Tsunami News

JANUARY 2005

A Queen is forced to leave

Published by TIMES OF INDIA

30 Jan 2005

The palace has gone. The empire is lost. And the queen is forced to leave. The tsunami has done it all. 

"Every thing is over now. The tsunami has taken away everything. My people, my fields and the small peaceful world, where everyone was so happy," said 72-year old 'Rani Fathima', the queen of an empire in the Nancowry group of island in Andaman and Nicobar. 

Nancowry is a collection of three low-lying islands in the middle of the Nicobar archipelago, which bore the brunt of the tsunami. 

The Nicobars, with a population of more than 42,000, were one of the places worst hit by the tsunami, with a death toll of 1,489 while other 5,541 were missing since December 26. 

The queen was evacuated from a village of Nancowry island called Champin, which was her kingdom till December 26, where her decision used to be the final one. 

"She was ill. So we evacuated her to Port Blair from Nancowry via an Indian Air Force aircraft," says Sabira, Fathima's younger daughter. 

Despite her poor health, the queen is busy meeting the bureaucrats here for sending relief to her remote island. 

Her younger son, Rashid Yusuf, is coordinating between the villagers and the relief operation officers for proper dispatch of relief materials. 

Happier times: Prince Rashid Yusuf (right) at his birthday party with Dr. Simron Jit Singh (left) of the Andaman and Nicobar Associations during the IUAES Congress at Calcutta, December 2004 - 2 weeks before the tsunami devastated his islands.

'Rani ghat' (Queen's Palace), as the Nicobarese know it, or three buildings on Champin, was where the queen's family of 42 lived and from where they had to flee when the killer waves stormed in. 

"The title (queen) was bestowed on Fatima's grandmother, a Nicobarese woman called Islon, by a grateful British government, obliged with the service rendered by her," says Sabira. 

Fathima's grandmother Islon and mother Lachmi were treated as queens even after the country's Independence.

Queen Islong had only one child, a daughter named Lachmi, who succeeded her as a widely respected island leader until her death in 1989. 

Queen Fathima was also an only child. She has eight children, including three sons. But as per the system of female succession, eldest daughter Aisya, 49, will be her successor. 

"We have already selected the location for rehabilitation of our people. The administration has promised us to build our houses as soon as possible," said Rashid Yusuf who advised his men to select an elevated land deep inside the forest to set up the village again. 

The administration has assured all kind of help to this royal family. "Our first priority is to build houses for tsunami affected people before monsoon," official sources said. 

Chief Secretary of Andaman and Nicobar VV. Bhat, however, says there is no queen or king in these islands. "They may consider anyone as queen but the Government do not recognise any one as queen. It is their internal matter," he said.

Editor's note: The "Chief Secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar islands" heads the local bureaucracy. He does not head "the Government". It is not for a government servant (however grand and inflated) to recognize or not recognize the existence of royalty in the Nicobar islands.

A deadly bureaucracy in the Andamans

by COLIN GONSALVES

received from SUDARSHAN RODRIGUEZ
Marine Conservation Analyst
Flat 2B, Adithya Apartments
38 Balakrishna Road
Valmiki Nagar,Thiruvanmiyur
Chennai-600 041
Tamilnadu, India

Phone:+91 44 5201 9470
Mobile: +91 9840680127
Fax: +91 44 52019468
Email: sudarshanr@yahoo.com

26 Jan 2005

One would have thought that in a disaster of this magnitude even ineffective bureaucrats would put their shoulder to the wheel and take assistance from all well meaning citizens and push on without regard to petty rules and red tape. But the experiences of the NGOs have been to the contrary. Social workers, doctors and others are wasting their time at Port Blair. Thirty doctors from Medecins Sans Frontieres and Voluntary Health Association and six doctors from Kerala have been refused permission to move to the other islands.

In the mean while, Paul Sanjit, a 38 year old Nicobari on the Island Kakana fell ill on the 12th of January. There was no doctor to attend to him. He died that evening.

