working in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand as part of its emergency response to the tsunami disaster.

The IOM also revealed that an international aid agency had reported seven cases of child trafficking since December 26. “To date, actual confirmed cases of human trafficking remain minimal. But we are boosting our counter-trafficking operations and working with governments,” says spokeswoman Niurka Pinheiro.

Source: Reuters, January 7, 2005
               www.ndtv.com, January 5, 2005

As is becoming the norm with every disaster that strikes India, scamsters and local politicians are thriving on the opportunities provided by relief operations, while real victims wait for aid to reach them

Relief operations in tsunami-hit Tamil Nadu are being hampered by scores of racketeers, touts and traders acting in collusion with local government officials to claim relief, hijack aid and operate scams. Some are even using brute force to silence protesters. Meanwhile, survivors of one of the world’s worst natural disasters remain hungry and homeless, their frustration growing with each passing day.

Media investigations in Nagapattinam have unearthed a scam involving the distribution and use of ‘relief tokens’ needed to get government aid of Rs 4,000 in cash, three litres of kerosene, clothes and 60 kg of rice promised to every family who has lost a home.

In one instance, a local official was seen signing away a wad of tokens -- requiring only the tehsildar’s (local official’s) signature and seal -- to groups of rice traders. Trucks were on standby to make a quick getaway with the rice, which was no doubt later sold in the open market. The official, who had been claiming that tokens were being distributed door-to-door to victims, refused to comment when the fraud was brought to his notice.

Many aid recipients too are selling off sacks of rice to unscrupulous traders, as they’d rather have the money than the rice. They have no place to store the sacks, nor the means to cook it.

Another roadblock in the distribution of supplies is the action of local strongmen posing as victims to appropriate aid. At the arrival of a relief truck at a transit camp in Velankanni, groups of men elbowed women and children out of the way to make place for people who were not in the queue. “This happens every day. These are men with political clout, who had been terrorising us even earlier,” says Selvi who has been living on bread for four days. “If these things happen at government-run camps, it could be worse when we move back to our villages where the panchayat is all-powerful,” she adds apprehensively. In fact, there are reports of local strongmen taking over village panchayats to siphon away compensation amounts given to the kin of tsunami victims. “There was this man who came on Thursday and told us that if we paid him Rs 50 per head he would ensure that a truck came our way at least twice a day,” says Victor, a fisherman in Serudhur.

In Pallavan Nagar, a group of fishermen distributed their own ‘relief cards’ to people. As they distributed supplies and money to victims, they pocketed a portion of it as ‘commission’. Locals say no relief material can be distributed here without the cooperation of the mafia; they intercept and offload everything that comes into the area.

Interestingly, it all began as a ‘community initiative’ to streamline the distribution of aid. Local leaders mooted the printing of cards to ensure proper distribution of relief among the affected people. However, once the cards were printed they were sold to outsiders for Rs 150 each. “These outsiders have used the relief cards to corner relief material and money provided by the government. Many real victims have not received proper relief,” says Valarmathi, a resident of Pallavan Nagar.

According to Paul Sunder Singh, director of the Karunalaya Social Service Society, people who dare question the mafia are beaten up.

M Subbu, a member of the National Fishworkers Forum, says: “It’s not fair to give only fisherfolk relief. Everyone affected by the tsunami has to be helped. The camps are often of mixed groups including slum people and people who build boats, nets, etc. Not giving them relief is making them antagonistic. They come with relief for about 500 people, but a thousand turn up.”

In Power Kuppam, where four persons were killed and around 200 houses destroyed in the tsunami, people claim no relief has reached them. They blame local politicians for their plight. “Ruling party functionaries are diverting relief material and money to their own areas and friends,” says Bhavani, a local fisherwoman who lost her house and all her belongings. “All of us applied for relief tokens distributed by the government, but only a few of us have received them. However, some who staked false claims have got tokens with the support of local politicians,” Bhavani adds. It is believed that the rush for tokens is in anticipation of houses that the government is expected to build for victims rendered homeless by the disaster.

Ruth Manorama from the National Centre for Labour claims that money being handed out to victims was not what the government had promised. “On January 5, behind Santhome Church, 1,500 families were only given Rs 3,000 instead of the promised Rs 4,000, in front of the police and revenue officers. They were told to take it or they wouldn’t get anything. There has to be proper distribution without corruption.”

Source: Sunday Mid-Day, January 9, 2005
             NDTV, January 7, 2005
             The Indian Express, January 5, 2005

These decisions were taken at a meeting of the country’s top political parties, convened by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh at his residence on January 9, to discuss the situation in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster that struck Asian coastlines on December 26.

The government accepted the demands of all political parties to evolve an early-warning mechanism. Prime Minister Singh said that the government would look into the issue of whether India, or at least the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (which were closest to the epicentre of the Sumatran quake), could have been forewarned about the impending disaster. Dr Singh clarified that the purpose of the inquiry was not to fix blame for the scale of the disaster but for future preparedness.

Defence Minster Pranab Mukherjee said a committee had been appointed to look into the technical aspects of the plan, and that it would be part of an international effort to set up such a system in the region.

Brushing aside apprehensions about the competence of Parliament to enact legislation on an issue normally dealt with by the states, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said a cabinet note on setting up the NDMA was ready, as was a draft bill.

“The government has already approved the proposal for the authority and the bill would bring the legal substratum for the authority,” Patil said, adding that the 12th Finance Commission would be looking into the aspect of funds for disaster management. This was recommended by the National Committee on Disaster Management formed after the Bhuj earthquake in Gujarat in January 2001. Mukherjee said the government had accepted 64 of the panel’s 97 recommendations, including the setting up of a cabinet committee on disaster management.

Although the Centre gave no details about the proposed disaster management body, officials say it will be multi-disciplinary and autonomous. Scientists, technocrats and experts from all fields will be invited to be part of it. Similar disaster management bodies are being envisaged at the state and district levels, with links to taluka and village levels too, Patil added.

The government also plans to ensure that Coastal Regulation Zone provisions are followed more stringently and that fishermen are housed some distance away from the coast, to prevent huge casualties in the event of another tsunami.

Another suggestion taken on board during the meeting was to allow political parties to send calamity relief material to affected areas directly, without routing it through the civil administration.

On the issue of the adoption of children orphaned by the disaster, Patil ruled out any change in the adoption laws. “We will take care of these children,” he said, adding that only childless couples would be allowed to adopt the orphans, after due verification.

The home minister told the media that the government was in the process of gathering data on the number of children orphaned, after which they would be handed over to their nearest surviving relatives or those ready to take them in, or established non-government organisations.

Maintaining that the children were the government’s responsibility, Patil said: “Adoption is the last resort.” There was consensus among all those at the meeting that orphaned children should be raised within their own communities, with state support.

Clarifying the Indian government’s stand on the issue of foreign aid for its relief efforts, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said: “We do not require foreign aid at this juncture.” He said offers of assistance from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) were different, as India was a founding member of both. “We do not want aid for relief; the World Bank and ADB aid is for development assistance.”

Source: The Hindu, January 10, 2005
              The Indian Express, January 10, 2005
              The Telegraph, January 10, 2005

Admitting that the tsunami would definitely impact agriculture, Dr R N Adsule, a soil and agri-chemistry expert from Pune, explained that too much salt in the soil prevents crops from taking in water and nutrients by osmosis, causing them to perish.

The extent of damage caused by the tsunami has prompted the state’s agriculture department to dispatch four mobile testing vans -- two to Nagapattinam (one of the worst affected regions in Tamil Nadu) and one each to Cuddalore and Kanyakumari -- to assess the extent of the destruction caused to farmland.

These vans will test local soil and hand cards out to villagers stating the level of nutrients in the soil. They will also suggest remedial measures. It is being estimated that it will take two seasons for the soil to return to its pre-tsunami composition and become arable again.

Meanwhile, the agriculture department is waiting for a detailed report to come in to suggest methods to treat the soil, like leaching the soil by adding gypsum, repeatedly treating it with fresh water, draining the water and ploughing the soil.

“In addition to all this we suggest the farmers plant certain kinds of plants that will grow, die, decompose and, in the process, enrich the soil. Cultivation of paddy, which is the main crop grown here, will not be possible now,” says Thiru P Baskaradoss, Tamil Nadu’s agriculture secretary.

Although no funds have yet been allocated for soil treatment, the agriculture secretary estimates the costs would amount to Rs 5,000-Rs 7,000 per hectare.

There is also some confusion about the extent of land damaged by the salt. “Our rough estimate pegs the extent of salt water-contaminated arable land at 75,000-1 lakh hectares, mainly in Nagapattinam, Cuddalore, Kanyakumari and Kancheepuram districts,” says Baskaradoss. However, Dr V Murugappan, director of the Centre for Soil and Crop Management Studies at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, says the extent of affected area is much lower.

“We estimate about 5,500 hectares to be contaminated by sea water in the Nagapattinam, Kivalur, Tirukuvalai, Maladudurai, Sirkali, Tharangampadi areas. This works out to 4,000-odd hectares under paddy, 1,500 under groundnut and 100 hectares under pulses. Paddy now hasn’t reached the harvesting stage, but the plant surfaces are coated with mud from the floods. Coupled with the high salt content this is bad news,” says Murugappan.

Over 2,500 farmers in Karaikal, Pondicherry, lost years of hard work to the salty, muddy water that engulfed their fields. According to experts, the damage to soil in the Cauvery delta is so severe that it will not yield anything for the next two to three years.

Source: The Indian Express, January 7, 2005
                www.ndtv.com, January 7, 2005

In Nagapattinam, the worst affected area in India’s badly-hit state of Tamil Nadu, where nearly 6,000 people died, dalit families from 63 affected villages -- 30 of which were completely flattened -- who survived the tragedy have been spending their nights out on the streets.

They have been banned from drinking water and using toilets at facilities provided to survivors. Some have even been muscled out of food, water and aid supply lines, and given only the leftovers, by the Meenavars, a fishing community whose members, naturally, constitute the largest number of survivors in this coastal area.

The Meenavars, who belong to the Most Backward Class (MBC) category (thereby ranking low on the caste ladder themselves) consider dalits ‘untouchables’. Preserving their ‘purity’ remains paramount, even at this time of profound loss.

The discrimination is being practised both openly and covertly. In Thanjavur, 31 dalit families took shelter in a girls’ school after being forced out of relief camps by the fishing community. They were subsequently evicted by the school authorities that said they needed to reopen the school.

V Vanitha, a Class X dalit student, says adolescent girls are prevented from using the toilet area in Tharambagadi. “There are no toilets here and they prevent us from going to the area that serves as an open toilet,” she says.

Kesavan, a dalit from Nambiarnagar, says he was prevented from drinking water from a plastic tank put up in the hamlet. “We are forced to bring water in plastic cans from outside the village. The collector’s office has put up the tank here and provides clean water, but it is not for us,” he says.

Dalit activist K Darpaya says: “Dalits are not allowed to drink water from tanks put up by Unicef.” The Meenavars say they “pollute” the water.

Elsewhere, dalit fishermen said they were being edged out of relief and compensation queues. “We are inside the camp but kept in the far corner. Whenever officials and trucks come to give food, we are left out because nobody allows us to get near the trucks. Some men form a ring around us and prevent us from moving ahead in the queue,” says Saravanan, a dalit survivor.

There is also the more subtle discrimination. “The Meenavars are more privileged as they get to sleep inside the rooms and are first to receive food and water. We have to sleep outside in the verandahs or in the open ground,” says Jivanana. “Even in the relief camps, the Meenavars don’t want to sit with the dalits and have food. Some of them manage to get rice but other relief items coming in, like biscuit packets, milk powder and family household kits, are denied to the dalits,” Darpaya adds. Like in the Nallukadai Street Relief Camp, a Meenavar thalaivar, or leader, grabbed all the cartons of glucose biscuits delivered by a Coimbatore voluntary organisation. The dalits were told these were not for them.

The accused justify the discrimination by themselves pointing fingers. “These dalits have been playing mischief, going back to the villages and looting houses. That’s why we don’t want them around here,” says Chellayya, a Meenavar fisherman, at a Tharambagadi camp.

Darpaya responds to this charge by saying: “What’s left in the houses for the dalits to take? And where will they keep the loot even if we assume they have taken something?”

