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. 

Flying Through the Sleepy Mountains

On 2 July we had a meeting at SIDCUL, within the IT park, Dehradun with Additional Secretary, Disaster Management Department and other UN officials. We were briefed about the districts, given contact numbers in those districts, and divided into smaller teams to assess the situation in five different districts. In our team we were five members: Rahul Pandit, Dr. Abhijit B, Ms. Bharati S, and Mr. Subrat Dash, and me. I am to function as the team leader and we were scheduled to visit Pithoragarh district. I was informed by my friends that Pithoragarh is a very far off district, and might take about 15 – 17 hours of journey on road. Late night we were told that we would be taken by a helicopter, and I was given a number to contact at the airport.

An aerial view from the helicopter

On 3 July, at 9.00 am we left for Jolly Grant Airport. I was enquiring from the driver why this airport is named after a person called “Jolly Grant”, but he was not able to explain it. When we reached there, we were received by a messenger who took us through the security system in the airport. It was tough to get in because we had lot of materials that cannot normally be taken on a plane. The security personnel were strict. Once we proved our genuineness we were sent by a car to the helipad within the airport area. I met a gentleman called Mr. Sathya who is the Civil Aviation Manager at the airport. He is from Andhrapradesh, a southern state of India. I spent lot of time in his chamber to understand the hardships these gentlemen faced during the rescue operations after the flashfloods since 16 June and how they coped with it. He was narrating how it was tough on them as they spent hardly two to three hours of sleep, at times in the airport itself. Helicopter and aero plane maintenance, weather forecast follow up, VIP movement, extra number of planes carrying rescued people etc. kept the personnel at the normally sleepy Jolly Grant airport on tenderhooks. Our chopper took off around 12.20, more than an hour after hour scheduled time as the first flight of the chopper had delayed, and so had returned late, and then the captain had to take a break.

While all of us were fit with ear pads to reduce exposure to the chopper’s howling roar, I was fit with a pair of earphones and a microphone through which I can speak to the captain, in case of an emergency, and the captain can speak to me as well, if required. We were amused that the captain and the first officer were using manual maps to navigate through the forests and high mountains to fly to Pithoragarh. There are no ATCs in the area. So, on the alto meter I could see that the reading could be over 10,000 ft at a point, and suddenly it would show it is between 2000 – 4000 ft, and then it would rise to 8,000 and above in few seconds. The reasons are simple : we were flying over some very steep mountains, so when we were flying on a valley the alto meter showed that we were flying high, and suddenly, as we flew over a cliff, it was within a threatening distance. (No wonder, planes and helicopters crash on a bad weather day as they follow the manual maps which leaves lots of scope for human error.

As we landed in Pithoragarh airport, a  makeshift one, that is being repaired to make it into an all weather one, we were received by the District Collector and a very able leader: Mr. Neeraj Kherwal- which is another story.

End of a Saga

The Polio Emergency Response started in April 2011 by Core Group in West Bengal will come to an end on 5 May 2013. Dr. Roma Solomon the Director of Core Group Polio Project (CGPP), Mr. Jitendra Awale, Deputy Director of CGPP, Ms. Rina Dey, expert in Behavior Change Communication for CGPP, and Mr. Manojkumar, Data Management Officer of CGPP also are in Kolkata for a valedictory session. The session was organized at Hotel Indismart in Salt Lake with several dignitaries from Unicef, WHO, ADRA India and the partner organizations.

It is both time to thank one another and to appreciate the role of everyone. So, on 26 April, the team traveled to areas supported by Seva Kendra and Women’s Interlink Foundation, the two partners of CGPP where they met the community mobilizers and supervisors and interacted with them, appreciated them and thanked them for their wonderful task in bringing down resistance in most areas to zero levels and in some very hardcore areas under acceptable limits.

On 27^th and 28^th they spent the whole day at Bolpur, relaxing in our company, enjoying the warmth and love that we had to share with one another. On 29^th April, the valedictory session brought to fore the times and hardships the staff went through, the challenges in team building and the role each one played in strengthening emergency response. I had joined this team in April 2011 just for a period of 4 months. But then, the team in Delhi was so friendly and supportive, the task was challenging as the entire team of coordinators, supervisors and mobilizers were new to such response program, and it involved me to set up systems and procedures for networking, linkage with government, Unicef, WHO, Rotary, and managing the balance of relationship between partners. I enjoyed it….cherished it, and love it, as I became part of the CGPP family. CGPP too recognized me for the extra gifts I had by way of analytically looking at issues, programming and communication skills, besides the little knowledge on using technology for program management and monitoring.

Thank you friends for the wonderful support and love! Adieu everyone in the Polio Emergency Respones program. See you again!

Assessor and Giver

In Kumarganj block of South Dinajpur district, West Bengal, while giving a training on disaster management to the government officials and local elected representatives of the block, during the discussion on relief management, an interesting issue came up. The issue raised was how to ensure damage and needs assessments are realistic and point towards immediate steps that need to be taken for relief in periods immediately after a disaster, with minimum coloring of political or other sectoral manipulation. The officers in Kumarganj said, "The current system of engaging the same group of people for assessment and response, although they may not be personally the same, but come from the same category, is equal to a examinee correcting his own paper, with no reference to any question or answer at the time of correction! The suggestion is, therefore, segregate the officers doing the assessment from those who give the relief." It can be done in two ways: (a) Let relief be given by the elected representatives with minimum supervision by the administration. But all damage and need assessment must be done by the executive staff only. No elected representatives or political class in it. (b) To strengthen the system further let executive officers from outside the affected area or specially designated persons with appropriate knowledge and skills at the state and district level be entrusted with the task of assessment and the local executive and political class take care of relief distribution. This would minimize the controversies surrounding too much demand for too little relief.

Does someone have any data on, actually what percentage of tarpaulins out of those distributed have been used for setting up temporary shelters ? All such critical data will help re-plan emergency response strategies. Are some of our relief materials really feeding into the "wants" of people rather than "needs of people?