While the Relief Commissioner said that he had a million water purification tablets they were apparently not reaching the people. There were complaints of women needing sanitary napkins. The Anand Margis at Hut Bay complained that they could not get rice while it is said that the Government godowns are full of grain. Two hundred cycles meant for Central Nicobar are not being transported to the islands. Mothers want mosquito nets for their infant children. People need axes for the making of houses. In Car Nicobar seventy 'huris' (boats) were lost. An NGO offered government two fiberglass boats but they were not accepted. They were then taken by an NGO and sent to the islands. Freight charges have been introduced for the first time for relief work. However, even when the NGO's pay the cargo does not reach.

As a result rising anger has manifested itself in ugly incidents. The Tehsildar at Hut Bay was tied up by local people. An official supervising relief operation at Camorta was criticized by tribals because of insensitive remarks that he allegedly made. An officer at Nicobar having not bathed for days took one in mineral water. He has now been replaced.

Cambell Bay

A Class I gazetted officer living at Laxminagar recounted his tale of woe. The Tsunami struck on the 26th destroying everything. For three days no one came to their rescue. The Assistant Commissioner ('A.C.'), assuming, since his area was not badly affected, that the remainder of the island was safe, apparently sent a radio message that Cambell Bay was fine. No helicopters flew over. The coast guard did not provide relief. In desperation on 29th morning the entire group began trekking towards the headquarters. They felt very let down when they heard on the radio that Indian planes and ships had reached Sri Lanka while they were still not rescued. At 10. 30 that night they were still on the road looking for the AC. They were told, ''searching for the A.C. is like searching for God.''

Champin

The earthquake struck Champin in Nancowry Island causing extensive damage. The A.C. in charge was requested to depute three administration boats for rescuing people. He declined because he had received a signal from the Director of Shipping Services not to send the boats. The A.C. was requested to send rations to Champin but he said he could not send a boat. Then one Nepas Levi managed to swim from Trinket to Camorta. He requested that a boat be sent to rescue people. Two small navy boats with the commanding officer set out at once. The officer saved the life of a seven years old child from Trinket. A resident, Rashid Yousuf was one of the first persons to give his four boats for rescue. Together with the police they rescued two hundred people from Trinket, Safed Balu and Chota and Bara Inaka. Mrs. Priscilla of Pilpillow village floated for three days and reached Teressa. If the boat had been sent earlier she might not have had to go through this ordeal and who knows how many more wo

uld have been saved. Through all this the A.C. in charge insisted that everything was ''under control.'' A request was made to him to supply rations free. He said that he had no orders from a higher authority to supply free rations. These were released only after Dr. Naresh of the civil hospital insisted that the cost of the rations be deducted from his salary.

Why the great secrecy? Apparently thousands of non-tribals live illegally in the Andamans with the connivance of the officials. Retired Government employees have houses on tribal land and are cultivating land, an activity prohibited by law. The excuse of tribal passes is used to keep out experts so that the actual functioning of the administration is not exposed.

What needs to be done? First, no tribal pass should be issued without consulting the Tribal Council. They seek 100% reservation in government jobs. They must be an integral part of all planning processes. The Autonomous Tribal Council with increased powers is a long pending demand. Loss must be assessed immediately. The survey done by the administration is unreliable. Repayment of bank loans and the other liabilities of the tribals must be waived. Compensation in Tamil Nadu is Rs. 1,00,000 for death, Rs. 10,000 for house reconstruction, Rs. 5000 for cremation expenses and smaller amounts for grain and utensils. In the islands the only compensation paid is the initial Rs. 2000 despite the Prime Minister's announcement of Rs. 1,00,000 compensation for death. The banks are offering loans but are unclear about whether the existing liability is to be waived. The Lt. Governor declared a payment of Rs. 60 lakhs to the Tribal Development Cooperative Society but this is yet to materialize. Th

e children need to start studying but the books have not reached. A scholarship system must be set up. The children are traumatized and persons with professional counseling skills are needed immediately. The process by which a tribal can get a contract for work takes up to one year and needs to be radically changed. Boats must be given priority. Most of all NGOs must be allowed in but only after clearance from the Tribal Councils.