Even where their presence is tolerated, dalits are soon ‘taught their place’. At a Puttur relief camp, where the Meenavars have hoarded family relief kits, rice packets, new clothes and other relief material, dalits paid a heavy price for asking for some of it. They had to spend the night out on the road.

The social ostracism is so complete that many non-governmental organisations are setting up separate shelters and kitchens for dalit survivors.

Sevai, a voluntary organisation based in Karaikal, Pondicherry, was one of the first to address the issue. Coordinator R Indrani says: “Since dalits are not receiving sufficient food and water, we have started cooking for them in separate kitchens. They come from wherever they are taking shelter and we provide them with whatever they want. We are also considering separate camps for them.”

Source: The Indian Express, January 6, 2005

Dalits from 63 villages in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, who survived the December 26 tsunami, now face government apathy in providing them relief and compensation, in addition to the usual discrimination by members of higher castes in relief camps and aid queues

Two weeks after the tsunami, the residents of Keshvanpalayam, a predominantly dalit village, have only their flattened homes to display. While survivors elsewhere have received relief supplies like food, medicines, sleeping mats, even kerosene, no aid has made its way to this village that houses 83 dalit families. Nor have any cranes or bulldozers come to clear the debris.

S Karuppiah, field coordinator with the Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation, says that in some villages dead bodies of ‘untouchables’ were only reluctantly being moved. “The government is turning a blind eye,” he says. “When dalits bury the dead they are not given gloves or medicines but only alcohol to (cover) the rotten stench.” The people who helped pull out corpses from the debris of the tsunami during the first few days all belonged to the dalit community.

Activist Mahakrishnan Marimuthu, who heads the voluntary organisation Education and Handicraft Training Trust, says the tsunami has dealt a multiple blow to dalits who are already on the margins of Indian society. “They lost their jobs, houses and relatives. On the other hand, the social discrimination is proving to be worse,” he says.

Take the case of Murugesan and his family. “In Nagapattinam, three relief camps we went to denied us shelter saying they had no place. At the Nataraja Damayanti High School the watchman refused to let us in,” says Murugesan. At first, many families did not understand why this was happening to them, but as door after door slammed in their faces, it soon became clear. They approached their local municipal councillor K Tilagar. “He assured us we would be given shelter soon, but he disappeared,” says Anjamma, another survivor.

The government has denied allegations that relief distribution is being carried out along caste lines, and says it is providing relief to every tsunami-affected family. “There is no intention of closing down any camps and we are providing relief to each and every family. We will provide temporary shelter as these relief camps are getting overcrowded,” says Veerashanmugha Moni, Nagapattinam’s senior government administrator.

The irony is that the administration and relief agencies have to depend on the strong network of Meenavar fishermen -- the very people who have been accused of practising discrimination -- to disburse aid and relief to survivors of the tsunami.

M Jayanthi, coordinator of the South Indian Fishworkers Society, says: “Dalits are facing discrimination in all relief camps where they are present. But society does not want to raise the issue, as it would complicate things further. Without making it public, we are opening separate facilities exclusively for dalits,” she says.

Unicef says that although the government, relief agencies and aid workers do not discriminate against dalits, the caste issue always exists. “All the aid going in is distributed the same way to all survivors. The social discrimination has been there during normal times,” says Amudha, head of a team of Unicef volunteers in Nagapattinam. “After the disaster happened, it is still continuing. That is nothing new,” she says baldly.

Source: Reuters, January 3, 2005
               The Daily Telegraph, January 7, 2005

With the threat of epidemics looming large in the wake of the tsunami, Unicef is supporting the governments of Tamil Nadu and Kerala in launching a measles and Vitamin A immunisation campaign targeting children affected by the disaster


Around 100,000 children in Tamil Nadu and 15,000 children in Kerala are being immunised over a one-week period as part of the tsunami emergency operations being undertaken by the United Nations children’s agency, Unicef. With the threat of epidemics looming large in the wake of the tsunami, Unicef is supporting the governments of Tamil Nadu and Kerala in launching a measles and Vitamin A immunisation campaign targeting children affected by the tsunami disaster.

“Measles is a deadly threat to children living in crowded camps. It spreads quickly, killing children or severely weakening their immune systems. Those children are then too weak to fight off other diseases, leading to more deaths. It’s a vicious circle. But we can head it off with a good round of immunisation and Vitamin A,” says Dr Marzio Babille, Unicef’s chief of health in India.

The campaign, covering relief sites in 11 districts in Tamil Nadu and three districts in Kerala, supported by Unicef and the World Health Organisation (WHO), was given the go-ahead by the Tamil Nadu and Kerala departments of public health and the Government of India.

As part of the campaign, 12 health officials from Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal have been assigned to Tamil Nadu and Kerala to support the campaign’s logistics and planning. A hundred and ten thousand auto-disable (AD) syringes, supplied by Unicef to the government of Tamil Nadu for routine immunisation programmes, are being used for the emergency operation. Available vaccine stocks are being used for the campaign.

General health assessments are also being carried out at various relief camps in hard-hit districts in Tamil Nadu. Unicef doctors visiting the camps are looking at general morbidity and mortality, drug supplies and treatment services to help the local government respond more effectively to the needs of victims.

To prevent and treat outbreaks of diarrhoea, especially among children, Unicef is supplying Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) to health camps, using mobile vans in the disaster-hit districts of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. Forty vans carrying 120 communications personnel are criss-crossing relief areas in Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Kanyakumari and Pondicherry to distribute and demonstrate how to use ORS, and to provide soap in camps.

“Diarrhoea is a child killer, but we can stop dehydration with ORS and good information, that’s why we are taking urgent action to give families in relief camps the information they need to act immediately if their children get sick,” says Cecilio Adorna, Unicef’s representative in India.

Over 70,000 sachets of ORS have so far been distributed out of a total of 2.02 million packets that Unicef has decided to make available.

Unicef is seeking $144.5 million to support urgent humanitarian aid for the estimated 1.5 million affected children in South Asia. According to the organisation, the primary nutritional threat to affected children will be acute malnutrition, both protein-calorie as well as vitamins and minerals. Unicef has promised to help set up targeted supplementary feeding centres and provide fortified blended food to malnourished children under the age of five and pregnant and lactating women who have been displaced by the tsunami disaster.

Source: www.unicef.org, January 6, 2005
               www.unicef.org, January 3, 2005

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown says that the tsunami disaster has shown people that what happens to the richest citizen in the richest country affects the poorest citizen in the poorer country

British chancellor Gordon Brown wants to harness worldwide horror over the fate of Asia’s tsunami victims to drive forward the agenda for helping Africa and other developing countries. In a recent speech in Edinburgh, to an audience of more than 200 people including aid workers, he restated his goals for doubling aid and eliminating the debts of the world’s poorest nations.

Brown said 2005, in which Britain holds the EU and G8 presidencies, offered a “once-in-a-generation” chance to eradicate global poverty. He wants a Marshall Plan for Africa like that which rebuilt post-war Europe.

The chancellor called on rich nations to deliver full debt relief, and urged that, in addition to donations, there should be an international financial mechanism to lever in additional money from the international capital markets.

The challenge that faces the world is to provide enough aid to help victims of the Boxing Day tsunami tragedy and to tackle ongoing poverty in Africa and developing parts of the world.

“The true test of the international community will be how we can fund and assist both the immediate day-to-day emergency services needs but also the long-term reconstruction of these countries,” Brown said. “We must ensure that countries affected by the tsunami are not prevented from paying for essential reconstruction because they are having to fund the servicing of their debts.”

The chancellor’s goals for the UK’s EU and G8 presidencies include doubling aid from donor countries as well as eliminating debt owed by the world’s poorest nations. He agreed there was a danger that efforts to tackle the aftermath of the tsunami disaster might absorb resources that were previously bound for Africa. “We have got to release the funds that are necessary -- after all 30,000 children are dying unnecessarily each day (in Africa) because of hunger, because of a failure to deal with the problems of developing countries.”

Brown added that people had realised, as a result of the December 26 disaster, that “what happens to the richest citizen in the richest country affects the poorest citizen and the poorer country”.

“Just as we’ve seen the power of nature to destroy, we’ve seen the power of human compassion to build and it’s on that moral sense of ‘something’s got to be done’ that we build.”

Source: www.bbc.co.uk, January 6, 2005

Fishermen in Sri Lanka and India fight to allay false fears that fish stocks are contaminated, in the aftermath of the disastrous tsunami that took a heavy toll on fishing communities across the Asian region

Villagers in Mirissa, Sri Lanka, held a barbecue to show that fish was safe to eat after rumours spread that fish from the sea was contaminated and should be avoided. A small fleet ventured out from a south Sri Lankan port on Wednesday -- the first step in rebuilding the country’s vital but devastated fishing industry. Seven boats left Mirissa and returned with a symbolic catch, some to be sent to President Chandrika Kumaratunga. The fishermen hope Kumaratunga will eat the fish publicly to dispel fears that catches have been contaminated by decomposing bodies.

December’s tsunami killed more than 30,000 people in Sri Lanka. The nation’s Central Bank puts the damage cost at $1.3 billion. Between 800,000 and 1 million people are believed to have been displaced.

Many fishermen in Sri Lanka and India, however, are still reluctant to leave the shore, worried that more huge waves could swamp the coast. When they do, like Lasantha Jayasooriya who overcame his fears to take his boat out, they cannot send it to market, as nobody will buy it.

In some parts of eastern Sri Lanka, the worst hit area, shops were reportedly opening for the first time in nine days. In Amparai district, villages are slowly returning to life with people clearing up their homes. Many are still too scared to return to live in them, preferring to remain in shelters in schools and community centres.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk, January 5, 2005

A week after one of the world’s worst natural disasters, the focus of the UN’s multi-agency relief effort is shifting to looking after the millions of people displaced by the tsunami tragedy

Upto 5 million people have been displaced and thousands more injured in the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed coastal villages across South Asia last week. Providing these people with clean water, sanitation, food and shelter has become top priority for the multinational aid agencies involved in one of the world’s most widespread relief efforts.

“We estimate that upto 5 million people have been displaced and are at risk across the region,” says Harsaran Pandey, spokeswoman for the World Health Organisation in South Asia .

The global health body said between 1 and 3 million of those affected were in Indonesia , with another 1 million in Sri Lanka . The rest were spread between India , Thailand , the Maldives and other nations.

The estimate was given five days after an earthquake of terrifying proportions sent tidal waves crashing into 12 countries across Asia and Africa .

As aid agencies across the world rush to get relief supplies to survivors of the tragedy still marooned in remote areas of Aceh in Indonesia, northeastern Sri Lanka and parts of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, monsoon rains in Indonesia and flash floods in Sri Lanka have added to the survivors’ misery and hampered relief efforts, already slowed by shattered infrastructure.

“Quite a lot is being done,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters when asked about bottlenecks keeping immediate assistance away from those most in need. He said various governments were now offering communications and transport, and moving military capabilities into the region, using the Thai capital Bangkok as a hub to reach other affected areas.

The UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland conceded that there were problems, given the vastness of the catastrophe stretching from Southeast Asia to the east coast of Africa . “I agree it is beyond the reach of all our combined resources in these five massive parallel operations from Somalia to Indonesia ,” he said when asked about problems of transportation and coordination.

Egeland added that while “the first wave” of the disaster had already brought more than a hundred thousand casualties, the “second wave” -- the after-effects that would affect millions of people -- could be equally devastating.

An estimated 1.8 million survivors are now in urgent need of food aid and because new assessments were being done for remote parts of Somalia in northeastern Africa and the Maldives , a nation made up of more than 220 inhabited islands, the number could go up to 2 million in the coming days, Egeland said on December 2.

He said relief teams hoped to reach all of the estimated 700,000 hungry in Sri Lanka within three days, but that it could take longer before enough food aid got to the nearly 1 million in need in hard-to-reach parts of Indonesia, where the known death toll has topped 94,000.

Fifty aid groups are now operating in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital on the northern tip of Sumatra . They include Oxfam, which is providing water to 60,000 people in 14 camps, and Medicins Sans Frontiers that is running five clinics.

The world’s largest food aid agency -- the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) -- said it would need around $150 million to address the food crisis in tsunami-affected countries. The Rome-based agency has already begun to distribute food in Sri Lanka , where it was already operating before the quake. This allowed the agency to react quickly to the situation. A convoy of 35 WFP trucks brought rice, sugar and lentils from Colombo to 12 districts in the east and north of the island, including areas controlled by Tamil Tiger rebels.

