ANOTHER CYCLONE
WHERE’S THE MONEY GOING in Nagapattinam.
The managing director is nervous, shuffling papers in his chilly office. He has summoned a group of Madras (Chennai) NGO’s to feed him good advice on tsunami projects. He is sitting on a few million Euros, waiting in the pipeline from his French business partner, and the donor wants to know how and where to spend this money. The MD wants the NGOs to tell him, so he can pass on their advice. But there are strings attached to such money. The money wants physical evidence – a building, bricks and mortar, and nothing less. No, not a boat which can be sold off, sink or sail way; no, not nets, they’re not photogenic; no, not motors which break down, not this, not that. The money wants a monument, proof of its good intentions. The NGOs, already having their own funding, promise to send in such specifications, a building of some kind, and I wonder what they will come up with.
The stocky man on the platform of Tambaram station, waiting for the Kumbun Express to take us to Nagapattinam, is full of enthusiasm. He has the money too to fund the tsunami survivors and is looking forward with his boundless energy to do his bit. It’s Danish money, he says, and not for Nagapattinam but up the coast at Tranquebar. The Danes had their toe-hold there and that’s where, from historical empathy, they want their Kroners (not Euros) spent. He isn’t sure how or where the money will be spent; this is a reconnoitring trip to pinpoint the recipients. They too want proof, a snap shot they can show around, captioned too.
I too am heading south to find out about salvation for the survivors. It seems that money is not the criteria; there is a flood of it washing around. Not just millions of rupees but many millions of dollars, Euros, Yen, Rials, Pounds, Pesos, name it and it’s available, just waiting to cleanse away the pain and suffering left behind by the tsunami. The world and the Indian people have been generous in donations. I’m travelling with Mr Kanniarm of the Indian Council of Child Welfare (ICCF) as a starting point. At least they’re focused on their agenda- children. Mr Kanniarm is a quiet, dedicated man, having spent his life in government social services department and who took early retirement to work on his PhD on children in our judicial system. He’s now a consultant and we’re going to the tsunami hit villages to assess what has be done over the next three to four years. ICCF has already donated school bags, books, pens. He will also be setting up a counselling system for the children, apart from re-building schools. It’s during our chat that he mentions an interesting term, ‘letterhead NGOs’ and it sticks in my mind. I think he means possible conmen or maybe just means temporary organisations with no qualifications wanting to help.
Over morning coffee a hotel guest, dressed in shorts and wearing sturdy walking boots and thick socks joins me. He is from Bangalore and he’s raised, from private individuals he emphasises, 10 million rupees that are burning a hole in his pocket. He’s a seasoned disaster man, which explains his attire, he was in Gujarat after the earthquake and had raised and spent money on that relief. He is here with a German friend and they are going to explore ways to spend their millions, beginning their search with a visit to the Collectorate. He’s disappointed that I don’t have a few million to donate too.
Mr Kanniarm, the local ICCF social worker, Sumita, and I visit Kalar first, a village tucked away down the coast and we pass the wreckages of many boats, stacked like cords of wood by the tsunami. We also pass a grand flyover which is incomplete and looks abandoned as if someone changed their mind. In Kalar, they villagers are watching television in a thatched hall, a satellite dish is attached to a tree and a lone cop sits outside peering through a side opening at the screen. Sumita has been here already, handing out bags and schoolbooks. The men now drift out of the hall to talk about their needs. They, whichever village we visit, are all acutely aware of the money hovering just beyond the horizon – government grants and loans, NGOs yearning to spend money on them. It’s human nature, I believe, to get as much as one can, disasters do bring some benefits in their wake. At dusk, in one village, an old woman, followed by a child, walks slowly towards the flattened, and cleared, remnants of homes. She sits on a patch of dirt, her old home, while the child sits on a stone some distance away, both silent. Watching her sad solitude as she stares out to the calm sea, I know her story – children lost, only she and the grandchild survived.