As things stand today senor persons from leading Indian NGOs are twiddling their thumbs at Port Blair. They were bluntly told by the administration that the government did not need their help. Even in the Little Andamans and Cambell Bay where permits are not necessary journalists and NGOs are now blocked after reports critical of the administration emerged from those islands. The administration promises to allow funding to reach Hut Bay, Little Andamans and Cambell Bay but that permission has not yet been granted. However the need is far greater in the Nicobar Islands. Give us the money, is the stand of the administration, we will do the work

Andaman Trust founded

by MADHUSREE MUKHERJEE
lopchu@att.ne

26 Jan 2005

The Andaman and Nicobar Trust Account has been created. It will collect funds for rebuilding the lives and livelihoods of the indigenous Nicobarese, at least a third of whom were washed away by the tsunami. The fund is to be used, insofar as possible, by the Nicobarese themselves. They face an uphill task, not just because of the bereavements but because large parts of the Nicobar Islands have sunk during the earthquake, and many formerly inhabited areas, which were near the coast, are now under the sea. See satellite photos at www.nrsa.gov.in for an idea of the damage.

The trust is the brainchild of Dr. Simron Jit Singh, a researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Social Ecology, University of Klagenfurt  in Vienna and author of "In the Sea of Influence: A World System Perspective of the Nicobar Islands" (2003). He spent years studying the Nicobarese and ended up finding ways to empower them. Simron is now on his way to the Nicobars to help the Nicobarese rebuild. Because of distance and logistics, it has been extremely difficult for the Nicobarese not only to receive aid but also to articulate their needs; they need spokespersons they can trust.

Please donate to the Andaman Nicobar Trust Account. The Trust account is operated by a Notary and under the responsibility of Prof. Marina Fischer-Kowalski, who heads the Institute for Social Ecology. The fund will be donated for the economic rehabilitation of the Nicobarese once official channels are opened.

Details can be found at
http://www.andaman-nicobar-fund.org/

Efforts to revive tourism in the Andamans

A&N Administration Press Release

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

25 Jan 2005

A large gathering of people consisting of representatives from Andaman Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Andaman Tourism Guild, travel agents, tour operators and general public ventured into the waters of the Carbyn's Cove beach to send a strong message to the world that Andaman is safe and open for domestic and international tourists. The Lt. Governor, Prof. Ram Kapse, the first lady Smt. Smita Kapse and Shri K. Krishanan, Chairman PBMC also participated. Speaking on the occasion the Lt. Governor called upon the tourism industry to endeavor to bring back tourists from all over the world.

He mentioned that since tourism has been identified as a thrust area along with fishing and high value agriculture, the union government is also encouraging the revival of the tourism sector in the Islands. He emphasized that the three thrust areas would be revived and given importance so that the islanders get employed in these sectors. He called upon everyone concerned to work as a team to revive these sectors and mentioned that this should be seen as a start of a new era. He stated that the Administration will build a new Andaman and the tourism sector will be made successful. He praised the media for highlighting positively about the tourism potential of the Islands.

Turtles nesting again

by SANJIB KUMAR ROY

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

24 Jan 2005

Helicopters scouring a devastated Indian island have sighted endangered sea turtles and they are nest-ing again at new locations a month after the tsunamis wrecked their habitat.

Coastguard spokesman Commandant Sanjay Anchalwal said Monday that olive Ridley and Leatherback turtles were spotted at Indira Point off the ravaged island of Campbell Bay, the southern-most tip of India. (= the southernmost point of Great Nicobar island). Campbell Bay lies just 163 kilometres (101 miles) from Banda Aceh in Indonesia, the epicentre of the December 26 undersea earthquake that sent tsunami waves crashing across Asian shores.

The remote island, one of more than 500 in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, bore the full fury of the towering waves that submerged Indira Point and washed away turtle nesting places.

"A Coast Guard helicopter Friday sighted turtle nesting for the first time since the disaster," the spokesman said, adding that the turtles had shifted their breeding grounds some 10 kilometres (six miles) from the orginal location.

"The nesting site has shifted from the original ground called South Bay Galathia river to a newly-formed beach at Indira Point," Anchal-wal added.