The UN’s refugee agency has opened relief stockpiles in Sri Lanka to deliver immediate emergency assistance to the island nation, which is one of the most widely affected countries and has suffered the second highest number of casualties. Given the unprecedented nature and magnitude of the disaster, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, said: “Our supplies are usually for displaced people, but this is an emergency and the local population needs help right now.”

UNHCR will provide 18,000 pieces of plastic sheeting, 17,000 plastic mats, rope and non-food relief packages to around 2,000 families. The packages include cooking sets, plastic jerry cans, mosquito nets and clothing. Stichting Vluchteling, a Dutch voluntary organisation working with the UNHCR has said that it would cover at least four-fifths of the approximate US$ 280,000 cost of the relief items through its special fund-raising efforts for disaster victims.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has already rushed in an initial US$ 500,000 in emergency assistance for victims of the tsunami.

Meanwhile, the UN has announced that the total amount of financial aid pledged by world governments had reached US$ 2 billion, with Japan pledging US$ 500 million, the United States 350 million dollars and the European Union an initial US$ 4 million. Belgium has allocated 500,000 euros in emergency aid to be distributed by Red Cross bodies and the EU. On January 3, Canada doubled its government aid contribution to $ 67 million. While this outstripped the UN’s original aid appeal, Egeland stressed that the world body would launch a separate appeal for reconstruction funds.

Already, World Bank President James Wolfensohn has said his agency would double or triple the $ 250 million it has promised for regional reconstruction, and would also be looking at debt relief for poorer nations worst affected by the disaster.

On the fifth day after one of Asia ’s worst natural disasters, with rescuers in Indonesia finally reaching the remote parts of the worst-hit Aceh province, the death toll in the country rose by nearly 28,000

Five days after the massive earthquake and tsunamis that devastated coastal areas in South Asia , the death toll from the natural disasters has risen sharply to 125,000. Indonesia , where the earthquake struck has suffered the highest casualties with close to 80,000 people feared to have died, according to latest estimates, most of them on the island of Sumatra .

The previous official toll in Indonesia was 52,000 dead, but the Indonesian government announced on December 31 that the death toll from quake and tsunamis has jumped to 79,940, almost all in the Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra , the island on which the quake of 9 degree magnitude struck.

With rescue workers in the country just beginning to reach towns and villages in the worst-affected province, the toll in Indonesia is expected to mount even further.

In Sri Lanka , the country that was worst-hit by the tsunami, over 27,000 people have been killed as of December 31, and almost 5,000 people are still missing. More than a million Sri Lankans have been displaced by the disaster. The government has cautioned that the number of people killed could rise as some areas have still not been contacted and scores of bodies are washing on to beaches along the country’s south coast.

The government says it will need over US$ 1 billion to rebuild the lives of those affected.

In India, the official toll stands at over 7,000 dead, but unofficial estimates say it could be as high as 13,230.

Among the other nations, 2394 have been reported dead in Thailand, 120 in Somalia, 90 in Myanmar, 67 in Maldives, 65 in Malaysia, 10 in Tanzania, two in Bangladesh and one each in Seychelles and Kenya.

While relief operations in India and Sri Lanka are reportedly progressing well, chaos has hindered relief efforts in Indonesia .

With an estimated 60 % of Aceh’s provincial capital of Banda Aceh destroyed, along with severe damage across the 250km northwestern coast, shattered infrastructure is proving to be the chief hurdle in getting much-needed aid to an estimated 500,00 homeless and hungry people in the ravaged province.

By December 31, much-needed food and medical supplies were stacking up at the airport in the provincial capital and only a few trucks could be seen bringing food into town. Handwritten signs tacked up on utiltity poles and fences across the city by desperate residents pleaded, "Please help. Give us aid."

Basic supplies such as fuel had almost run out, forcing even ambulances to ration gasoline and generating long lines outside fuel stations. Hundreds of people lined up with cans at the few working petrol pumps, guarded by police with automatic weapons. "The police are there, otherwise there would be violence," said Zezi Afrizal, 26, a food vendor. "Tell the world we need more fuel."

On December 30, Budi Aditutro, head of the Indonesian government's relief team, said food drops by military pilots had begun in western Aceh province on Sumatra , mostly of instant noodles and medicines. Some were successful, but other areas "were hard to reach because they are surrounded by cliffs."

Though health experts warned that contaminated water, the spread of disease and dwindling food supplies were a bigger danger, officials focused on the grisly task of disposing of the masses of the dead. A military spokesman said 620 bodies were buried on December 30 alone.

The 160 aftershocks, ranging between 4.8 to 5.8 degrees in magnitude that were detected on the island since the quake have only deepened the fears of already traumatised survivors, huddled in makeshift refugee centres in mosques, schools and government buildings.

The Indonesian government has estimated it will cost US $150 million to rebuild the Aceh province in the coming year and more than US$1 billion (euro735 million) over the next five years.

While there are no official figures on how many people belonging to the endangered, indigenous tribes on the islands of Andaman and Nicobar might have been killed by the tsunami, reports on the possible annihilation of some of the tribes continue to pour in

As rescuers struggle to find survivors on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, there are fears that some of the region’s ancient, indigenous tribes like the Jarawas, Ongis, Sentinelese, Shompen, Kondul, Great Andamanese and Nicobarese, may have seen their dwindling numbers fall even further after the giant waves swamped their shores on the morning of December 26.

Officials are especially worried about the entire community of the Shompens who occupy parts of the Car Nicobar island which has a population of 19, 000, and was a part of the island chain most badly affected by the onslaught of the tsunami.

Initial estimates had revealed that close to 100 Shompen, 150 Sentinelese and 120 Onges may have died.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands administration has now completed a survey of the survivors of all the 319 inhabited islands and the human toll of Sunday's tsunami is now officially over 10,000 people, dead or presumed dead.

More than 72 hours after the killer waves came and went, authorities have lost hope of any of those categorised as "missing" being found alive. "If any of them were alive, they would have returned by now," says the island’s inspector-general of Police, S B Deol.

The distance between the inhabited islands, where the survey of survivors is over, and the uninhabited islands precludes the possibility of those declared "missing" having survived. They are now presumed dead. The Andaman and Nicobar islands are spread over 700 square kms and comprise a total of 535 islands.

An unofficial estimate claims that one out of every three residents of the islands is believed to have died.The union territory, where 90% of the population comprises 72 indigenous tribes was the second-most badly hit area of India , after the state of Tamil Nadu on the country’s mainland.

According to the last census of these tribes, there were 266-270 Jarawas, 98-100 Onges, 150-200 Shompen, 200-250 Sentinelese and 40-45 Great Andamanese.”The majority of these tribes are highly endangered," says Dr Lalji Singh, director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad .

On December 29, the government claimed that the fate of members of two aboriginal tribes -- the Shompens, who live in Campbell Bay and the Sentinelese, inhabitants of North Sentinel island -- was not known while it had been able to establish contact with four other primitive tribes on the islands

According to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Jarawas, who inhabit the Middle Andaman island are unlikely to be affected because they live on hilly terrain and forest areas. The Andamanese, who live on the bigger landmass of the Strait Island are also expected to be in relative safety.

A ministry spokesperson said that food was being sent to the Andamanese, and that about 40 Onge tribespeople had been rescued and efforts to trace the others were on in Dugong Creek.

However, it is the most prosperous Nicobarese who are believed to have been the most affected. Most of the 26,000-strong community are feared to have been killed.

There has also been no information from a large part of the Nancowrie group of islands, which is 90 miles from Sumatra , the epicentre of the Indonesian quake that triggered the destructive tsunami.

The ministry is finalising a relief package to assist the primitive tribes. It is in touch with the local administration to ensure that relief and assistance reaches the six tribal communities in the region.

Meanwhile, rescuers have begun reaching the territory’s remotest islands where the local people continue to be panic-stricken, with more than 54 aftershocks hitting the island since Sunday.

Sending rescuers to the remote, far-flung islands, making relief supplies available and reaching proper estimates about the number of casualties and the scale of damage has been made even more difficult by the fact that the wireless network, the only form of communication between the islands, were snapped after the disaster. And since jetties all along the coast were destroyed, speedboats and motorboats, the main form of transport, are unable to operate.

The Andaman and Nicobar islands were the first Indian area to face the sea’s wrath, being the Indian landmass nearest to epicentre of the earthquake.

With rescue and relief operations in the tsunami-hit areas of the country being carried out on a war footing, the Indian government has announced a series of financial aid measures for families of victims and survivors of the tragedy, mainly the badly-hit fishing communities and those who lost their homes

The Indian government has announced a financial aid package of Rs 500 crore for the relief and rehabilitation of victims of the earthquake-induced tsunami that struck its coastlines on December 26, and Rs 200 crore for the rebuilding of houses that were destroyed by the tidal waves.

The government also announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 1 lakh to the next of kin of each of the tsunami’s victims from the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund. The decision was based on the central Crisis Management Group's (CMG) review of the emergency relief and rehabilitation operations and the magnitude of the devastation.

In addition to the central government’s packages, the governments of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have also announced that an amount of Rs 1 lakh would be paid to each of the victim’s families in their respective states.

The government also announced that Indian banks and financial institutions would provide loans on easy terms to those who had suffered losses due to the catastrophe, to enable them to rebuild their lives, particularly fishermen, who bore the brunt of the tragedy.

Already, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has announced a credit package for rehabilitation of people affected by tsunami in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Pondicherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands .

NABARD will provide 100 % refinance to all categories of banks for extending loans to fishermen for purchase of nets, boats, engine etc., irrespective of the loan amounts involved.

Insurance companies like the New India Assurance Company have also been directed by the Indian government to accelerate the claims for damage, particularly for boats and other equipment of fishermen.

Immediately after the disaster struck on Sunday morning, the CMG met and drew up an emergency plan to carry out relief and rescue operations in affected areas of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Pondicherry, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Kerala. The scheme for relief operations and rehabilitation was made district and area-specific.

On December 28, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chaired a meeting of the special Group of Ministers --- comprising Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Communications and Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran, Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar and Environment Minister A Raja -- personally constituted by him to monitor and channelise the relief and rehabilitation efforts, in addition to the efforts of the CMG.

The PM deputed the ministers to visit Cuddalore and Nagapattinam to carry out relief operations and make an on-the-spot assessment of the devastation. The minsters have since been extensively touring the two worst-affected districts in the country.

The Indian finance minister P Chidambaran has said that there is no dearth of central government funds to carry out the massive relief operations in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami. He said that the government would provide all the immediate assistance needed to every state affected by the tragedy but added that the state governments should initiate long-term relief and rehabilitation programmes. "There is no shortage of funds available with the centre. We want the state governments to come out with long-term relief assistance programmes."

The finance minister said the government machinery has been fully activated to tackle the after-effects of the catastrophe. "We are extending emergency relief measures to fishermen affected by the tidal waves on a war footing. However, long-term rehabilitation assistance, such as houses for persons who were rendered homeless, and fishing nets and boats to fishermen should be extended immediately," he pointed out.

Perhaps heeding the FM’s advice, the government of Tamil Nadu, which has suffered the highest number of casualties, has announced a Rs.650-million relief package exclusively for the fishing community to help them replace nets, vallams, or small boats, and catamarans.

Chidambaram said that based on the assessment of damage by the state governments, the centre would decide whether to relax the norms for drawing from the Central Calamity Contingency Fund.

In the aftermath of a disaster that has claimed upto 10,00 Indian lives, the government, aided by the military, aid agencies and non-governmental organisations has launched the country’s most widespread disaster-relief operation ever

Indian authorities have mounted a massive rescue and relief operation, distributing relief material and medical supplies in the country’s southern and southeastern coastal areas that were ravaged by the earthquake-triggered tsunami that claimed thousands of lives and displaced entire communties on December 26.

On December 29, rescuers headed to the last of India 's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands , where survivors have been living on little else but coconuts since the giant waves struck.

There has been little contact with most of the islands -- many days from the nearest help -- since the tragedy, but authorities fear at least 7,000 residents are dead and 8,500-10,500 more are missing on two islands alone. "The situation in some of the islands we managed to establish contact with is indeed very, very grim," the island’s inspector general of police S B Deol said.

