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V. Neglected communities

The tremendous losses suffered by the fishing communities affected the entire local economy because the industry directly and indirectly supported the lives of thousands of other people. For instance, traders, ice plant owners, fishnet menders, boat menders, cleaners, shopkeepers, and others who supported the fishing industry have no source of income until the fishermen return to their trade. 

After the tsunami, a group of women from near Prathaparamapuram village in Tamil Nadu wrote a petition to the government requesting relief. One of the women, called Mallika, told Human Rights Watch that her family was near starvation, succinctly capturing the problem faced by thousands of people in India who previously earned a living supporting the fishing industry:

My husband is a carpenter and he mends boats. Since the tsunami, he has had no work. We have finished all the food we had in the house.⁸⁴

Because the impact of the tsunami on these groups was not as direct or easily visible, their needs were initially forgotten or ignored by those providing aid.⁸⁵ Considered only partially affected, they were inadequately assisted in the first weeks after the tsunami until the authorities realized that they too had lost their livelihood and were in danger of starvation.⁸⁶ 

Indian governmental and nongovernmental agencies have done a good job of providing emergency rations to the tsunami’s survivors to avert immediate starvation. But relief rations have now been stopped and the efforts of the government and voluntary agencies to ensure food security will be useless, unless the survivors regain a sustainable livelihood. 

Many of these communities survive on subsistence labor associated directly or indirectly with the fishing industry, which is only now being gradually restored. For each person directly involved in fisheries, there are four to five others dependent on downstream employment, and they are still without jobs.

Losses suffered by communities in terms of lives, boats, or homes are being addressed by the government, to some extent, through compensation. But the process is slow and there have been complaints that banks are demanding collateral for loans to purchase boats, which the fishing communities, who have lost all their assets in the disaster, are unable to provide.⁸⁷ Not only does this kind of policy delay the restoration of fisheries, placing thousands of fishermen at the risk of losing their livelihood, it also adversely affects those that subsist on nothing but the labor they provide to the fishing industry or related activities.

Andrew Hewett, Director of Oxfam Community Aid Abroad Australia, had warned that some of the early responses to the disaster, especially by non-governmental aid agencies, did not adequately address the needs of all the different communities directly or indirectly affected by the tsunami:

All of the assistance is not taking into account people who’ve been indirectly affected by the disaster. So, it may focus on communities which are right up against the coast, who live up on the coast, who’ve lost their livelihoods and the like, but communities just behind them, whose livelihoods are based upon servicing those communities, are not being targeted for assistance.⁸⁸

The government also initially excluded these communities from the list of those eligible for relief. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, according to C.V.Shankar, Special Officer on Duty for the Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation agency of the state government:

We are conscious of the fact that the calamity has affected other communities. But seventy to eighty percent were from the fishing communities, so naturally, initially more attention was given to them. It is not correct to say that there is discrimination. People from other communities may be discriminating against each other. But I can say with complete confidence that there is no discrimination from the government’s side.⁸⁹

A subsequent order from the Tamil Nadu government acknowledged that measuring the impact of the tsunami on families connected with the coastal economy was a priority stating that:

The Government also directed that families involved in small business and petty trades connected with the coastal economy may also be made eligible. It is essential that those ordinarily resident in these affected areas in these villages and functioning as shopkeepers and traders should be made eligible.⁹⁰

Others who suffered loss of livelihood are tenant farmers and agricultural laborers. The tsunami tossed seawater as much as three kilometers inland, devastating standing crop that was nearly ready for harvest and ruining the soil. About 22,000 hectares of agricultural land was inundated. The winter crop is usually harvested in January and was nearly ready for harvest when the tsunami struck on December 26, 2004, and destroyed the crop. The land may not be ready for another yield for several years because the soil has turned brackish, leaving these agricultural workers and daily wage earners, many of them Dalits, without livelihood. ⁹¹ Drinking water sources, too, have been contaminated by salt water.

The estimated damage and loss to agriculture and livestock in India, excluding Andaman & Nicobar Islands, is over U.S. $37 million.⁹² While this is small compared to the damage and loss to fisheries ($600 million)⁹³ or housing ($220 million),⁹⁴ it still affected thousands of families.

The government has said that those whose agricultural lands are affected will be assisted, but the affected communities fear that assistance will target landowners, and not the landless agricultural laborers, sharecroppers or leaseholders who depend on agriculture for survival. According to S. Salaya, local chief of the Manikapanga hamlet in Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district, revenue officials surveyed the damages. But he was worried that only the landowners would receive compensation:

This land will take four or five years to mend. What will we do? Our livelihood has been destroyed. The landowners will take the compensation. Some [landlords] have already asked us for a share in the cash relief we received. What will happen to us?⁹⁵ 

It is crucial to design and adequately fund policies to restore the livelihood of the landless and others who have thus far not been identified as beneficiaries of compensation plans. 

Tenants renting homes also had problems after the tsunami. Press accounts suggested that some landlords claimed compensation for damaged homes but refused to return deposits and rent advances. The people who actually lost their belongings and residences, in many cases, received nothing.⁹⁶ Compensation plans should ensure that the basic needs of tenants, including for housing and replacement of lost personal belongings, are addressed.