"Some 20 tracks are visible and a ground team has also found newly-laid eggs," he said. Old nests appeared to have been smashed by the waves and the turtles settled among debris washed ashore at the new location on Indira Point. However the primitive, protected animals which co-existed with the dinosaurs, were not sighted in large numbers.

"Our men could locate only four to five turtles while in peak season earlier we have noticed 15-20 turtles every day coming ashore to lay eggs," added coast guard official Pankaj Verma.

The original breeding site known as "Point 41" is completely deserted and half submerged in the sea following the devastation.

Six turtle researchers from the western Indian city of Pune and 16 lo-cal lighthouse personnel are still missing from Indira Point since De-cember 26.

Andaman environmentalists on Monday cheered after the official sighting which was reported in Port Blair, capital of the federally-ruled territory.

"Life finds out its way. It is really nice to see these endangered turtles claiming a new land for laying eggs," said Pankaj Sekhsaria of the An-daman and Nicobar Environment group.

"Other researchers too have located leatherbacks and olive ridleys on a beach on Rutland island," some 130 kilometres (80 miles) from Port Blair, Sekhsaria said.

Four species of sea turtles -- the leatherback, green, hawksbill and olive ridley, the most common in Indian waters -- nested on the beaches of the Car Nicobar chain of islands between December and February.

All but the leatherback were once hunted on the islands for meat and the creatures remain a lucrative target for poachers.

Some 7,500 people were killed or are listed as missing on the Andamans since the waves hit on December 26.

The archipelago is also home to brakish water crocodiles, deer, wild boar and a huge variety of birds.

Good news: the Port Blair government begins to listen

Press Release from SOCIETY FOR ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ECOLOGY (SANE)
sane@andamanisles.com
Tel. +91 3192 232929 and +91 3192 234624; Fax: +91 3192 236014
and
Dr. VISHVAJIT PANDYA
vishvajit_pandya@da-iict.org
Tel. +91 9898024561)

23 Jan 2005

In contrast to non-indigenous settlers, indigenous tribal communities have shown a greater resilience in response to the grave disaster. They have picked up the pieces of life and started rebuilding without entirely depending on the hard-pressed administration. For example, instead of just waiting for the relief materials, the Onges have already resumed their hunting and the Nicobarese are engaged in replanting their horticultural gardens. This perhaps indicates towards a unique worldview of these indigenous communities in which their understanding of life and death is derived from their lived-in observation of chaos and disorder in nature.

This perspective on their natural environment is also evident in the oral narratives and mythologies of Andamanese and Nicobarese indigenous communities.

Following the Tsunami disaster, the Andaman and Nicobar administration was overwhelmed with the task of handling excessive negotiating demands, attention and criticisms put forth by dozens of relief and rehabilitation organisations and politicians which made it difficult for the administration to rely on appropriate co-operations and strategies.

As the dust settles, the administration has taken first positive steps by acknowledging the wisdom of the local communities, the resourcefulness and experience of local NGOs and accepting inputs of scientists who have been working in the area for several years.

On 23rd January morning, the Lt. Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Prof. Ram Kapse, welcomed the proposal of a local NGO, Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology (SANE) and associated scientists whereby the individuals and volunteers of SANE would contribute to the process of rebuilding indigenous lands.

The proposal for Nicobars was developed on the basis of an invitation of the Nicobar Youth Association and the Tribal Councils. In the case of Onges of Little Andaman, drawing up a plan would be based on a long standing relationship of Prof. Vishvajit Pandya (DA-IICT, Gandhinagar), an anthropologist working with the Onges for nearly 2 decades. The Nicobar efforts are built on the years of work of Dr. Simron Jit Singh, a human ecologist from the University of Klagenfurt, Vienna. The Nicobar Youth Association has already liaisoned a group of young Nicobarese volunteers who would assist in the process.

This process would involve eliciting community's perception in rebuilding the community with cultural sensitivity and minimum imposition but maximum appropriate assistant.

Says, Samir Acharya, Secretary of SANE, "We at SANE are elated that the administration has decided to put our information and knowledge base with the expertise of our associate scientists to the best interest of the affected indigenous communities".

