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.

On the Risky Terrain - Women, Vulnerability and Disaster

06 July 2013: It has been raining since 5th noon, and it was just getting worse. I along with Rahul and Bharti went to meet few officers in the Block Administrative Office, took some data, and then proceeded towards Madkot, from where we should be going to a village called Devibagar, which was on the other side of the river. The roads were getting more damaged due to the rains, and in several places it was slippery. I was saying a prayer in my heart, as at several points I could feel that the wheels were just dragging on the wet slippery surface. When we were about four kilometers from Madkot, we saw that the road has been blocked as new debris had come down the mountain and few men were working at it. Seeing that on both sides vehicles had stopped and that the road looked very unsafe.... (we could see deep cracks appearing on the road which would after all fall into the ravine that had water cutting from below the road at over 70 feet down! It was frightening even to look at the water.

Seeing the situation we asked Bharti to return to Munsiyari, and we two men along with the IDBP soldier, began to walk towards Madkot. I kept looking in front of me and on road making sure that I am neither too close to the edge of the road nor closer to the mountain, and avoid water that had turned muddy by then. Suddenly, the soldier shouted at me, "Sir, Stop! STOP !" I stopped and turned back to him and asked, "What happened?" He said "You see the debris is coming down the hill from up? You need to look up as well!" We waited for the debris to fall, and then we jumped past that and we walked towards Madkot, wondering - "What a risky life is this! In flood prone areas, I should be careful of whirlwinds. But here what I have is - I need to look ahead of me, below me and above me, even to take a step forward!" Another prayer in heart : "God, please take me back home safely!"

After we crossed through Madkot, another three kilometers of walk to Devibagar. We stopped a gentleman in his late thirties or early forties who was walking with a young girl (approx 17 - 19 years), and asked him about how the disaster has impacted his life. He said that his house is safe, but food prices and transportation are the concern, and he did not want to talk to us because, pointing to the girl he said, he was taking his wife to the doctor! Alert, certainly in this place child marriage is rampant.

When we reached Devibagar and got into the Tourist guest house closer to the hot spring there, the eight families living there came forward, and we had very good discussion. The families took us around the affected area, spoke about how their houses were washed away by the river and how much of compensation they got etc. The children mentioned that they were studying in the Madkot school which has been washed away, and they are not sure where they would go to for schooling.  The families sounded desperate as they did not have any work and were living on the ration (relief food items and the money they got. The men and women kept mentioning that they are not getting work, even the road work. Their desperateness was on their eyes, looks and body language. I also noticed that this was the only village where I saw at least 6 young girls in their teens, which was not the case in the villages where we have visited so far, where I hardly saw a young girl. So, the question began to come to my mind:

Are these girls vulnerable to be trafficked? Why aren't many girls in other villages, including Madkot which is more thickly populated? Have the girls of those villages been already married off or trafficked? So, in that case, is Devibagar better than others - in protecting their girls?

Madness at Madkot

04 July: Both the teams left at 6.15 am after a cup of black tea that the hotel thoughtfully provided,  and we separated after picking up an ITBP soldier each from the camp. I had Mr. Neeraj as our driver and Mr. Suresh, an ITBP soldier as our companion, along with Rahul and Bharati, my team mates. As the car climbed through the hills, Bharati took ill, and we stopped quite a few times, and at Thal for breakfast. When we reached Munsiyari at 12.30, our stay had been booked at KMVN guest house, a government run building. The lady at the front desk told us that the cost of the rooms would be 1250 per night. I was surprised that it is pretty costly with the rooms not so well maintained, with no AC etc. However, we thought of continuing to stay there. We visited the Munsiyari block office and had a brief by the Addl. District Magistrate Dr. Raghav Langer who was stationed there to coordinate the relief operations. He gave us a lot of information verbally asked one of the block officers to give further information to us in printed formats. As it was taking time, we thought of collecting the information on the next day, have lunch now (it was 3.00 pm), so that we can visit a village on the same day.

We asked Bharati to stay put at the hotel since she wasn’t feeling well, and we three men (me, Rahul and Suresh) proceeded to Madkot. Our journey to Madkot took over an hour, although the distance was hardly 16 kms. The road had been damaged at several locations, but it had been “mended”. When we crossed the river Gori just ahead of Madkot, we saw the crumbling village. Its school and several buildings had been damaged or gone in the water about 90 – 100 feet down the valley. We had discussions with families, shopkeepers, the village leader and finally we visited also the relief camp where 12 families whose houses had been fully damaged were living.

Madkot village is an entry point to several other villages, and so it had lots of shops and the houses were well built. My first impression was that the people of the village cannot be too poor here. Purely looking at the houses, there were about 30% of families who can be classified as poor, as other families lived on shops or jobs, and they seemed to be better off. We were even surprised that there were two hotels in the village! One of them was just on the river bed, and might be threatened soon if the river doesn’t change its course, and the other was a lot more interior and in a secure location.

The relief camp had been set up on an abandoned building by a failed / attempted hydro power station in a nearby location. When we visited the camp, we saw the place to be clean. After a brief with the staff at the camp, we went to visit the families in the camp.  (I am not discussing programmatic issues in this blog, because this is a personal one. And so such have been presented in official reports. Only human stories and personal experience are mentioned here.)

We saw a man on wheel chair, two other men, few children and a old lady, and we started talking to them. Other family members had gone into the village as they go about their normal work and they return whenever they think off to come to stay at the camp. They had come with all their properties as they saw the river beginning to eat up under their houses. We saw dish antennas, parked cars, heaters and even power generators! As I said earlier, many of these families were not poor. But nature had punished them, and have been left homeless and landless now. The three buildings in the camp had two floors each, and in each floor two families were staying! So, well set!

Where politics steps in: We were told that the local Member of the Legislative Assembly has told these families not to quit the camp as this place is better secured, unless and until the government gives them a better house! Arrogance of leadership.

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?

Relief Quota

The training in Disaster Risk Management for Government officials of various departments, municipal departments and local elected bodies started in South Dinajpur district on 01 Nov and the first round of trainings will be over on 12 Nov, and again will restart on 20 Nov, and end on 23 Nov. It has been a very enriching walk back in the district as I had worked in the district through various development, health and disaster management programs. I could meet Mr. Banamali Roy, Block Development Officer (BDO) of Banshihari. He had worked in the Malda floods last year with me. Mr. Jayanta Das, Mrs. Reena, Mr. Subhash Topno, ….. all former colleagues who worked with me in various programs. Many new friends also have come up in all these blocks and in the district.

In Kushmandi block I came across an interesting situation which the block administrative officials shared with me. They said when the block administration saw that there are several people who are extremely poor and are destitute, and they need help, and arranged for the same, not only the political leaders, but even some of the lower level government officers objected to the same saying, “If you are planning to help them you do it yourself, and do all the works by yourselves. Or else, we have a quota, and follow the same!” In other words, each government officer has the “right” to help based on “his personal assessment”, and not on objective parameters. Be it a disaster response or help to any needy person, any objective assessment and assistance is abhorred and resisted. Well, I think, the anti-corruption group India Against Corruption should start working on these fundamental systemic issues rather than wasting their time in targeting individuals.