The fishing villagers’ immediate needs have been met by the government – cash, food, clothing, shelter. Christian Aid, in some villages, have built row upon row of temporary huts, all joined together, out of a fire resistant material which feels like fibrous tarpaulin. In other villages, the government has erected similar temporary shelters. The village women are industriously washing, cutting vegetable, cooking. Boys play cricket or marbles, the men sit around, some waiting to return to the sea. But not all. Later, when I meet Ephrem, of the South India Federation of Fishermen’s Society, he tells me that some fishermen want to give up the sea, they no longer trust it. But they have every right to be compensated for their boats and how they spend the money is their business, not the government’s or a NGOs.
The statistics are depressing. Across the five taluks (districts) 6065 died (Adult males 1883, females 2406, children male 887, female 889) while there are still 2188 (adult males 676, females 756, children males 352, female 408) listed as missing. As a counter statistics so far the government has distributed 854,650,000 rupees to the survivors, and this includes cash for loss of life, house damages, loss wages, loss of limbs, net damages and repairs to boats. In kind it has given out tons of rice, 269,000 litres of kerosene, thousands of dhotis, sarees and bed sheets. Eight hundred and fifty four million rupees sounds impressive, yet from what I’ve read in the newspapers, there are many, many more millions still awaiting distribution. They are in the government’s coffers and I wonder when (or whether) they’ll see daylight. India’s politicians and bureaucrats do have a flawed reputation.
However, despite this seeming largess, I have come across pockets of coastal villages, in Cuddalore and here, which were overlooked by the state. I don’t know whether it’s deliberate or by design, as these aren’t ‘fishing’ villages though also hit by the tsunami.
The next morning, the Bangalore gentleman and his old school friend still haven’t figured how to spend their money. The German (Indian) wants to set up a school and link it to the school in his German home town where those children had donated money for the relief. But they’ve turned a bit cynical in the last 24 hours, having visited a village. Do the people really need their help? He also tells me that in some villages he visited the people resent only the fishing villagers being helped.
Their money has to be spent so I accompany them to the Collectorate. It’s an impressive building – a five floor V-shaped structure- for such a nondescript town with nothing memorable about it. There’s a shamiyana on the lawn for the NGOs to register and it’s run by volunteers, one of them a Canadian lady, Achama, returning to India after many years away. Just as I’m about to ask the question, a messenger from the Collector appears, wanting a list of the NGOs and I have my answer. She has 468 NGOs registered with only 20 per cent ‘active’. I presume ‘active’ meaning they’re still on the ground and haven’t flown away. Achama fills me in. The Collector, L. Radkhakrishnan, was quick off the mark to set up this NGO centre and set up their landline. On a board behind her is a list of the conferences and meetings for NGOs over the week. NGOs wander in and out. One lot arrive in a Tata Sumo, having flown in from Delhi, and the shamiyana is full of the bonhomie of old friends meeting at yet another disaster. The Tata ones are American Aid workers, all carrying black laptop bags, reminding me of executives about to attend a board meeting. They seem to reek money.
I ask Achama about ‘letterhead NGOs’, and she thinks they could be commercial organisations who come in to get contracts for materials. She hasn’t yet come across a fake organisation, yet.
The eye of the tsunami rescue, relief and rehabilitation of the survivors is the Collector. Of course, I had read about his huge effort to battle the tsunami, so went in search of him. The morning wasn’t a good time as representatives from all the affected villages were meeting him. In the beginning the meetings had been daily but as the weeks passed they had dropped to thrice a week and were now weekly. They had their grievances and to report on the successes of the state’s efforts to help them. Just as I drift by his office, the door opens a young man dressed in slacks, a checked shirt and sneakers hurries out to enter a cabin and sit at a computer. He’s followed by a torrent of people. I’d not expected L. Radhakrishnan to look so young, he seem no older than a college graduate with all that boundless energy and optimism in his appearance.