Relief blocked by Port Blair government - NGOs claim

by SUBIR BHAUMICK
Published by BBC News, Calcutta

Received from MADHUSREE MUKHERJEE
lopchu@att.net

23 Jan 2005

Tribal organisations in India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands have severely criticised the local administration.

They have accused it of refusing to carry relief material from local voluntary groups to remote islands which were devastated by the tsunami. The island administration has stopped voluntary groups from relief work in the worst-affected Nicobar region.

Last week, Red Cross officials accused the authorities in the Andaman and

Nicobar Islands of "hijacking" aid.

Little role

Indian officials reported 30 more tsunami deaths on Monday, increasing the death toll in last month's catastrophe to 10,744. The figures show that 1,894 islanders are dead in the archipelago, with more than 5,500 missing.

The administration in Andaman and Nicobar says it has supplied enough relief to all communities hit by the tsunami - so there was little role for voluntary groups.

A government spokesman said some local groups were taking huge quantities of relief material from foreign non-governmental organisations and asking the administration to transport them to the islands.

The spokesman said the government would give priority to shipping its own supplies around the islands.

Local correspondents say the Andaman-Nicobar administration is determined to prevent foreign voluntary groups from joining the relief effort, even if it is by proxy. They say the local administration is trying to stop local voluntary groups from receiving foreign support.

Earlier, the administration said that while overseas groups would not be allowed to join the relief effort, any material they could provide was welcome.

Red Cross officials last week alleged that supplies shipped to the islands' capital, Port Blair, were being seized at the docks, apparently for distribution by the government.

The Tribal Council in the Nancowrie group of islands, the area in Nicobar worst hit by the tsunami, has accused the local administration of being insensitive to local relief requirements.

It said in a statement on Monday that the administration had now stopped local voluntary groups from conducting relief work in the Nicobar area.

The council's chairperson Ayesha Majid said that was most unfortunate, arguing that local groups are aware of the typical needs of the Nicobarese people, which is not the case with the federal officials working on the islands.

Communications restored

A&N Administration Press Release

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

23 Jan 2005

Due to the recent earthquake and the tsunami which followed, telephone exchanges across the Islands were destroyed. In most of the cases, damages occurred to the exchange equipment, battery and power plants and the satellite receivers, among other things.

The staff of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited immediately sprung out to different parts of the Islands carrying replacement equipments and other materials and they were able to restore the functioning of most of the exchanges within a short span of time.

The functioning of the Swadeshnagar exchange in Mayabunder has been restored, where the optical fibre was replaced. The Bambooflat exchange was shifted to a new building with fresh exchange equipments and the exchange is now functioning full fledged. At Hutbay, the exchange has started functioning from a satellite building and the equipments were replaced. At Car Nicobar, the optical fibre equipment, engine alternator and the satellite receivers were damaged. Those were replaced in the exchange building and the Car Nicobar exchange is now working properly. At Katchal and Teressa, the exchange equipment, battery & power plant, engine alternator, satellite receiver and the copper cable and pillars were destroyed. They have all been replaced and the exchanges are functioning from new buildings. At Camorta, the satellite receiver was repaired and the exchange is functioning. At Campbell Bay exchange the equipments, battery & power plant, engine alternator, optical fibre cable and the copper cable and pillars were damaged. These were replaced and the exchange is working from a satellite building. Efforts are underway to install an Inmarsat satellite phone connection at the Champin exchange (on Nancowry island) .

The BSNL exchanges in the Islands are operated on 48V DC power delivered from the battery & power plant, which in turn operates on AC 220V/415 V commercial power supply. Standby AC supply is generated by the engine alternator. Exchange networks in different Islands are in turn connected to the satellite hub at Port Blair through satellite media.

Lt.Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands visits Little Andaman

A&N Administration Press Release

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

22 Jan 2005

The Lt. Governor, Prof. Ram Kapse today visited Little Andaman to review relief operations there. From the helipad the Lt. Governor drove to the Primary Health Centre (PHC) set up in the Forest Corporation Guest House and met the doctors. The Lt. Governor and the First Lady visited the ward set up in a Govt. quarter and enquired after the welfare of the patients there.