The Indian military, paramilitary forces, non-governmental organisations, aid agencies like the Red Cross and Oxfam have all pitched in to help in burying the dead, looking for survivors, tending to the injured and bereaved, and providing food and shelter for the homeless.

Volunteers from across the country have arrived in the affected areas for one of the most widespread and most difficult relief efforts India has ever undertaken, but for those spared by the tragedy, daily sustenance is an immediate worry.

Although official estimates of India 's toll from the tsunami, that battered coastlines across South Asia hovered around 9,500, unofficial accounts from the affected areas put the human cost of the disaster at more than 12,000 lives.

Bodies are still being fished out by the minute from swampy fields and razed coastal villages, and with hundreds of people, mainly fishermen living all along the country's east coast still reported missing and feared dead in Tamil Nadu and the Andaman and Nicobar islands , the death toll could mount higher, authorities fear.

The Indian military is also involved in its biggest-ever peacetime rescue and relief effort, even as the number of lives claimed by the tragedy increases by the hour.

Over 30 naval and coast guard ships, 20 aircraft primarily belonging to the Indian Air Force, over a dozen helicopters and several hundred army troops are participating in ferrying the dead and the injured and transporting relief material, official sources in the capital New Delhi said.

Navy and coast guard helicopters are also scouring the coastline in southeastern parts of the country,in their search for missing persons.

The Indian army has rushed relief items and medicines from its stores to survivors and despatched engineer columns to rebuild bridges and roads in severely affected areas while the Indian Air Force has set up five centres from where it is sending relief material to the hub of the relief efforts in Chennai.

On December 28, India’s Minister of Health Dr Anbumani Ramadoss directed that more medical teams, including experts from Indian Council of Medical Research be mobilised immediately, to assist the governments of Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Andaman and Nicobar islands, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala in their efforts to provide medical relief to the coastal people affected by aftermath of the tsunami.

Even 48 hours after the disaster, the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) has said that it is facing difficulty in catering to the huge relief demands being made on it from the three affected states -- Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, besides the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . So far, only one plane-load of relief material has reached the Andamans and two more are expected to reach by December 29.

In parts of the southern mainland authorities have simply given up counting the dead, instead disposing of rapidly decomposing bodies as fast as they can in mass burials and cremations, to avoid the possibility of the spread of disease.

On the third day after the tragedy struck, as rescue workers continued to look for bodies, survivors, who are fast losing hope of ever seeing their missing loved ones again, are now trying to cope with the prospect of uncertain futures -- the loss of their homes and livelihoods.

US scientists had predicted that tsunamis might strike close to the epicentre of the Indonesian earthquake, but Indian scientists never had the benefit of this preliminary information since the country has not invested in tsunami warning systems

India received no warning of the destructive waves that were heading towards its eastern coast despite the fact that there was a 90-minute window between the time the massive earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the first tsunami battered its shores on the morning of December 26.

India and Sri Lanka were two of the countries which had not invested in a tsunami warning systems since they were viewed as natural disasters specific to Pacific countries, and hence, was not among the 26 countries that received the message of imminent danger, within 15 minutes of the earthquake, from scientists running a tsunami warning system for the Pacific region.

This tsunami warning stated, ‘‘Revised magnitude based on analysis of mantle waves is 8.5 degrees. This earthquake is located outside the Pacific. No destructive tsunami threat exists for the Pacific basin...There is the possibility of a tsunami near the epicentre.’’ The last part of this prediction was crucial to the two countries, as it this very ‘‘possibility” that, translated into reality, resulted in death and destruction on a gargantuan scale.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) in Los Angeles alerts nations on its network about the potentially destructive waves hitting their coastlines well in three to 14 hours in advance.

The destructive aftermath of the massive tsunami and the catastrophic death toll might have been reduced in India and Sri Lanka had they been part of the international warning system designed to warn coastal communities about potentially deadly waves heading their way.

The PTWC, that sounded the latest alert, has almost mastered the art of forecasting destructive waves. Its member countries receive specific early warnings with exhaustive data on tsunamis and can bank on an extensive network of seismic stations to locate potentially ‘‘tsunamigenic earthquakes’’ in near real-time.

The system is connected via satellite and telephone to nearly 100 water level stations throughout the Pacific that can be used to verify the generation and possible severity of a tsunami.

This international tsunami alert network was started in 1965, the year after tsunamis associated with an earthquake measuring 9.2 degrees struck Alaska in 1964. Among the member nations are all the major Pacific rim nations in North America , Asia and South America , was well as the Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand , France and Russia .

It's estimated that joining the tsunami warning system would cost around Rs 1,000 crore.

Canada-based Indian Tad Murty, one of the scientists who helped set up the Pacific Tsunami Warning System says key equipment and computer models could also have helped save thousands of lives in the event a tsunami strikes.

Immediately after an earthquake, computer models can calculate how fast the tidal waves will travel, as well as their amplitude, or height. According to Murty, in spite of speeds of 400-500 miles per hour, it is possible to make warnings practicable.

Murty has developed computer models specifically for the Indian Ocean , the very lack of which the Indian Seismological Central Receiving Station has been lamenting.

Now attached to the University of Manitoba , Winnipeg , he says, ‘‘I have tried several times with the Indian government, but they have said they do not have enough money to sustain a full-fledged system.’’ He added, ‘‘it is largely seen as a Pacific country problem.’’

The official explanation that Sunday’s tsunami was unique and indeed the general perception that they are a rare occurrence in this part of the world aren’t quite supported by the facts. In the past century itself, Mumbai was hit by tsunamis on November 28, 1945 . These occurred after an earthquake, which killed 4,000, off the Makran coast in Baluchistan , now in Pakistan . Tsunami waves triggered by the quake reached a height of more than 35 feet in the Kutch , but subsided to less than 7 feet by the time Mumbai was hit at 8.15 am .

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands , one of the areas worst affected by the December 26 tragedy, are also no stranger to localised tsunamis. On June 26, 1941 , the Andaman Islands were hit by the region’s strongest known earthquake and the resulting tsunamis invaded the Bay of Bengal and the Coromandel Coast , inflicting damage on Port Blair. An earthquake off North Andaman also caused tsunamis and killed two people in September 2002.

Yet, the Indian met office has its own explanations. ‘‘Unless we have computer models, we cannot issue a tsunami warning after every earthquake,’’ says R S Dattatrayam, director (seismology), Indian Meteorological Department. Citing the fact that every major earthquake in the ocean does not result in a tsunami, Dattatrayam says, ‘‘It is a question of science. We cannot issue a warning causing panic, unless we can establish it scientifically.’’ There was a major earthquake on June 26, 1941 , of a magnitude of 8.1 off the coast of the Andamans, but it did not trigger any tsunamis.

But the need for a permanent warning establishment has been voiced earlier. As recently as June 2004, a meeting of the Inter-Governmental Oceanographers’ Commission, a UN expert body, concluded, ‘‘The Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis.’’

Murty admits that a full-fledged early warning system -- that requires a seismograph, tide gauges and computer models -- would be ambitious for India to implement on its own. ‘‘It will be difficult for India to do it alone. They should get together with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Thailand, and come under the umbrella of the UN to set up this round-the-clock warning system,’’ he says.

Coastal dwellers in three south Indian states and two union territories faced the fury of the tsunami that struck South Asia on Sunday morning. Two days after the tragedy struck, the fate of thousands in remote areas remains unknown

Nearly 7,000 people have been killed by the tsunami that struck the south and southeastern coast of India , ravaging the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala as well as the union territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Pondicherry during the early hours of December 26.

The toll from the disaster continues to rise steadily as thousands of people are still reported missing and rescuers continue to recover bodies from the seas. Rescue and relief measures are continuing on a war footing with army and air force personnel engaged in recovering bodies and looking for the missing and injured. Several naval ships are also engaged in rescue operations.

Tamil Nadu, with a death toll of 3,400 followed by Andaman and Nicobar Islands with 3000 dead and another 2000 people still missing, are the regions worst-affected by the disaster.

Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu was the worst-hit district accounting for 2300 deaths, a significant number of them children. Besides women and children, most of the victims were the families of poor fishermen who were too weak to run or swim through the swirling waters. Hundreds of mud and thatch shanties lay in ruins amid household debris in Nagapattinam.

Nearly 500 pilgrims to the famous Christian shrine of Velankanni were also among the victims of the deadly tsunami waves in Nagapattinam.

Ten thousand people have been evacuated from the devastated town to relief centres where they are alos being given food. However, relief work in Nagapattinam was hindered due to the incessant rainfall in the region on the day following the disaster.

Kanyakumari, the famous tourist destination at India ’s southernmost tip. with 525 casualties, the fishing town of Cuddalore with 400 deaths and Tamil Nadu’s capital city of Chennai with 200 deaths are the other areas which were badly hit by the tsunami.

Due to its relative proximity to the epicentre of the earthquake the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, largely under water flowing the tsunami’s strike, was also hit badly. The disaster not only submerged the roads and houses of the urban dwellers but also washed away the homes of the tribals who have lived on the island for generations. Entire communities residing on the island are reported to have been washed away.

An entire airforce base in Car Nicobar island was wiped out and 27 members of the Indian Air Force were confirmed dead after their buildings were almost instantly destroyed by the waves, which were up to 20 feet high.

The full extent of the damage is not yet clear as communication lines, especially with the outlying islands, are still down. “The worst-affected islands are Car Nicobar and Great Nicobar which were totally cut off due to extensive inundation. Communication links and water supply have been disrupted in these areas,” said a statement issued by the Indian government.

In fact, district officials say that the fate of upto 30,000 inhabitants of the Andaman islands is unknown. "Villages are spread all over. There are 30,000 people that need to be accounted for. Some may have fled into the interior jungles or been swept to sea," said district official GC Gupta.

As relief and evacuation work more than 30 aftershocks on the islands since the giant waves struck have added to the misery of panic-stricken survivors. Two particularly strong tremors, measuring 6.9 and 5.1 on the Richter scale hit the islands on December 27.

The neighbouring union territory of Pondicherry on India 's east coast reported a loss of 377 lives, 265 in Karaikal -- an enclave surrounded by Tamil Nadu -- alone. "Death came from the sea. The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?" said Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave.

In the state of Andhra Pradesh more than people 200 people are feared dead. About 1,300 people including many fishermen and Hindu pilgrims who had gone for a ritual dip in the sea on the morning of the tragedy are still missing. “The high number of missing people means the toll was likely to be much higher than the current body count. The situation is quite grim,” said home minister Shivraj Patil.

In the southwestern state of Kerala at least 162 people have been killed by Sunday's disaster. People in coastal areas of the state have been on the move ever since the tragedy struck.

On December 28, there were reports of seawaters rising from some areas in Alappuzha, Kollam, Vaipeen, Thrissur and Kozhikode districts. In fact, experts at the Centre for Earth Science Studies had warned about the possibility of the sea waters rising again along the Kerala coast as an aftermath of the aftershocks of Sunday's earthquake and the resulting tsunamis.

The tsunami, which was unleashed in the Pacific Ocean following a massive earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale that occurred early Sunday morning on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, hit the south and east coastline of the country leaving a trail of death and massive destruction in its wake

The quake whose effects were felt all the way to the east coast of Africa , triggered giant waves that washed away entire communities in the coastal areas of seven south Asian countries, including the southeastern coasts of Sri Lanka and India

Upto 24,000 people were killed and thousands more injured across South and Southeast Asia after a tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake off the western coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra hit the coastlines of India , Sri Lanka , Thailand , Malaysia and the Maldives on December 26. With communications to remote areas cut off by flooding, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster, aid agencies said.

More than twenty-four hours after the deadly waves struck on Sunday morning thousands of people, mostly fishermen, are still missing and rescue workers report that bodies continue to be washed ashore. Most of the dead are women, children and fisherfolk. Tourists are also among the hundreds killed, since this time of year is peak tourist season on the islands of Indonesia , Thailand and the Maldives .

Measuring 9 degrees on the Richter scale, the world’s worst earthquake in 40 years and the fifth worst since the year 1900 resulted in seismic waves -- upto 10 metres high and travelling at upto 100 kms per hour -- that battered shorelines also washing away houses and boats, and displacing hundreds of thousands of people, mainly from coastal communities. The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 6,000 km away.

Sri Lanka , India and Indonesia suffered the highest death tolls but Thailand , Malaysia , Myanmar and Bangladesh were also hit by the surging walls of water. Across the affected areas, the military has been pressed in rescue and relief efforts.

