By Ken Moritsugu
December 7, 2005
THARANGAMBADI, India - From fishermen cleaning nets to women sorting fish, the tsunami-hit shoreline of this town in south India bustles with activity. More than 300 fishing boats, brightly painted with the names of donors, blanket the beach.
A mile away, the scene couldn't be more different. Only minimal aid has reached the dusty, almost abandoned village of Pudupalayam. Residents have struggled to eke out a living since salt from the tsunami spoiled the fields where they worked as laborers.
Nearly a year after the tsunami raced across the Indian Ocean, bringing devastation to 13 countries and killing an estimated 225,000 people, international aid agencies have relearned a bitter lesson: Not everyone can be helped equally.
What's happened here also has happened elsewhere: Those who already were relatively well off are doing better with assistance from international donors, while those who were struggling before the tsunami often still are struggling.
Former President Clinton, meeting privately with aid groups last month as the United Nations special envoy for tsunami recovery, underscored the importance of reaching the region's poorest. "A successful reconstruction effort should ensure the protection of vulnerable populations," he was quoted as saying in a U.N. news release.
"The hope is that at the end of it, there's a better infrastructure, there's a more equitable social pattern," said Steve Hollingworth, the India director for CARE, a development agency that's active in the reconstruction.
"But the fact of the matter is that an emergency like this is an opportunity for some over and above others, and it makes vulnerable groups much more vulnerable than they were before," he said. "There's no way around it."
The plight of villages such as Pudupalayam (pronounced poo-doo-PAH-lay-uhm) is especially challenging in a country such as India, where a decade of economic growth has spawned shopping malls and a burgeoning middle class, but still hasn't overcome a social system that remains divided largely along gender and caste lines.
"All the aid agencies and even the government are only looking after the fisher-folk," complained Shivalingam, a young and outspoken community leader who like many here uses only one name. "They got their boats and their nets. We don't have any work."
The farm laborers of Pudupalayam come from the lowest caste in Indian society. Once derided as untouchables, today they're known as Dalits, a name that means "the oppressed."
Tsunami relief efforts initially overlooked them; many aid agencies weren't even aware the Dalit villages existed, let alone needed help. Now, a growing number of groups are diverting resources to the Dalit victims in hopes of keeping them from sliding farther down the socioeconomic scale, though the efforts come late.
It was only natural that the focus would fall on helping the fishing families of Tharangambadi (Tah-rahn-gahm-PAH-dee). About 300 people died here in the Dec. 26 tsunami, which claimed 16,000 victims in India. The village, about 150 miles south of Chennai, the city formerly known as Madras, suffered major property damage as the sea flooded inland, sweeping away boats, houses and shops.
Rescue workers arrived here within hours to assess the damage and begin the rebuilding process, aided by a tightly knit community that organized quickly to capitalize on multiple offers of reconstruction aid.
International aid agencies - flush with more contributions than ever before in response to a natural disaster - tripped over one another in the rush to build new boats for the town. The Indian government also reimbursed fishermen for lost boats. Anyone who received both a donated boat and government reimbursement was required to make a payment to the local village council, which presumably spent it on other needs.
The story has been very different for the Dalits of Pudupalayam and elsewhere. It was weeks before rescue workers visited most Dalit areas, and then only because some aid workers decided to see what was down a dirt turnoff they passed every day en route to a fishing village.
They stumbled on Marudhampallam, a Dalit hamlet of 371 families that had lost 138 cows and 200 goats to the tsunami.
"They were people who were never reached by anyone," said Saikat Mukherjee, who's from the West Bengal Games and Welfare Organization, a group that's distributing tsunami relief for Ireland's Hope Foundation. His group purchased cows and goats for the community.
Even today, few relief groups seem to be aware of Pudupalayam. Aside from government food handouts, virtually the only assistance has come from an Indian organization that works with Dalits.
The group, NESA, or New Entity for Social Action, is desperately short of money, said Peter Fernandes, who's overseeing its efforts to help 800 families from seven Dalit hamlets.
The lack of money shows. Other temporary housing shelters have thatched roofs to provide relief from the heat. At the camp built for Pudupalayam, a few palm fronds have been thrown on the tarpaper roofs, to negligible effect.
NESA hasn't been able to pay the 2,500-rupee ($56) monthly rent for the land for the past six months. Now the owner, himself a Dalit, has asked NESA to vacate by January, because he wants to sell the property. Permanent homes for the 46 families aren't expected to be ready by then.
Residents of Pudupalayam acknowledge that the tsunami's impact there was less dramatic than on communities closer to the coast. The water was about chest high when it surged into the village of 55 families. Only one person died.
But the water did wash away livestock and possessions and damage houses. Worse, the seawater deposited salt in the rice paddies, which a year later remain a desolate brown.
There are few signs of life in the village, which sits on an unmarked and unremarkable dirt road.
Selvaraj, a 50-year-old man, remains in the village to care for his cow, which survived. What he needs most, he said, pointing at the desolate rice fields, is work. An aid agency has ploughed the fields; when and if rice will grow again remains to be seen.
