Life in Delhi

My life in Delhi has got into a clear routine now. I wake up at 5.00 am on most of the days, and at times if I am too tired wake up at 6.00. After a wash I work till 7.00 am by checking the mails and updates on social media. I have bath at 7.00, get ready for office and by 7.45 I am on road. I reach UNICEF Country Office by 8.00 am. I have my breakfast at the canteen and I'm on my desk at 8.30. Till noon it is work....meetings....discussions....At about 1.00 pm we walk down for lunch, usually a few minutes early to avoid the rush. Back to desk in about 40 minutes. Work continues. At about 2.30 often I feel so sleepy that I doze off on chair at times. In case I doze off it is for about 15 minutes. And then work continues till 6.45 pm. I wind up, and am out on street to return to the guest house where I stay. On reaching I have a bath and begin to relax by watching some comedy channel and news channels alternately. Sharp 8.30 pm I rush around the corner to a restaurant for dinner. My favorite at this restaurant is "baigan bhartha". Usually it is a full meal, which means 2 chappatis, a little rice, dal, and two vegetables. I tried non-veg at this restaurant, but was not too happy with the quality, and so I have settled down for occasional omlette or scrambled eggs. Back to room before 9.00 pm to catch up on talk shows on television. At times the laptop is once again switched on for some more work. Usually the day ends with a long telecon with Shubhra at about 11.00 pm. 

Though there may be some minor variations on different days, the regularity has given me confidence to work. At the atmosphere at the office is great as I am slowly getting to know more and more colleagues. Just one regret: being an operations person who was always found among people on field, the centrally air conditioned office that has a whole lot of facilities still looks like a cage at times. The satisfaction comes from the fact that my interventions go a long way to influence policies, programs and millions of lives positively.

From Desk to Changing Destinies

As Director of Social Welfare Institute in Raiganj, I was working directly with communities, toughing the lives of over 200,000 children, and thousands of families. One of the most important part of satisfaction was the employment I was able to generate for hundreds of families through various interventions and programs. In India, if one can do a great service, it is giving employment to another person. Many of those staff moved into better positions, and good number of them joined various low level government positions in health sector. 

In Kolkata, when I worked as State Inter Agency Coordinator (2009-2010) in the post-Cyclone Aila response, though not much of controls were with me in the response days, the information I processed and provided enabled reaching out to several deserving communities. I also focused on state level capacity building of humanitarian agencies. So, number of partnerships were developed to strengthen human capacity to respond to disasters. As State Emergency Response Coordinator with Core Group Polio Project, (2011-2013) again I got the opportunity to work in the thick of things, with services reaching out to the unreached children, specially those denied of vaccination by those who are supposed to protect the children: their own families. Managing partnerships, reaching out to over 200,000 children, with more than 300 staff engaged in the process was an amazing experience. 

The Uttarakhand experience in a sense was desk based work, leading a small team of highly qualified humanitarian workers who had lot more experience than I did. However, soon I knew why the UN Disaster Management Team (UNDMT) had placed me there. It was a whole lot of negotiations that were conducted patiently with various levels of government officials, designing and setting the course of action, clearing the paths for early recovery of communities through appropriate guidance, advice and advocacy in the Districts and State. Soon I found that we had achieved more than we had hoped for. We had built a new way of doing things! We had influenced the way services would be provided to hundreds and thousands of people who had been affected / impacted by the disaster of May 2013. It was an incredible experience. 

The experience of working on the Multi-Hazard Vulnerability Mapping (MHVM) project (2014-2015) was an unique experience in the seven months I was engaged with the project. Key outcomes: the name of the project had to be changed to increase acceptability at the government level, designed how the project needs to be implemented for better long term impact, and set the course of action through a government owned process. The Uttarakhand amd MHVM project experiences have increased my confidence in working with government, and my negotiation skills. I have learnt how to strike at the root without being too vocal in public. I have learned how to analyze systems and power structures, so that the interventions are truly owned by the stakeholders and give the maximum output.

Then I had the break from mid-Feb to mid-April break to welcome our son Rajarshi. I began working from 15 April at UNICEF India Country Office as Consultant - Disaster Risk Reduction. Highly desk based so far. If someone asks me what do I do, I say, " I am like the housemaid. I do whatever comes on my way, besides some regular tasks....". People laugh and wonder! As of now, the tasks are multi-fold. I prepare number of TORs for various positions and consultancies, attend some meetings, prepare several types of reports. Some of the key documents I reviewed and gave inputs on include: Government of India's policy document on Smart Cities (and prepared a brief and a presentation on the same); prepared a beautifully designed Risk Profile of Bihar State (albeit with limited data); and a document on School Safety.

Present tasks at hand besides making of TORs that don't seem to end, (a) preparation of a district level risk profile for all states of India along with two colleagues in UNDMT; (b) designing program on preventable disaster risks; and (c) planning for expanding program interventions in the country on DRR. One key problem: I am still not able to measure how many people would be positively impacted by what I do. It is only that information can satisfy my heart. 

2015 : Joys, Pains and Plans

2015 : The year started on hectic travels, unimaginably busy schedule wherever I was and the birth of Emmanuel Rajarshi on 23 March, besides the much needed house repairs that seem to be never ending. I also took a break from work from mid-Feb, to give some time to family and to manage other fronts. By the fact that I am sitting down to write a blog after six months since the last posting is an indicator of what I have been through. Leaving children and Shubhra back home has been the biggest pain, as I had to shift to Delhi in search of job in mid-April.