Sri Lanka , the worst-affected country, where upto 12,000 casualties have been reported and a million people have been affected, has declared a state of national emergency and appealed to international agencies for aid. "We are not well equipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude because we have never known a disaster like this," Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga said.

About 15,000 military personnel and police have been deployed to cope with the island nation’s worst disaster in recorded history. The country has also appealed to neighbour India for help in search and rescue efforts.

"We are getting reports from the main towns, but there are still areas which have been cut off,” said one official. The southern coastal town of Galle , a major industrial hub famed for its historic fort, had been submerged by a 30-foot wave. Sections of the railway from the south of the country to Colombo were a tangle of metal or had been swept away and the Colombo-Galle road, a major transport link, had also been cut off by flooding.

The United Nations’ children’s agency Unicef said that many of the victims in Sri Lanka had been children. "At least one third of the reported dead are children as the beaches and the coastal areas are home to thousands of people, living in makeshift huts and houses where children play and help their families," a Unicef spokeswoman said.

The tourist islands and beaches of southern and western Thailand also lay in the path of the tsunami that had killed up to 839 people and caused injuries to 5,000 more. The worst-affected area was the province of Phang Nga , where 528 people are now known to have died. The picturesque island of Phi Phi , is reported to have been devastated. At least 200 tourists and islanders were airlifted from the island by helicopter, but scores more are still missing.

On the resort island of Phuket , hotels and restaurants were wrecked and boats were rammed into buildings. “We have had 68 bodies here since this began this morning but now even more are coming," a nurse at one morgue said on December 27.

In Indonesia , where the giant quake occurred, more than 5,000 people are reported dead so far, most of them in Sumatra ’s Aceh province. Many of those killed are said to be children and the elderly, who were swept away by the surging tides.

In northern Indonesia , nearest the epicentre of the undersea quake, soldiers were sent to recover bodies from trees where they were dumped by huge waves, while divers recovered bodies from the sea. The search for survivors is likely to be hindered by the dense jungles that cover Aceh's hills, where many are likely to have fled. Getting aid and supplies to Aceh will be especially difficult since the province is under military rule as the Indonesian army fights separatist rebels.

A total of 65 strong aftershocks have jolted Indonesia since the epic earthquake that has already killed thousands.

In India , coastal communities in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala as well as the union territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Pondicherry have also been devastated by the massive waves that hit the eastern coast of India on Sunday morning. A total of 7,000 people have been killed so far.

In the island nation of Maldives , 30 lives were claimed and two-thirds of the Maldivian capital of Male was flooded, following the invasion by the giant waves.

In the Southeast Asian nation of Malaysia , the tsunami has claimed 50 lives so far and injured upto 200 more. Most of the dead were in the holiday resort of Penang .

In Myanmar , 36 people in Pyinzalu Island in the Irrawady River delta died as a result of the natural disaster, while in Bangladesh two lives were lost as massive waves swept the shoreline.

The United Nations has warned of disease epidemics if local agencies and officials are unable to cope with the health emergencies in the aftermath of the world’s worst human tragedy in recent times.“This may be the worst natural disaster in recent history because it is affecting so many heavily populated coastal areas ... so many vulnerable communities," said the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland.

The people of Assam are now experiencing the effects of prolonged flooding -- waterborne diseases, drinking water and food shortages, the threat from snakes and rats that have entered waterlogged homes and the indifferent relief efforts of an apathetic administration

Facing a scarcity of baby food Assam has sought baby food aid from international agencies, as the death toll in one of Assam’s worst floods mounts to 151. An estimated 15% of the nearly 2 million people living in makeshift relief camps set up by the government in Assam are children, state health minister Bhumidhar Barman said.

“We are providing rice, lentils and salt for adults as relief. But we are short of baby food and the situation in some areas is really disturbing,” Barman, a medical doctor himself, explained. “We are in desperate need of baby food and request aid agencies to come to the rescue of hundreds of thousands of children trapped in the devastating floods,” he told news reporters.

Hundreds of women in Juria village in eastern Assam, about 150 km from the state capital Guwahati, say the authorities and aid agencies are oblivious of the food requirements of children during floods. “We don’t want vitamin syrups, we want baby food packets,” an angry Khalida Begum told a team of healthcare workers that visited the area.

Infants are not the only ones going hungry in the state. Mothers are force-feeding older children rice boiled in fetid water. “We got some rice and salt from government officials. Our children are starving, but then what to do? We are feeding them just boiled rice, laced with salt, at times forcefully as we have no other option,” says Nal Banu, a mother of two teenage children.

Food apart, the people are demanding the authorities provide them with water-purifying tablets. “When in distress, we are forced to give dirty floodwater to our children. We heard that something called halogen tablets (water-purifying tablets) have reached the state from some aid agencies. But then where are the medicines,” asks Sreemanta Das, another villager.

Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi says efforts are underway to get baby food and other essentials, including halogen tablets and medical aid, to the flood-affected areas. “Efforts are going on, on a war-footing. But then, in this kind of a devastating flood, we understand we cannot satisfy each and every affected family or village.”

Waterborne diseases pose a huge threat to the health of the people of Assam. Health teams have already treated 82,000 people suffering from various ailments. “We are really worried about vibrio-cholera breaking out in some areas, going by last year’s experience in which at least two persons died of the disease,” says Barman. “Precautionary measures are being taken with experts warning us of an outbreak of other diseases like typhoid, jaundice, dysentery and gastroenteritis.”

More than 12 million people in the northeast have been displaced, and up to 135 persons killed, in floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains since mid-June. An Assam government statement on July 25 said the flooding had affected all 27 districts in the state, and had washed away about 400,000 houses in 11,000 villages.

Witnesses say two farmers in Juria committed suicide, unable to bear the sight of their damaged crops. “The two farmers, both of them middle-aged, hanged themselves almost simultaneously.” Both had earlier said they were doomed and life had no meaning for them as their entire paddy crop had been washed away, says Kutubuddin Ahmed, a village elder.

As the floodwaters slowly begin to recede, those who are lucky to have survived the devastation brought on by the overflowing Brahmaputra are returning to their homes where they have to contend with poisonous snakes and rats that have taken shelter in waterlogged houses and in relief camps.

Morigaon, about 70 km east of Assam’s capital Guwahati, is among the worst hit districts. “The fear of snakebite is so serious that people are now scared to sleep at night and are terrified to even clean their waterlogged homes, with snakes of all shapes and sizes moving around,” says Suren Das, a villager.

Health authorities have asked people to remain vigilant. “We have supplied anti-snake venom injections to all district hospitals, with the risk of snakebite likely once the floodwaters recede,” said Barman. “Officially, we don’t have any reports of snakebite so far but then many cases simply go unreported with people taking recourse to indigenous methods of treating such things,” the minister added.

Source: Indo-Asian News Service, July 27, 2004
             www.newindpress, July 26, 2004

As Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh continue to reel under heavy floods, one of the worst the northeast has ever experienced, the chief minister of Tripura asks for help from the Centre

With overflowing rivers inundating several parts of the capital Agartala and cutting the state off from the rest of the country, the chief minister of the northeastern state of Tripura has appealed to the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh to ensure the airdropping of essential commodities to its desperate people.

Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar asked for assistance in a letter, following a high-level meeting attended by food minister Gopal Das, the chief secretary, food and transport commissioners and officials of the Border Road Task Force (BRTF).

About 5,000 people have been rendered homeless as parts of the capital were submerged by floodwaters from the Bhairav river. Also inundated are over 20 villages close to the international border, says Shambu Nama, Agartala’s sub-divisional magistrate. People are sheltering in schools and in government buildings, he adds. They have been given financial assistance of Rs 90 per family.

Das told reporters that incessant rain had caused the submergence of National Highway No 44 at Badarpur in Assam. As a result, prices of essential commodities including petrol were rising. The authorities have introduced a special permit system for the sale of petrol in specified quantities to prevent black marketing, official sources say.

This year’s floods have been the worst since 1950. But their effect is being felt more thanks to the negligence of various agencies responsible for maintaining river embankments.

Also, funds meant for flood control have allegedly been diverted; grants for flood relief have not reached the victims.

Large parts of Arunachal Pradesh are also under water. Flash floods in the Lohit and Changlang districts have submerged the homes of more than 10,000 people belonging to the Chakma tribe. While the surging Bareng and Kamlang rivers have affected three Chakma villages in Lohit district, several villages including Moitripur, Gautampur, Shantipur, Jytotipur and Dhumpani Dhumpather have been inundated in Changlang district by water from the Nao-Dihing river.

Source: The Hindu, July 26, 2004
             PTI, July 25, 2004
             The Pioneer, July 25, 2004

Hunger is stalking a vast majority of the 11.5 million people rendered homeless by floods in the northeast, while some look to make a killing from the food shortage

Swirling river waters have affected food supplies in flood-hit Assam, as roads remain cut off by mudslides, swollen rivers and collapsed bridges. Helicopters and boats ferrying food packets are the only source of food for hundreds of people.

Driven from their homes, battling the elements as the rains continue, and facing the prospect of disease, hunger has become the latest in a list of problems the people of Assam have to contend with.

“We have had virtually nothing to eat, not even clean drinking water. We are forced to make do with the dirty floodwaters for survival,” says Hamida Banu, a middle-aged woman.

Hundreds of kilometres of roads and rail track have been submerged by the floods, cutting the supply of essential commodities and pushing up prices. There are also reports of hoarding by traders and shopkeepers, something the local authorities have warned traders about. The police have said they will cancel business licences or impose fines on traders who stock up on food items. “We are sending out a strict warning to all traders not to hoard food items and take advantage of the flood situation,” says Hiren Nath, a senior police officer in Guwahati.

But, local residents are finding it difficult to cope. “Prices of food items have gone up at least three times, and housewives like me are finding it just impossible to manage our monthly budget,” says Zuri Mech.

Across the region, thousands of people jostle every day to grab food packets containing puffed rice, molasses and plain rice handed out by relief officials in boats and dropped by helicopter.

On July 24, a month after devastating floods submerged almost the entire state, hundreds of people in Assam’s Hojai area, 150 km from the capital Guwahati, were seen rushing towards a hovering Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter to grab at food packets. IAF crewmembers could do little to prevent the rush. One of them said: “A packet can help a family survive for at least two days.”

There are hundreds of villages like Hojai that can be reached only by helicopter. Nearly half of Assam’s total land area remains inundated in the waters of the Brahmaputra. Rising waters have washed away roads; decaying carcasses of cows and buffaloes poke through the mud in many areas, spreading disease.

Many stranded villagers have expressed anger and frustration at their plight, accusing the government of doing little to provide relief. “People will die of hunger and disease,” complains Haider Hussain, a village elder in Morigaon district in eastern Assam. “Hundreds of children are crying for food,” he says.

Assam’s chief minister Tarun Gogoi says: “We have been dispatching food supplies and medical help, but I know it is not physically possible to reach out to every village.”

Meanwhile, the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) has said it will soon be distributing kitchen utensils, plastic buckets, bedsheets, towels, cotton blankets, saris and assorted medicines to Assam’s flood victims.

At least 118 people have been killed in floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains in five of the seven northeastern Indian states, since mid-June. Floodwaters have washed away whole clusters of villages, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake.

Source: IANS, July 24, 2004
             Reuters, July 24, 2004

The failure of the monsoon and the impending drought have triggered panic in Orissa as more and more people leave the state in search of a livelihood

The state of Orissa, where 90% of the population is dependent on agriculture, is once again experiencing the phenomenon of mass migration as people leave their homes in search of a livelihood. This year, the scale of the exodus is causing some concern with railway stations in western Orissa witnessing long queues of outbound labourers.

The region’s economic backbone has been broken from two consecutive years of drought. This year too, erratic rainfall has led to the drying up of cultivable land in the poverty-stricken districts of Kalahandi, Bolangir and Nuapara in western Orissa.

Experts fear Orissa’s farming community is no longer in a position to sustain further losses by taking up cultivation under the trying circumstances. This has led to an unusually high number of farm labourers and marginal farmers leaving the state for neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.

Chhattisgarh already has a large population of migrant Oriyas working as rickshaw-pullers and brick kiln labourers. The size of this floating population is likely to grow over the next few months.