The Lt. Governor visited the relief camp set up for the Onges and interacted with them in the presence of Prof. Vishwajit Pandya, renowned Anthropologist. The Onges discussed matters relating to shifting their settlement to safer locations. The Lt. Governor also met the inmates of another camp for settlers and listened to their problems.

The Lt. Governor visited the Hut Bay jetty and the breakwater and inspected the work going on there. He met the peoples' representatives and the general public at the APWD Guest House. The Lt. Governor invited PRI members to come to Port Blair on 25th January, 2005 to discuss the matters relating to their demands.

Prominent among the demands was resettlement of entire Hut Bay area, repair of jetty, road, starting of schools, aid to fishermen, starting postal services, cell phone facility and radio and TV at every relief camp.

The Lt. Governor asked the authorities to start schools from Monday. He also asked TV and Radio may be provided at the camps. He asked the PWD officials to repair the roads. He also informed that sufficient stock of Kerosene would be sent to Hut Bay. He informed that other matters would be taken up with the Central Govt. during his visit to New Delhi.

The Lt. Governor also interacted with members of some NGOs working in Little Andaman. The First Lady Smt. Smita Kapse met women and children and enquired about their problems and needs.

The Lt. Governor on his visit was accompanied by the Member of Parliament, Shri Manoranjan Bhakta, Deputy Commissioner, Andamans, Shri Gyanesh Bharti, Director of Fisheries, Dr. V. Krishnamurthy and Chief Executive Officer of Zilla Parishad, Shri CM Singh.

Islands denied relief by Port Blair bureaucracy

by SUBIR BHAUMIK
Published by BBC News, Calcutta

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

19 Jan 2005

Tribal organisations in India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands have severely criticised the local administration. They have accused it of refusing to carry relief material from local voluntary groups to remote islands which were devastated by the tsunami. The island administration has stopped voluntary groups from relief work in the worst-affected Nicobar region.

Last week, Red Cross officials accused the authorities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of "hijacking" aid.

Little role

Indian officials reported 30 more tsunami deaths on Monday, increasing the death toll in last month's catastrophe to 10,744. The figures show that 1,894 islanders are dead in the archipelago, with more than 5,500 missing.

The administration in Andaman and Nicobar says it has supplied enough relief to all communities hit by the tsunami - so there was little role for voluntary groups. A government spokesman said some local groups were taking huge quantities of relief material from foreign non-governmental organisations and asking the administration to transport them to the islands. The spokesman said the government would give priority to shipping its own supplies around the islands.

Local correspondents say the Andaman-Nicobar administration is determined to prevent foreign voluntary groups from joining the relief effort, even if it is by proxy. They say the local administration is trying to stop local voluntary groups from receiving foreign support. Earlier, the administration said that while overseas groups would not be allowed to join the relief effort, any material they could provide was welcome.

Red Cross officials last week alleged that supplies shipped to the islands' capital, Port Blair, were being seized at the docks, apparently for distribution by the government.

The Tribal Council in the Nancowrie group of islands, the area in Nicobar worst hit by the tsunami, has accused the local administration of being insensitive to local relief requirements. It said in a statement on Monday that the administration had now stopped local voluntary groups from conducting relief work in the Nicobar area. The council's chairperson Ayesha Majid said that was most unfortunate, arguing that local groups are aware of the typical needs of the Nicobarese people, which is not the case with the federal officials working on the islands

New commander-in-chief of armed forces in the Andaman and Nicobar islands

Published by THE DAILY TELEGRAMS, Port Blair

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

18 Jan 2005

Lieutenant General Aditya Singh has taken over as commander-in-Chief of Andaman & Nicobar Command from Lt. General BS Thakur, who has proceeded to New Delhi to take up his new assignment as Vice Chief of Army Staff.