As I retreat from the torrent I notice there’s a lecture hall with the topic on ‘Stress Management for government officials’ going on. Inside, there’s a lecture hall silence with around 100 people, mostly neatly dressed men, with a few women scattered around, listening to the speaker on the dais. The flyer outlines the symptoms of stress. The list ranges from sleeplessness, fatigue, irritable behaviour to impotence. Then the Collector himself hurries in to give them a talk on how to take care of themselves. These are the Collector’s troops, the State’s direct contact with ordinary people and he wants them all to be mentally fit to deal with the citizens. The cure for stress isn’t just taking leave but taking up hobbies, playing sports, reading books, listening to music, yoga.
‘I enjoy meeting people, so I don’t suffer from stress’ L. Radhakrishnan tells me and then smiles. ‘In fact if I didn’t meet people I’d probably be stressed out.’ He’s given me some time, clearing his office of everyone. I notice his stillness when he’s talking, no finger tapping, leg shakes, very calm. When I mention that some non-fishing villagers on the coast may have fallen out of the donation net, he says, ‘My door is always open, I will see anyone who wishes to see me to redress their grievances. I’ve instructed my department to help everyone affected by the tsunami.’
‘Those are, what I’d call, the fortunate ones because of the tsunami. What about all other poor who weren’t affected? They remain in poverty.’
‘I know what you mean. But the State does have its poverty alleviation programme which is reaching out to as many of the poor as it can.’
Prior to Nagapattinam, he had been the Collector of Madras and then the Collector of Thanjavur. He was there for the Kumbakonam fire tragedy (over a 100 children died in a school fire) where he had hands-on experience of dealing with such heart-breaking disasters.
‘The other day the Kumbakonam women whose children died in that tragedy came to me with the one lakh they had collected for the tsunami orphans. It brought tears to my eyes. Here they were women who had lost their children giving money for children who had lost their parents.’
After our chat, a man comes in holding out a cheque for five hundred thousand rupees and hands it over to the Collector. It’s also a photo opportunity. Now everyone crowds in, including an old woman tagging along a small boy, both barefoot, certainly from a village. He listens to her story, reads her letter and quickly signs it to ensure she’s helped. The boy is her grandson, both his parents died in the tsunami. And she’s not the one I saw the previous night either. The Collector patiently listens to everyone, sometimes all talking at once. He’s good at crowd control and, even as one leaves, two others take his place.
As I walk out of the building a tempo van pulls up to park some distance down the drive. A dozen Europeans, all blonde and young, wearing bright yellow t-shirts, spill out of it and hang around the van. They look like honey bees and certainly draw me over. On the front of their t-shorts is written ‘Scientologists’ and behind ‘Apprentice Preachers’. I’m no fan of scientology, founded by L. Ron Hubbard in 1955, and its self cleansing theories, so I’m surprised to see them here.
I chatted to one of them, a young Brit with a goatee, who tells me they’ve been visiting the tsunami hit villages. He’s a bit inarticulate in explaining his beliefs.
‘What do you do in the villages?’
‘We help them.’
‘With donations?’
‘Oh no. By touching them we can spiritually heal them.’
‘You speak Tamil then?’
‘No we use interpreters to communicate with them.’
‘And this touching really helps them?’
‘Yes, they feel better. There are only a few of us here now but soon another thousand will be arriving by next week.’
I return to the NGO office on the lawn. ‘What are the scientologists doing here?’ I ask Achama.
‘I’m surprised they’re back,’ she says. ‘They were thrown out a week ago.’
As I leave, I meet the Bangalore men coming out of the Collectorate and ask what they’re going to spend their money on.
‘Bicycles,’ they answer. ‘We found out that many of the girls from the villages have to catch busses to attend schools and colleges. So we’re going to buy bicycles for them and thought it would be the best way to spend some of the money. We saw the Collector and he agreed.’ Then they add as an after thought. ‘And we can also send the photographs of the girls with their cycles to all the donors.’