Over the years, the state government has done little to improve the drought situation and prevent the migration of people. Except for one major irrigation scheme in Kalahandi, no other irrigation infrastructure project in the vast drought-prone belt encompassing Kalahandi, Bolangir and Nuapara has been initiated. The entire area depends on the rains for agriculture. Many of the existing medium and small-scale irrigation schemes here do not function.

Lack of drinking water is further aggravating the situation in the villages of western Orissa, where people have to trek miles as waterbodies are drying up and hand pumps and tubewells lie defunct. Although the people here realise the importance of water-harvesting structures, such initiatives remain largely NGO-driven.

Source: The Pioneer, July 21, 2004

With almost the entire state under water, heavy rains continue to hamper attempts to provide rescue and relief to nearly 11.5 million affected people

Now into their 28th day in Assam, floods continue to take their toll on life and property in the state with five more people, including three children, falling victim to their fury. The situation remains grim with water levels in the Brahmaputra and its tributaries continuing to rise, breaching several embankments. Parts of the capital Guwahati remain submerged after the Brahmaputra burst its banks.

The death toll in the current wave of floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains in Assam now stands at 114; more than 11.5 million people in 26 of the state’s 27 districts have been displaced.

Over 23 lakh hectares of land have been affected, with nearly eight lakh hectares of crop area damaged in more than 9,000 villages. Around 400,000 houses have been damaged. The authorities have set up 1,762 relief camps housing nearly 2 million people.

A police spokesperson said three children drowned late on July 21 in Assam’s Kamrup district while trying to escape the floodwaters on a bamboo raft. Two others died in separate incidents when their boat capsized in the eastern Assam district of Dhemaji.

To add to the misery of marooned residents, an outbreak of waterborne diseases has been reported from various parts of the state. “We have rushed medical teams with adequate stocks of medicines to vulnerable areas where there were cases of diseases like diarrhoea breaking out,” said Assam’s health minister Bhumidhar Barman.

Several states in the northeast remain cut off, with mudslides blocking highways.

With water levels in the Brahmaputra subsiding slightly over the past few days, the situation in Guwahati has improved marginally although low-lying areas remain inundated.

Lokopriyo Gopinath International Airport is under threat of inundation by an embankment that was breached in the Palashbari area on the outskirts of Guwahati. Although water has not entered the airport, several areas near it have been submerged.

Meanwhile, road links between lower and upper Assam remain disrupted with National Highway 37 inundated at Dharamtul and Nellie in Morigaon district, which is entirely under water. This has hampered the landing of rescue helicopters, so only boats are being used.

The army is still working round the clock to provide rescue and relief to marooned citizens.

Animals have also been affected by the floods. Almost the entire area of the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, famous for its one-horned rhino population, is under water. The situation in neighbouring Nagaon district is also grim with the river Kopili flowing above the danger mark. Several villages here have been submerged.

Rail communications between Guwahati and the Lumding section of the North East Frontier Railway have been interrupted due to heavy flooding. Trains have either been cancelled or rescheduled. According to a railway spokesman, long-distance trains bound for Tinsukia and Dibrugarh have been terminated at Guwahati station due to heavy flooding between Haparmukh and Hojai stations.

“All the facts and figures with various departments go to show that the flooding this year is one of the worst in living memory. Maybe it is the worst, after the devastating floods following the great Indian earthquake in 1950,” says A K Mitra, additional chief engineer at Assam’s water resources department. “I have been in the department working in various capacities since the past 30 years. My personal experience says this is one of the worst floods.”

The extent of the flooding is measured in terms of both water level and damage caused to property, and the total land area covered by the floodwaters, says Mitra. “For example, the last time the Brahmaputra river crossed the danger level in Assam’s main city was in 1988. But, on Wednesday, the city surpassed that level by at least 10 cm.”

Source: NDTV, July 22, 2004
             IANS, July 22, 2004

With large parts of the country experiencing a poor monsoon, the prime minister says the government will spare no effort in providing relief to overcome the fallout of a possible drought

With a majority of the country, especially the northwestern region, having so far experienced a poor monsoon Indian prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh said the government had decided to increase foodgrain stocks in areas of deficient rainfall. He also promised a weekly review of the government’s plan to cope with a possible drought.

A committee consisting of representatives from the concerned ministries and the relief commissioners of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa has been constituted, Dr Singh said. Its chairperson is the cabinet secretary for agriculture.

Speaking in Parliament on July 21, the prime minister said he had personally reviewed the situation with the ministers and secretaries concerned and had asked the cabinet secretary to review the situation on a weekly basis. The first monitoring meeting had been conducted on July 13, Dr Singh said.

“I would like to assure the members that the government shall spare no efforts in providing all possible assistance to the people in the eventuality of a drought,” the prime minister assured the Lok Sabha.

Dr Singh said the ministry of agriculture was keeping a close watch on the situation, adding that government officers had reviewed drought relief preparedness in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab. He added that the Telangana and Rayalseema regions of Andhra Pradesh, Vidarbha in Maharashtra, western Madhya Pradesh, western Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand were experiencing a “rain deficiency of 25%-51%”.

“The crop-sowing season in all these states extends up to the end of July with delayed rainfall. The precise extent of unsown area can only be assessed after the end of July,” Dr Singh said. “Therefore, assessment for employment generation under drought relief measures would be considered after July.”

Between June 1 and July 14, 16 of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions in the country had reported deficient or scanty rainfall; 20 received normal/excess rainfall.

On the measures taken to tackle a possible water shortage, the prime minister said: “All the state governments have drawn up their plans to ensure drinking water supply in areas affected by deficient/scanty rain in the eventuality of a shortage of water.”

In his statement to Parliament, Dr Singh also stated that the revision of norms relating to drought assistance to states deserved to be considered in the light of prolonged calamities.

Regarding Maharashtra, the prime minister said that for 2003-04 the total assistance given to the state to deal with declared drought-affected areas was Rs 208.14 crore from the Centre’s share of the calamities relief fund, Rs 242.79 crore from the national calamities contingency fund and seven lakh tonnes of foodgrain amounting to Rs 700 crore.

“Subsequently, the state government submitted yet another memorandum seeking additional assistance of Rs 914.97 crore based on the relaxation of norms,” Dr Singh said. He added that the high-level committee consisting of the concerned ministries was considering the memorandum. “If the committee recommends a higher allocation, it will be considered,” he said.

Source: The Financial Express, July 22, 2004
             Business Standard, July 22, 2004
             www.newindpress.com, July 22, 2004

Suffering its worst floods in more than a decade, the situation in Bihar has worsened in the last three days

There are reports of more people drowning in the Motihari, Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga districts of Bihar, where the Burhi Gandak, Kamla Balan and Kosi rivers have caused widespread destruction. The death toll from the devastating weeklong flooding has risen to 59. The situation has been made worse with incessant rains since July 15.

More than 300,000 people have been rendered homeless or marooned by the floods. In Darbhanga, the district worst affected, both road and telecommunications links have been down since July 12. There is no power either.

Nearly 600 school children in Pachaadi, in Darbhanga, were marooned for five days after their school was submerged by floodwaters.

Torrential rain in a number of districts further aggravated the situation created by the discharge of more than three lakh cusecs of water through the Bagmati, Kosi and Sone barrages situated in the foothills of neighbouring Nepal.

With the inundation of railway tracks and roads by surging waters from the Ganga’s tributaries that originate in Nepal, the headquarters of five districts in the state remain cut off from the state capital Patna.

The Indian army and airforce have been pressed into service to help the local administration rescue the marooned and airdrop food packets into flood-hit areas. Many people here, as in the rest of South Asia, are complaining about poor relief and the state government’s slow response in dealing with the crisis. For instance, the Bihar government appealed to the federal government for Rs 10 billion in flood aid only on July 15.

“People are forced to live on roofs and even in treetops, but there has been no move by the government to evacuate them or give them relief material,” says Umadhar Prasad Singh, an independent legislator. One media correspondent noticed thousands of homeless people spending the night huddled under plastic sheeting, without food or drinking water, more than a week after the emergency began.

In Darbhanga town there are reports of hungry people plundering grain stores.

Source: www.ndtv.com, July 15, 2004
             AP, July 15, 2004
             Reuters, July 16, 2004
            www.bbcnews.com, July 15, 2004

With 29 of the country’s 64 districts already under water and the flood situation worsening, waterborne diseases are starting to spread

Thirteen more people are reported to have died in floods that have covered vast areas of low-lying Bangladesh. Half of this low-lying country is under water.

Bangladesh’s weather forecasting centre said that in the next few days, water pouring down from the north was likely to submerge low-lying areas of the national capital, Dhaka, a city of 10 million surrounded by three rivers. Already 29 of the country’s 64 districts are under water.

To add to the people’s woes, waterborne diseases are beginning to break out among people marooned by the floodwaters and deprived of fresh water supplies. Wells are inundated, forcing people to drink dirty river water.

An outbreak of diarrhoea killed one man and affected 300 others as relief workers battled on Wednesday to deliver medicines and clean drinking water to people living on embankments, in schools and in boats in the worst-hit northeast region.

Diseases have also broken out in overcrowded flood shelters because of shortages of food and water.

Bangladesh officials say the floods have destroyed one million acres (400,000 hectares) of standing crop, damaged 400 schools and washed away 2,000 km of roads and more than 100 bridges.

Although agriculture minister M K Anwar said the damage would not affect overall food output, in one of the world’s poorest nations, it “might have crippled many farmers, and the government would assist them in recovering their losses”.

Source: www.alertnet.org, July 16, 2004
              www.ndtv.com, July 15, 2004
              www.bbcnews.com, July 16, 2004

Incessant rains have hampered rescue and relief efforts in India’s flood-affected northeastern states, as the death toll continues to mount. The region has been cut off from the rest of the country for more than a week

Following heavy overnight rains on July 15, upto 80 more people were reported missing in separate incidents in India and Bangladesh. The same day, water levels in the Brahmaputra rose, submerging half of Guwahati, Assam’s capital city. Six people died in a series of landslides in and around the city.

Two more people were reported to have drowned when their boat capsized in Assam’s Dhemaji district, bringing the number of dead in the state to 50.

Twenty-four of Assam’s 27 districts are under water. Of the estimated 8-10 million people who have been affected by the devastating floods in South Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal and India), five million have been displaced in Assam alone.

The current wave of flooding, one of the worst in recent years, has affected more than 6,500 villages, damaged over 400,000 houses and five lakh hectares of cropland. Officials said on July 15 that 9 million people have been affected by heavy rain in the region since late-June.

“The floods this time are really very serious. We don’t have anything left, not even food,” says Narayan Gharphulia, a villager in Nalbari district in western Assam. “Unless we get urgent food supplies, we are doomed,” she adds.

Indian army soldiers have been engaged in relief and rescue operations in the state, airlifting thousands of marooned villagers to safety. “So far, we have rescued about 5,000 people, besides helping villagers with food and medical supplies,” says an army spokesman.

On July 16, a 20-member team of paramilitary divers and experts belonging to the disaster management wing of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) arrived in Guwahati from Hyderabad to help in the rescue operations, state officials said. “The CISF personnel are specially trained to work in disaster situations and are capable of reaching the worst-hit areas where normal rescue personnel cannot venture,” said a senior CISF official.

Earlier in the week, the central government released Rs 181 crore to the Assam government towards an immediate relief fund. Rs 54 crore was from the government’s calamity relief fund and Rs 46 crore from the national contingency fund. The Union ministry of water resources released Rs 81 crore for short-term flood-control measures.

Meanwhile, in the adjoining state of Arunachal Pradesh, heavy landslides and floods have cut several districts off from the rest of the country.

Torrential rains also triggered landslides in Tripura and Manipur. Road links between the two states and the rest of India remain closed. Floods and landslides have also affected the neighbouring Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

In Meghalaya, another northeastern state, over 4,000 people in 32 villages have been affected by flooding in the Garo hills. Deputy commissioner of the west Garo hills district, S Jagannathan, says that although no loss of life has been reported, standing crop estimated to be worth Rs 75 lakh has been damaged in the floods. Livestock has also been swept away.

The flood toll in the northeast has risen to 71 in the three weeks since late June.

