Susceptibility and Consequential Vulnerability

As I continue to work on the Social Sector Plan for the most affected villages in five districts  of Uttarakhand, along with lots of inputs and preparatory works from my colleagues in the districts and in the State, I began to wonder about one thing. What are we really focusing on? Or rather, what are all the humanitarian agencies focusing on in their emergency response in Uttarakhand. As I kept pondering through these questions, in one of the daily mails that I share with my colleague (and mentor ) Sarbjit Singh Sahota of UNICEF, wrote " Response to Event Vulnerability will happen, but what about our response to Consequential Vulnerability?"

The people who were most vulnerable and highly exposed at the time of hazard striking them are dead and gone. Families have have lost their loved ones, bread winner, cattle, shops, valuables, almost everything ! The humanitarian agencies continue to respond with food baskets, clothes, temporary shelter, medical camps etc. There is an attempt to strengthen the emergency response system, the critical infrastructure and life line services which have been highly impacted in these districts. So, we are taking care of the "event vulnerability", i.e. people and resources who were vulnerable and have been affected by disaster are taken care of temporarily.

But what about Consequential Vulnerability -- vulnerability that is born of a disaster? People who were better off or in lower middle class, now have become poor. People who had land have now become landless and homeless as their houses and land were carried away. People who had a bread winner at home have become widows, father or motherless, orphans. People who could cultivate some grains have become paupers. Those who earned from shops and cattle have now come to seek asylum. 

The way we treat consequential vulnerabilities today will have an impact on event vulnerabilities and susceptibility of these people to disasters tomorrow.

Time the Compensation

One of the questions I have begun to ask in this assignment in Uttarakhand state is: Is the timing of giving compensation to families who have lost their houses "the right time"? Let us examine the facts. 

Usually after a disaster, immediately there is a hue and cry for compensating the loss. The governments, in order to get a political mileage and to silence the voices, immediately announce a compensation package, and at times it is even revised to increase the earlier package. In the case of Uttarakhand, each family that had lost its house got 200,000 rupees. Indeed, although the disaster had taken place on 16 - 17 June, during my visit to Pithoragarh district closer to the Nepal-Tibetan border with India as early as in the first week of July, I found that the families had been compensated. I was pleasantly surprised at that time the compensation has reached the community and people are happy that they received the money without any delay.

But this is the rainy season. People do not have much work. Most of the affected families are living on the generosity of the government which comes through free or subsidized food and some benefits given by the non-profit organizations. Today, that is about two months from the disaster, how much of that 200,000 is left with the families to reconstruct their houses? In any case with the rains continuing, the house reconstruction cannot start before October. So, how much will be left on the first day when the deprived family needs money? People eat, purchase clothes, pay for medicines, they travel and buy some utensils etc. with the same money.

This takes me to the first question: Is the timing of giving compensation to families who have lost their houses "the right time"? Or, should the "housing compensation be better timed?". One option I would propose is the following (an idea I shared with a few and later I wrote to Eilia J. in Care India yesterday, to share my opinion. 

Hon'ble Chief Minister of Uttarakhand gives compensation 

I would propose that the government gives the money in 3 or 4 installments; and all installments should be paid as advances (unlike in Indira Awaj Yojana where money is retroactively paid). This might have some force on the families too to take responsibility for the money and the house, while at the same time help in standardizing, completing the housing, and improve the the Cash Transfer mechanism as well.

If given in one time advance, it looks like the government has given the compensation, and it has technically washed its hands off! A longer term engagement by splitting the money will also give space for more dialogue on land rights, land usage issues, environmental concerns, risk prevention and management etc. 

May be it is time to rethink some of our compensation policies.

First Impressions of the Disaster

03 July 2013 : I knew even before I left Dehradun for Pithoragarh that this district is not the worst affected. However, I also knew that I had not been sent here on a paid tour. The UN and government must have had a specific reason to put me on this visit to Pithoragarh. At the airport which had just a small little concrete roof of about 10ft x 10 ft passage way that had been converted into the control room with the district Collector Mr. Neeraj Kherwal IAS sitting and the 2^nd Commandant of ITBP (Mr. Martolia, because he is from a village called Martoli) in Pithoragarh guiding the ITBP jawans and camps across the hills, and both of them giving briefs to the IAF helicopter captains….and several satellite phones and wireless systems set up to ensure flow of communication, and couple of tents and over 20 civilian and para-military vehicles lying on the side…. It all gave you an impression of you have landed in the midst of an English action thriller.

The district collector explaining about the disaster using map.

The Collector (also known as the District Magistrate) was very welcoming, honest about the disaster, explained the current situation through a map of the hills drawn by the ITBP that had been placed on a small display board. We could question him about the government’s response. Then we went to meet the District Disaster Management Officer Mr. B.S. Rana at his office, and thereafter to the ITBP camp for further discussion on the logistics. Mr. Martolia  took us into a large hall that is used for educating the young soldiers. The hall had a three dimensional replica of the region mentioning where the Indian villages are, borders are, various security camps are and where various passes and passage routes are. This was extremely important for us to understand which route we must be taking, and which we must avoid. This discussion was educative as well, as we decided to make a strategic change: Our team will be divided into two: two men will go to Dharchula and three of us will go Musiyari, and these two towns will be used as our bases to visit other damaged villages. As a guide and security, Mr. Martolia also offered to provide us with a soldier each so that each team is safe and comfortable in the unknown region.  (The maps we saw are security sensitive and so we were asked to delete them from cameras.)

We were tired as it was already 8.15 pm, and I had to update several persons about the present plans, logistics etc, We checked in at Punetha Inn after a little bargain on the rates. The manager of the hotel was accommodating, and we went to bed by 11.00 pm after a vegetarian meal.

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.