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Pic 1. Dalit families at Kizhpettai village

Valli, a cute lanky girl at 20 is shadow of a woman, who shrinks into her own thoughts as she reclines on her emaciated mother and tries to smile when you ask about her future. Ever since her old mother stopped work due to ill health a few years ago, Valli has been the sole bread earner for the family. Today, Valli is jobless after the small coir unit near her village shut down after the tsunami. She had to earlier walk five kilometres and work for eight hours for just 15 rupees a day. The job, which felt like a punishment then, is remembered as a privilege taken away by the tsunami waves.

Janaki, a lady in her fifties points to scars on her palms that she receives everyday while catching prawns with hands in the backwaters to keep her oven warm. Valli and her mother live in a mud and thatch cottage in the dalit hamlet at Thalangadu; Janaki lives in a similar house and supports her family in a dalit hamlet at Muttukadu located along side the ECR Highway from Pondicherry to Chennai.

The dispersed hamlets in which the likes of Valli, her mother, and Janaki live along the Tamil Nadu coast were argued not to have been affected by the tsunami, for the waves did not wash away their houses. But their livelihoods were ravaged, a fact that few had the eyes to notice. No wonder, all government relief efforts and much of NGO funds raced their way to fishing villages. The fisher folk suffered maximum losses, and deserved all the help they got. One year past the tsunami, the fisher folk have more boats than before; some sold away, some abandoned on the beach. They are back in the sea. Some fisher families have entered got houses built by NGOs, while others shall do so in coming months. But what about dalits and iruals left out of the rehabilitation process without livelihood and shelter? Fishing families living in temporary shelters should get new houses early. But, what about dalits and irulas, most of whom permanently live in makeshift unsafe houses?

Pic2. Dalit children at Kizhpettai village

The mechanical logic of counting heads that suffered the direct impact of tsunami waves explains systemic apathy to the plight of the dalits and irulas, who survive even during normal times without the benefit secure livelihoods, safe shelter, drinking water, and easy access to education and health services. The system as if keeps this reserve army of labour alive for exploitation of cheap labour. Like a pack of cards must give in to the slightest whiff of winds, placed as they are in highly vulnerable conditions, these marginalised communities suffer most every time a disaster strikes, directly or indirectly. The tsunami of course was no exception.

Dan Church Aid like other humanitarian agencies did extend all the support it could to the affected fishing communities. It’s partners such as Churches Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA), Lutheran World Service-India (LWS-I), United Evangelical Lutheran Church of India (UELCI), and Arcot Lutheran Church (ALC) worked with affected fishing communities providing them with food and clothes, family relief kits, boats, nets, emergency health care, education materials for children, children parks, psycho-social counselling, alternative livelihood aid, temporary and now permanent shelters, etc. People’s Watch-Tamil Nadu (PW-TN), and Society for Rural Education and Development (SRED), DCA’s human rights oriented partners focussed on para-fishers, dalits, and irulas and fought against discriminations practised in tsunami relief work. SRED and PW-TN activated rights networks to fight against such discriminations against marginalised groups such as dalits and irulas. The Tamil Nadu Dalit Women Movement (TNDWM) managed by SRED has hundreds of local women groups working. PW-TN has set in place two large rights-based networks, Tsunami Legal Aid Committee (TLAC) and Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation Committee (TRRC) having over 300 NGOs as members who are addressing rights issues in the process of relief and rehabilitation.

Even as it provided considerable support for fishing families, DCA given its strategic commitment to address the needs of the most marginalised in disaster situations, DCA could not stay put in fisher villages alone. One of the few funding NGOs to have formally developed a tsunami programme strategy, DCA identified the most affected and marginalised dalits, irulas, and women as its core target groups for its “Post Tsunami Disaster Mitigation/Prevention and Livelihood Programme, India”. The programme focuses on building habitats and emergency shelters; securing sustainable livelihoods, advocacy for positive social change, and promoting disaster preparedness. The programme strategy seeks to link up relief, rehabilitation, and development activities focussing on post-disaster livelihood intervention integrated with safe shelter, preparedness, advocacy for protection of human rights in the recovery process, all within a management framework emphasizing a high degree of transparency and accountability.

The first experiment initiated in this direction is the “Socio-economic Empowerment of Tsunami Affected Dalit Women” Project being implemented in partnership with SRED in the Kanchipuram district. Its objective is to organise dalit women groups, provided them with necessary input support for strengthening their livelihoods and raising their awareness on disasters, development, and rights issues, so that they are able to deal with future risks and negotiate terms with mainstream institutions for their rights and entitlements. Activities being implemented include forming village development committees, setting up community emergency shelter-cum-work centres, setting up group revolving funds and capacity building for income generating activities among dalit women. Women were chosen as the main target group keeping in view their crucial role in supporting families during emergency situations as also during normal times. Widespread alcoholism among dalit men explains the enormous burden that dalit women must shoulder for supporting their children and maintaining their households.

The community emergency shelter cum work centres are visualised to grow up as community hubs for a number of activities. These would provide dalit women with place for training programmes, meetings, group micro-enterprise activities such as tailoring and coir craft during normal times. During floods, cyclones, these community centres would double up as emergency shelters for temporary stay and storage of essential commodities. Training cum production centres are being set up in these community halls where young educated dalit girls would undertake group-based income generating activities.

The tsunami caused 10000 deaths and destroyed property worth millions (USD), but it also provided an opportunity to address long standing development issues in the region. So the millions (USD) that have poured in should not just be targeted at asset replacement but focus on a new paradigm addressing disaster risks in a rights-based framework augmenting human development. There are humanitarian agencies still caught up in their own limited visions, which, if broadened, could benefit the cause of the most affected and the most marginalised.

-Satya N Mishra, DCA

For more details about Danish Church Aid activities, please visit: http://www.dca.dk

* Names of dalit women and girl have been changed to protect their identity. (editor)

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