Source: IANS, July 16, 2004
             www.ndtv.com, July 15, 2004
             www.ndtv.com, July 14, 2004
             Reuters, July 16, 2004
             The Statesman, July 13, 2004

With the monsoon doing a vanishing act in parts of the country, drought looms large over many states

The prospect of drought seems almost a reality in Telangana and Rayalseema in Andhra Pradesh, Vidarbha and Marathwada in Maharashtra, western Orissa, western Madhya Pradesh and eastern Rajasthan, with almost no rainfall reported in these regions in the three weeks since June 23. The government has begun drawing up contingency plans to tackle the possible worst-case scenario.

Telangana and Vidarbha are the worst affected -- crops sown here after the first few showers in early June are already damaged. With more than 50% of the total cultivable land in Vidarbha requiring re-sowing, crop failure, mounting debt and a prolonged dry spell have already taken their toll on the farmers. Fourteen farmer suicides have been reported from the region in the last two months; one farmer, unable to bear the sight of his wilting crop, suffered a heart attack.

Yavatmal district in Vidarbha is the worst hit, with cotton and soyabean cultivators suffering heavy losses. Around nine farmers in Yavatmal have committed suicide in the last 15 days. “I have already spent Rs 12,000 on two sowings on my 20-acre farm. If it doesn’t rain in another two days, I will lose all the money,” says Santoshrao Mahajan, a farmer from Ralegaon, Yavatmal’s cotton bowl.

So far, around 4 lakh hectares of kharif crop in the Vidarbha and Marathwada regions are on the verge of drying up due to a 20-day dry spell in June and a two-week-long dry spell in July.

Orissa, where 90% of the population is dependent on agriculture, is another region that’s waking up to the reality of impending drought. Erratic rainfall has led to cultivable land drying up in the poverty-stricken districts of Koraput, Kalahandi and Bolangir in western Orissa, with the latter being the worst affected.

With just three days of rainfall in June, cultivation in Bolangir has begun only on 9% of the total agricultural land. Of the 345,475 hectares of land under kharif cultivation, agricultural activities have begun only on 38,491 hectares.

In Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, farmers have sown 20% of the soyabean crop. Thanks to a delay in the rains, farmers have been asked to wait before any further sowing.

Meanwhile, the 2002 drought handbook brought out by the central government is proving a great help to administrators as it lists alternative crops that may be planted if it does not rain till August 15. The plan also lists crop varieties that may be used in each of the vulnerable regions, during times of drought.

The information on drought relief and cultivation strategies is being disseminated through agro-advisories, krishi vigyan kendras, the mass media and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research website.

“We don’t want to be caught napping like in 2002. We have sent teams to all these states and they are expected to return any day now. Contingency measures will be drawn up for these areas,” says Radha Singh, secretary, ministry of agriculture. The actual damage to the land from loss of moisture will be known only when teams return from the affected regions.

Besides alternative cropping patterns, the contingency plan also includes food-for-work programmes and increased supply of seeds to these regions.

Source: The Indian Express, July 15, 2004
             The Indian Express, July 13, 2004
             The Asian Age, July 12, 2004

In the worst floods in the region in over a decade, hundreds of people across India, Bangladesh and Nepal have drowned or been killed. Millions have been rendered homeless

The states of Bihar and Assam have appealed to the central government for help, following devastating floods brought on by heavy monsoon rains over the past few days. Since the second week of July, floods caused by incessant rains have displaced upto five million people in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bihar and Assam as well as Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. A dam that burst in neighbouring Bhutan has swamped lower Assam and cut road and rail connections to the entire northeastern region.

At least 100 people are feared dead in India after the river Brahmaputra broke its banks over the weekend of July 10-11.The worst monsoon flooding in years has forced more than two million people from their homes in Assam, officials said on July 12. The death toll since this latest round of flooding began has mounted to at least 22, state officials in the capital Guwahati say.

Floodwaters have swept away thousands of bamboo and straw homes, as well as power lines and more than two dozen small dams. Thousands of people were stranded on rooftops, waiting for military helicopters to rescue them and provide food. Many died from snakebite, as rising waters drove snakes into their homes.

More than half of Assam is submerged under water with the Brahmaputra and at least three of its tributaries overflowing. The situation was further aggravated when, following a breach in the Kurisho hydel project on Tsatistu lake in Bhutan, Bhutanese authorities took the decision to release excess water from the dam on July 11. Water from the reservoir began flowing into the Manas and Beki rivers devastating Barpeta, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and Nalbari districts in lower Assam, official sources say.

Kalitakuchi in the Hajo sub-division, in Assam’s Kamrup district, has been submerged under water for the second time this year. This time, waters from the Puthimari river which breached its embankments threaten to stay around a lot longer.

On Sunday, the army rescued more than 700 marooned people from Samdhara and Kulkami villages in Sonitpur district, as the heavy downpour triggered landslides in south Assam’s Barak valley, affecting road, rail and air traffic. At least six airforce helicopters have been deployed to rescue marooned people, most of them women and children trapped on rooftops.

On July 10, 40 villagers including women and children, who were packed into a wooden boat, drowned. There were no survivors.

Thousands of people and vehicles were stranded on National Highway 31 after floodwaters washed away a bridge near Karaibari, a village in Kokrajhar district, 270 km west of Guwahati.

Assam’s chief minister Tarun Gogoi has announced a Rs 60 lakh relief package for flood victims. “We are experiencing the worst ever flooding in recent years,” he said. “Some 400,000 houses were damaged in floods in 18 of the state’s 24 districts…The approximate loss caused by the floods is estimated at about Rs 10 billion.”

In Majuli, a third of the residents of the world’s oldest river island (slowly disappearing due to soil erosion) had to flee their homes and take shelter in makeshift tarpaulin tents. Thousands of homes and buildings on the 800 sq km island located in the Brahmaputra river in Assam have been flooded since July 9, and locals have moved to tents pitched on muddy embankments. Nearly 150,000 people live on the river island.

Floods also threatened 20 monasteries established by a 17th century Hindu philosopher and saint of Assam, Sri Sankardeva.

On Saturday, fearing flooding, thousands of people abandoned their homes in panic to spend the night on a highway along with their cattle, in Bongaigaon district close to the Indian border, said local administrator G K Kalita. “The threat persists as it sometimes takes upto 20 hours for water from Bhutan to flow into neighbouring Assam state,” Kalita said.

Local weather officials in Assam have forecast more rains over the next 24 hours and say all the state’s main rivers are in danger of overflowing.

On July 12, the flood situation in Bihar worsened with two of the eight flood-affected districts -- Sitamarhi and Darbhanga in north Bihar -- submerged by the swollen Bagmati and Adhwara rivers. Train services have come to a halt and road traffic has been suspended.

On July 11, seven people died in Sitamarhi district and four others were crushed under their collapsing homes in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district, said Upendra Sharma, deputy secretary in the state’s relief and rehabilitation department.

Rain-fed rivers have ravaged eight districts -- Sitamarhi, Banka, Supaul, Sheohar, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur, West Champaran and Khagaria -- and affected 500,000 people.

The army and paramilitary forces have been pressed into action in parts of Bihar. Jawans provided relief to the worst-hit Sitamarhi district and, using boats and helicopters, evacuated marooned residents from the area, which has been cut off from the rest of the state.

Over the weekend, train services in Bihar came to a grinding halt as surging floodwaters inundated more areas, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to take shelter in makeshift relief camps.

Landslides caused by heavy rains in mountainous Arunachal Pradesh have blocked roads and washed away bridges. The local weather office says heavy rains are expected to continue in the northeast for at least another day.

Meanwhile, a third of Bangladesh has been affected with three million people marooned, thousands more searching for shelter and several people killed.

In Nepal, flash floods have killed at least 36 people over the past week.

Source: Reuters, July 12, 2004
              NDTV, July 12, 2004
             www.bbcnews.com, July 12, 2004
             www.alertnet.org, July 12, 2004
             AP, July 12, 2004
              NDTV, July 11, 2004
             Reuters, July 11, 2004

In a tiny state unprepared for floods, the bursting of a dam has caused havoc

Flash floods caused by rising water levels in the river Bordikai, in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, have washed away between 20-30 people in Seppa district and driven 15,000 villagers from their homes.

Officials say floodwaters also inundated over 15 villages in the Sijusha area and Sonitpur district in neighbouring Assam. As a result, Sijusha is now totally cut off from the rest of the country.

Victims trapped inside trucks were swept away as they were working in a quarry next to the river, on the night of July 5. Local officials say water levels in the river rose by several feet after a sluice gate collapsed. This caused immense damage in the Sijusha area of eastern Kameng district, washing away at least five trucks that were collecting rocks in the river.

The cause of the flash floods is not yet known, though ecologists fear they may have resulted from a burst dam on the Tibetan side. According to an expert on northeastern Indian rivers, Dulal Goswami, massive landslides in Tibet often block the normal course of rivers. Once the blocks -- loosely called dams -- give way, water gushes downstream at great speed, causing havoc along the way.

Torrential rains over the last three days have also led to flooding in the district that borders China’s Tibet region. About 10,000 villagers were moved to higher ground by the authorities in the two states.

“There could be many more casualties, as reports of people missing or drowned in the area have been pouring in thick and fast,” said a police official in the state capital Itanagar. “The area is totally cut off and in many places the water level is as high as five metres above normal.”

The floods have taken local authorities completely by surprise. “The area being hilly, floods are quite unprecedented,” said Seppa district magistrate Y D Thongchi. “The situation is really devastating and we have been unable to carry out any relief and rescue operations so far due to the floods…Rows and rows of huts were washed away; hundreds of cattle and livestock drowned. The exact loss of human life will be ascertained only after the floodwaters recede,” he added.

The authorities have called in the Indian army for rescue operations. “Civil authorities in the area are not equipped to deal with such a crisis situation, so we have requisitioned the army for immediate help,” Thongchi said.

Forest officials say the floods also put elephants at the Sijusha Elephant Project and the Nameri forest area at grave risk.

Source: www.bbcnews.com, July 6, 2004
             www.newindpress.com, July 6, 2004

The project’s aim is to make real-time data on soil content, groundwater levels and weather conditions in villages available at the state drought-monitoring centre

The project’s aim is to make real-time data on soil content, groundwater levels and weather conditions in villages available at the state drought-monitoring centre


In an attempt to compile data on drought from where it actually originates, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) proposes to set up a network of monitoring stations for drought control, starting at the village level in the form of village resource centres.

Speaking at a national workshop on ‘Drought Management -- Space Inputs’, in Bangalore on June 19, ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said the existing network of a few meteorological centres did not provide real data from the villages where drought actually manifests itself. Scientific monitoring of the situation calls for data on soil content, groundwater levels, weather conditions, etc, directly from these villages, explained Nair.

The village resource centres, whose infrastructure cost is estimated at Rs 10 lakh each, will be manned by locals or non-governmental organisations suitably trained by ISRO. They will be connected to a district resource centre, which, in turn, will be connected to a state monitoring centre.

The systems at these centres will be simple enough to allow local personnel in charge to operate them much as one would operate a television set, said the ISRO chairman.

A hundred such stations are likely to be in place by the end of 2004, in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The first of the village resource centres can be expected to be in place within the next four months.

Source: Deccan Herald, June 22, 2004

The number of people displaced by a week of massive flooding now stands at 330,000, with Dhemaji in Assam being the worst affected district

Six more people have drowned in continuing flooding in India’s northeast, which has claimed 24 lives in the past one week. Flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains in the region have displaced up to 330,000 people.

A police spokesman said two people were drowned when their boat capsized in Assam’s north Lakhimpur district, 400 km east of the state’s main city, Guwahati. Four more died in separate drowning incidents in the western Nalbari and eastern Morigaon districts of Assam, on June 26.

The districts of Dhemaji, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Nagaon, Morigaon, Kamrup, Nalbari, Barpeta and Dhubri continue to be in the grip of floods. “The situation is very critical, with at least 11 of the state’s 23 districts hit by the first wave of floods that began on Tuesday,” Assam’s flood control minister Nurzamal Sarkar said.

In the worst affected Dhemaji district, erosion at Rekha Chapori began at an alarming rate forcing people to move to safer areas. A revenue department spokesman said up to 350 villages were under water, displacing some 240,000 people so far.

In the adjoining state of Tripura, around 90,000 people are sheltering in makeshift relief camps after floodwaters inundated their homes.

A Central Water Commission bulletin said the Brahmaputra river and its tributaries were flowing above the danger level, at many places, although the situation is gradually steadying.

