Children in the Andamans
Left out of the loop

Two years after the megatsunami, a fact-finding reports says that the government and various NGOs in one of India’s most strategic outposts have not been able to adequately rehabilitate the children of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands who lost their parents and kin

By Arun Anand

Those who were battered by the “killer” waves of the December 2004 megatsunami are still trying to recover. One of the worst-affected among the calamity’s victims were the children in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands who lost their parents and other kin in one fell swoop.

Even two years after the event, the massive rehabilitation efforts in these islands, disconnected from the Indian mainland by geography and geopolitics, have left the children there out of the rebuilding loop.

Battered Islands, the report of a fact-finding committee, prepared by researchers Shivani Chaudhary and Enakshi Ganguly Thukral for the Housing and Land Rights Network’s South Asia Regional Programme (HLRN-SARP), says that many children continue to suffer because of poor rehabilitation efforts, lack of relief and rehab coordination and overlapping of efforts.

The report points out that it may be the typical post-disaster scenario of too many cooks spoiling the broth: various government departments and many of the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that reached the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the wake of the megatsunami have failed to work in tandem, reducing many good initiatives—on paper—to zero over time. In order to highlight the plight of the children orphaned by the tsunami, the fact-finding committee’s report has probed deep into lives of many affected children.

Take the case of Bhushan, who has since returned to health and lives in Campbell Bay. He was a few days old when the tsunami struck. Found floating on a piece of thermocol, he was adopted by a family in Nicobar. But not everyone is as lucky as Bhushan. Selvi, a resident of one of the islands, lost both her parents in the disaster and now lives in South Andaman with her uncle and aunt, who apparently maltreat her. Selvi cried in church one day and blurted she did not want to live with her uncle and aunt, says the report: “Selvi and many children who lost their parents started behaving abnormally after the tragedy.”

Says Thukral, “The sufferings of the tsunami-affected children in these islands are not yet over. There is an urgent need to take care of their rehabilitation.”

The government, and to an extent the NGOs, have been insensitive to the needs of children while carrying out rehabilitation work, says the report; it emphasises that child psychology and local geographical, socioeconomic and cultural factors must be taken into account to make the rehabilitation efforts effective.

In many instances, toilets have been constructed far from the shelters where children live. Often, it is a five to eight minute walk from their shelters, making it impossible for children to use the toilets at night because they are too traumatised to venture out in the dark. The report also points out that the education of these children has been disrupted. “There are complaints that teachers do not take regular classes and the quality of teaching is also poor,” it says. For most students, cheating in examinations has become the norm.

Says the report, “Clearly, children have suffered as a result of the tsunami. Parents, teachers, NGO workers recounted how in the immediate aftermath, children were unable to sleep and had nightmares. They were afraid to go anywhere near the sea. One year after, however, the initial fears have dimmed. What they now have to cope with are problems related to post-emergency rehabilitation.”

The study recommends, “Special measures to address children’s needs, especially of those who have lost one or both parents in the tsunami, should be incorporated in all relief and rehabilitation plans. “Adequate psycho-social support services and long-term counselling programmes for children should be integrated into school and play activities.”

The study indicates that the large number of NGOs working for the rehabilitation of the tsunami-affected children in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands often compete with one another. “All agencies working on children’s issues in a particular shelter should coordinate their activities and work closely together to prevent competition and duplication of efforts,” it suggests.

The report says that parents wryly commented, “There is often competition among the teachers to bring children into their centres.” While this competition might be helping the careers of the rehab specialists, it is not doing the children any good.