Somehow, my look for a job in Africa or elsewhere seem to be somehow eluding me. In spite of so much experience in disaster management, doesn't seem to get me far! Opportunity that came on the way to work in Nepal had to be sacrificed as I had just signed the contract a week before the massive earthquake struck the Himalayan country. 

Back in Delhi, I leave early - by 8.00 am to Unicef office, and I have my breakfast there in the canteen. Leaving early helps me beat the heat. My usual breakfast goes like this: either two idli or bread toast, along with a cup of coffee and half plate fruits (containing five or six types of cut fruits on a quarter plate). My lunch is around 1.00 pm, again at the canteen. If I can get out of the office by 4.30 pm, I leave office early to beat the traffic, and if I cannot, then I remain till 7.00 pm, by when autorickshaws are available back again. It is difficult to get autos on Lodhi road between 5.00 pm - 6.30 pm due to closing of offices in the area, and the autos come filled!

About my tasks in Delhi, I shall write in the next. For now, it is just the joy of working for a dream, pain of missing hearing "Appa" from Vasu, our daughter, and an eluding plan for a better legacy that I would like to leave behind.

An Untold Story: Silence of the Lambs

Couple of days back a friend working with an international non-profit organization that focuses on children's issues, sent me a mail about a missing family in the tragedy of 16 - 17 June that took away the lives of more than 5,000 people. This family was still searching for their only son who had disappeared along with his wife and an young son of about 12 years old since 17 June. I replied that the mail was incomplete if it has to be shared with any of the districts or state officials on missing persons. Later I got a call from this family. ( For the sake of this post, I shall call it Jenny's family.) When Jenny called me I was heading for a meeting, and so I scheduled to speak to her later on 19th afternoon. This post is all about that conversation that left me numb.

Jenny is married and well settled with her family along with her father. It is the story of her missing brother and his family that they are searching for as her father is inconsolable. I took details about the missing persons. Then I heard her speaking about children....women. I said "But wasn't only your brother and his wife and their single son involved?" She said, "Yes, but my uncle's family too traveled along with them." "So, how many were they?" She said, my uncle died sometime ago. My aunt along with her five daughters, their husbands and 7 children (total 18) of them and my brother, his wife and the son (that makes it 21) traveled from Delhi to Haridwar, and from there they traveled by a vehicle to upper hills. They had visited Badrinath around 15th and then on 16th they were in Kedarnath after trekking the mountains from Gourikund. They had called us after the darshan (worship). As it was raining, they decided to stay back in Kedarnath thinking that it would be difficult to trek back the 14 kilometers on the mountains with all the children in the rain. They thought it is better to stay in a place where there are lot of people in stead of getting stuck at a smaller place on the way. Since 17 June, we have not heard from any of them."

With my throat already dry, I asked her calmly, "I am very sorry to hear about this. You mean 21 persons in a single family have been just missing for the last four months?" She replied, "Yes Sir. Each day is a silent hell in our life. The rest of the family, all of us, find it even difficult to speak with one another. It is too much of SILENCE at home. None of us have much to speak to each there. With what words can any one comfort the other?"

I sympathized with her and told her that from my present position I can only share her story with the government and tell them to see if the matter can be expedited as early as possible. I checked with her if they had filed the missing person report with the police, and if inquiry has been completed, for which she replied positively. I checked if they gave DNA samples. She replied that it was not done as the Doon hospital that was handling was over crowded, it was an eternal wait for a whole day.

A whole family had been silenced. Silenced along with the thousands, leaving many more to remain in silence as they keep waiting for their beloved ones, who may never return. The trauma of the remaining members of similarly affected families would take decades to heal. Until then, pray that these families find solace in the company of good friends.

Journey for Assessment

30 June 2013 : At last I was leaving for Uttarakhand. It had taken over 10 days for this plan to happen, because I had few other pending works to complete in Bengal, and then required an organization under whose banner I can move. As a RedR India member, I was scheduled to visit Uttarakhand and do a Emergency Needs Assessment of various districts in the first phase. I had been alerted by RedR India that I may have to stay on in Uttarakhand for about 2 - 3 months to help in the coordination of relief and response. When I reached Bolpur with my heavy suitcase and back-back, I found that my ticket had not been confirmed and that several trains are running late. The one that came when I was standing there was so badly packed that people were over-flowing from the train. It would have been impossible for me to go without a confirmed ticket. So, I hired a car and reached Kolkata where I stayed for the night.

01 July 2013 : Almost all my colleagues who would be part of the team had reached by 11.30 am, and I too reached around the same time in Delhi. We were checked in into a hotel, and then we proceeded to the UNICEF office Lodhi Road.  The meeting with UN team took place at the UNDP Conference room. I was a bit discouraged as the entire meeting dwelt around how to fill an assessment format, which was just a rework on the commonly accepted Rapid Assessment Format. This format is usually used within 24 hours or maximum of 72 hours of a disaster. But we were using it two weeks after the disaster had struck. I did not get the key to this, except that we were informed that this assessment will be collated, mapped, and will be shared with the government and other agencies. 

One of the members from the team said in confidence, "My son in the college could have done this survey!" He felt that it was almost sounding like a survey than an assessment. We returned back to the hotel and wondered why are we waiting here in Delhi....