Forest authorities at the Manas National Park, a tiger reserve in western Assam, were on the alert after floodwaters from neighbouring Bhutan breached an embankment and entered parts of the sanctuary. “We rescued some animals that were hit by the gushing waters and later released them into safer areas of the park. The damage was not severe as the floodwaters have since receded,” says the park’s director Abhijit Rabha.

For hundreds of people affected by the flooding, the agony continues. “For the past three days we have been staying on a mud embankment after floodwaters submerged our village,” says Munirul Rahman, a schoolteacher in Hajo, a village on the outskirts of Guwahati. “Only people who suffer the pangs of floods realise the misery associated with them.”

Two children drowned in Assam, while one was swept away by swirling floodwaters in adjoining Tripura on the night of July 23, local officials say. In Mizoram, three members of a family were killed in their hut, on July 22, following landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains.

In Assam, up to 75 villages were submerged with the state’s main river the Brahmaputra bursting its banks and swollen rivers from the adjoining kingdom of Bhutan entering the area. “The overall flood situation remains very grim, with the Brahmaputra rising menacingly across the state,” says Assam’s flood control minister Nurzamal Sarkar.

At least six of Assam’s 23 districts have been affected in the first wave of flooding, uprooting some 80,000 people.

A Central Water Commission bulletin quotes the Brahmaputra river as having crossed the danger level in 12 main channels; it is flowing above the warning mark in seven vulnerable areas.

“The Brahmaputra is showing a rising trend all along its course and will continue to further rise in the next 24 hours,” says the flood bulletin. “In some areas, the river is flowing up to 2.5 metres above the danger level.”

Authorities in parts of western Assam have opened relief camps for the flood-affected. “Hundreds of families were sheltered in makeshift camps in schools and other raised platforms,” says a government spokesperson.

Every year, floods in the region leave a trail of destruction, washing away villages, submerging paddy fields, drowning livestock and washing away property in this state of 26 million. Last year, officials say, some 170 people died and over five million were rendered homeless during floods in Assam.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Tripura, some 70,000 people have been affected by flash floods, with rivers originating in neighbouring Bangladesh entering India. “The situation is critical with river waters rising alarmingly,” a flood control official in Tripura’s capital Agartala says.

Source: Indo-Asian News Service, July 24, 2004

The situation has worsened over the last three-four days with torrential rains causing all rivers, including the Ganga, Chandan, Odhani and Chir, to swell. Swirling river waters have flooded villages in the Jagdishpur, Gauradih and Sabaur blocks.

Over one lakh people have been affected in the Banka and Bhagalpur districts due to flash floods that struck the region on June 21. In Muzaffarpur district, 50 villages were submerged and around 75,000 people lost their homes due to rising water levels in the Bagmati and Lakhanddai rivers.

The district magistrate of East Champaran, S Sheo Kumar, has sent an SOS to the state chief secretary seeking funds and immediate measures to protect the eroded embankments of the river Gandak at Nagdaha-Misraulia.

Meanwhile, Central Water Commission sources reveal that a number of rivers are rising because of heavy rain in the catchment areas. Vehicular and rail traffic have been disrupted. Authorities are worried about the Kamala Balan river that’s currently flowing above the danger level at Jhanjharpur. And the Punpun which is likely to cross the danger mark at Sripalpur, threatening to submerge vast areas of countryside in Patna district.

Source: The Hindu, June 23, 2004
               www.ndtv.com, June 22, 2004

Researchers at the United Nations University (UNU) say two billion people will be living in the path of potentially devastating floods within two generations, and that climate change, deforestation, rising seas and population growth are responsible for increasing risks of facing once-in-a-hundred-year flooding.

Each year, 25,000 people are killed in floods worldwide and many more affected by the resultant homelessness, disease and crop failure. While the threat varies from country to country, it is clear that poor, developing nations bear the full brunt of annual flooding and huge costs in their aftermath. For instance, floods in Asia caused economic losses of US$136 billion between 1987 and 1997, according to UNU-EHS (Institute for Environment and Human Security).

Of the 30 countries with the greatest ‘relative vulnerability’ (number of people killed by floods per million exposed), 28 are in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. Venezuela, where nearly 1,500 people died in floods each year between 1980 and 2000, tops the scale, followed by Somalia, Morocco and Papua New Guinea.

According to data from the United Nations Development Programme, more than 90% of the populations of Bolivia, Ecuador and Nepal are exposed to floods.

Each year, floods and weather-related disasters cost the global economy between US$50 and US$60 billion. These losses could be reduced if current spending on flood prevention and prediction were increased.

Whilst countries are generous with post-disaster relief, they are thrifty where preparedness is concerned, spending US$100 on relief for every US$1 that is spent on preparedness.

“There needs to be a shift in the international mindset -- from reaction and charity to anticipation and pre-emption,” says Janos Bogardi, founding director of the UNU-EHS, Germany, which is dedicated to studying natural disasters and building governments’ capacities to respond to them.

“The thousands of tragic casualties from flooding in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in recent weeks underline the extreme vulnerability of developing countries,” says Bogardi. He adds: “While economic losses due to natural disasters destroy resources equivalent to two per cent of GDP in developed countries each year, in developing countries the proportion can reach as high as 13%.”

According to scientists, human activities are responsible for the increased flood risks. Rising sea levels linked to global warming threaten populations in coastal lowlands and small islands, and higher sea temperatures may result in greater frequency of cyclones and storm surges reaching shores. Meanwhile, widespread deforestation, particularly in mountainous regions, increases the chance of rivers flooding.

Source: www.scidev.net, June 16, 2004

Strong winds and heavy rain claimed at least 15 lives in northern Bangladesh on April 19, less than a week after a devastating storm killed 78 people. About 150 people have been injured in the latest incident. Most of the deaths occurred when houses collapsed, district officials say.

Monday night's storm, packing winds of up to 150 km per hour, hit four districts around the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, as well as Mymensing in the north, already badly damaged by a storm the previous week, in which around 2,000 people were injured.

Flash floods caused by the latest bout of heavy rains across the hills of northeastern India swamped parts of Bangladesh's northeastern districts of Moulvibazar, Habiganj and Sylhet. Water inundated rice-growing areas and forced many families to move to higher ground.

Rice and other crops spread over thousands of acres were destroyed, agriculture officials told reporters. They declined to give figures for estimated losses.

The Bangladesh government and aid workers are struggling to cope with the aftermath of last week's storm that battered parts of the north, leaving around 400 people in 40 villages, homeless. Officials expect the death toll to mount as the number of injured stands at 2,000, many of them critical.

“We are facing an uphill battle trying to reach all the victims and getting aid to them. There is a lot of work ahead of us,” says Nurul Islam, an aid worker from Netrokona district.

On April 18, Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia told a meeting of senior media persons: “The government and army have distributed cooked food, dry food, water, medicine and tents to survivors. The injured are being treated in hospitals.”

Reports from the affected districts of Netrokona and Mymensing say survivors of last week's storm had begun rebuilding their lives with whatever aid they received from the government and private agencies. Officials, however, say they are still assessing the number of homeless villagers. “We cannot rebuild homes for all the victims overnight, but we are giving them help to rebuild their lives soon,” said the prime minister.

Meanwhile in India the army was on full alert following heavy rains that led to unprecedented flooding in Assam's Cachar district. All rivers in this district, including the Barak, Kathakuli, Surma, Kushiara and their tributaries were flowing above the danger mark.

Cachar's deputy commissioner Sunanda Sengupta said the army had been put on standby to assist the civil administration in flood relief and rescue operations. People have taken shelter in 162 government buildings and the district administration has granted relief of Rs 19,37,500.

Flood control office sources say that record rainfall of 1,063 mm was reported in the last 10 days since the second week of April.

Source: www.alertnet.org, April 20, 2004
               NDTV, April 18, 2004
               www.alertnet.org, April 18, 2004
               Reuters, April 16, 2004

The Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has launched a virtual network linking scientists, managers, policymakers and water scarcity experts from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to help tackle the devastating effects of drought in southwest Asia.

“This is the first large-scale regional assessment of how countries in southwest Asia deal with drought,” says IWMI principal scientist Vladimir Smakhtin.

The new website aims to address the lack of consistent data and information on drought, impeding the work of governments and relief agencies dealing with drought situations.

The website is part of a regional drought project supported by the US state department to examine the status of drought research and management and recommend measures to mitigate its damaging and often fatal effects.

According to the IWMI, experts will examine data going back 50 years from 100 rainfall stations across the region. Based on these findings, a more extensive research proposal to create an effective long-term drought management programme for the region will be developed.

Household surveys are already being conducted to examine the impact of drought on livelihoods. The studies seek to examine how people cope with drought in villages in Rajasthan, in India, the Balochistan and Sindh provinces of Pakistan and Helmand and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Drought indices common to the region are also being developed.

Experts will examine earlier droughts and their effects on employment, wages and poverty levels.

“Water scarcity will always be a fact of life for people living in these regions, but we aim to find ways that will help governments and communities manage their water resources in a more sustainable way,” says Smakhtin. “Levels of drought preparedness differ between countries but there are lots of relevant examples where countries can learn from each other,” he emphasises.

In 2003, for instance, Rajasthan faced one of the severest droughts of the century, its fifth successive year of drought. According to the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, 31,000 villages and 33 million people were affected.

That year also saw dry spells in parts of Pakistan where drought stretched into its fourth year. According to the UN, although Afghanistan witnessed a good harvest in 2002, millions were affected by years of conflict and drought.

“Almost every year it is the poor farmers and people living on the margins of society who bear the brunt of drought in this region,” says Katharine Koch, regional environment officer for south Asia with the US state department.

Source: www.newindpress.com, March 29, 2004

Three years on, the massive earthquake that struck the state of Gujarat on January 26, 2001 is just an historical footnote. But only for those who were spared the trauma of the event. For the people who witnessed the mangled bodies of relatives, friends and neighbours being dug out of the earth, or had to stand upon the rubble of what was once their home, the nightmare will never end.

The earthquake, that measured 6.9 on the Richter scale, shook almost the entire state of Gujarat. Its epicentre was 20 km northeast of Bhuj. And its impact was like that of a killer wave leaving in its wake a gruesome human toll of more than 20,000 dead, 1.6 lakh injured and 600,000 homeless, along with the destruction of 348,000 houses. It is estimated that 15.9 million people out of a total of 37.8 million were, directly or indirectly, affected by the quake.

According to an IANS report, many earthquake survivors continue to be plagued by financial difficulties. “We thanked God when we were miraculously saved in the quake. But the monetary constraints that followed are strangling us. Sometimes we feel that it would have been better if the quake had claimed our lives instead,” says Bharat Choksi, tears welling up in his eyes. Choksi lived in the high-rise Mansi Apartment that was completely destroyed in the quake.

The problems stem from the fact that although the Gujarat government provided financial support of Rs 1.75 lakh to owners of houses that had been destroyed, there are many who have been unable to raise the additional money required to buy a new residential premise. “The amount provided by the government was used up in the past three years to pay rent. I need a minimum of Rs 6.5 lakh for a new house but the amount is beyond my reach,” says Choksi. Krishna Vallabh Goswami, Choksi's former neighbour from Mansi, agrees. “Most residents of Mansi were from the middle class and they had purchased their flats with all their savings. Currently, most of us stay in rented places or at relatives' homes,” he explains. Milan Thakkar who, unable to invest in a new apartment, has used the aid amount to refurbish his brother's house with whom he has been forced to stay since that ‘killer' morning.

For people who have still not been able to come to grips with the tragic turn in their lives, the massive financial aid that poured in from around the world, at the time, has no meaning. The UNDP contributed $100,000 towards immediate relief, in partnership with two of Gujarat's leading women's organisations -- the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) and the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan. USAID sent $400,000 for relief items such as shelter and family kits, and as support to the coordination mechanisms of NGOs and the UN; the government of Italy announced a contribution of $1.7 million, while more than 200 international agencies applied to the Gujarat government to allot villages for partnership rehabilitation programmes. There was also support from corporate bodies like Reliance, Ambuja and L&T.

But all that is in the past. Today, it offers no solace to those survivors who have no other option but to be a burden on those who can understand and share their sorrows. As Thakkar says: “It will be almost impossible for us to pick up the thread of our lives once again.”

Source: www.newindpress.com , January 26, 2004
               gujarat-earthquake.gov.in , January 26, 2004