Lt. Gen. Aditya Singh who completed his education from Mayo College, Ajmer, joined the National Defence Academy in 1963 where he distinguished himself by winning the President's Silver Medal. At Indian Military Academy he excelled in all fields and was awarded the 'Sword of Honour' and Gold Medal for being first in the order of merit. He was commissioned into The Deccan horse, one of the oldest regiments of the Armoured Corps. In addition to normal command and staff appointments, Lt. Gen. Singh has served as a Brigade Major of a Mountain Brigade in J&K and in Bhutan with the Indian Military Training Team. He has also served as the Brigadier General Staff of a Command HQ, where he was responsible for Maritime Operations in island territories.

Being an alumni of the prestigious National Defence College, Lt. Gen. Singh has had the honour of commanding The Deccan horse and The President's Bodyguard. He has also commanded a Sector in High Altitude area of the Indo Tibet Border, and Armoured Brigade in Rajasthan and an Armoured Division.

Thereafter, he was Commander of the Higher Command wing at the Army War College and later took over as Chief of Staff of a Pivot Corps. He then commanded 21 Corps, a Strike Corps. Lt. Gen Aditya Singh is an excellent sportsman and his sporting interests include golf and swimming apart from representing the Indian Army in Polo, an ANC release said.

Tsunami affects turtle conservation programs throughout Indian Ocean

by HILLARY CHEW

Published by JANAKI LENIN, Draco Films/Draco Books
P.O. Box 21, Chengalpattu 603001, India,
Tel.+91-4114-220195
www.snakesofindia.com

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

18 Jan 2005

Marine turtle conservation programmes surrounding the Indian Ocean suffered considerable damage from the giant ocean waves, severely undermining regional plans to save the highly endangered marine reptile.

Six out of seven species of sea turtles in the world are found in this region which was ravaged by killer waves triggered by the Dec 26 undersea earthquake off Sumatra. The tsunami disaster has claimed over 150,000 lives, displaced hundreds of coastal communities and disrupted the livelihood of thousands of fisherfolk.

The Indian Ocean and South East Asian Marine Turtle Memorandum of Understanding (IOSEA MoU) has started assessing the extent of damage following the tsunami tragedy.

"The IOSEA MoU Secretariat is compiling information on turtle conservation projects around the Indian Ocean that may have been affected by the tsunami," says its coordinator Douglas Hykle who is based in Bangkok.

Sri Lankan tsunami survivor Dudley Pereira lost some 200 hawkbill sea turtles to the tsunami when the waves destroyed his sea turtle tanks. In his hands is all that's left of his collection of the endangered turtles. The secretariat has been coordinating the turtle revival programme in the region since 2001.

"We will also collaborate with other organisations which are conducting or supporting assessments on the ground to ensure that important turtle habitats such as nesting beaches, oral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves are covered by these studies."

Facilities in the Indian Nicobar Islands, Sri Lanka and Thailand were the hardest hit with reports of dead and missing field staff and destruction of research stations.

The Andaman Nicobar Environment Trust field station at Campbell Bay in Great Nicobar was devastated when seismic waves slammed the island. Six out of seven field staff, including four scientists studying the Olive Ridley and Leatherback turtles, are still missing.

A field assistant, Santosh Augu, who sustained two broken collarbones, miraculously survived after he was reported missing for 17 days. Santosh related that a few of them had clung on to a tree, which was uprooted after the third wave battered the coast. He has not seen his colleagues since.

The Gahirmatha marine sanctuary in India's Kendrapara district, the largest breeding ground for the Olive Ridley, escaped the wrath of the tsunami.

Nesting at the sanctuary occurs on a cluster of islands - Barunei, Nasi-1, Nasi-2, Babubali and Agarnasi off the east coast. Waves surged into the Babubali and Agarnasi nesting grounds, causing minor erosion on the sandy beach. Forestry personnel who were present escaped unhurt as their camps were a safe distance from the coast.

The Kosgoda nesting beach on the southern coast of Sri Lanka was hit by a six-metre high wave which surged 1.5km inland. The Turtle Conservation Project (TCP) is managed by 17 local egg-protectors, six research officers and some foreign volunteers. Everyone was saved except for three egg-protectors who were swept into the sea.

The TCP field station located 1km inland was inundated and suffered damage to equipment and educational materials although the building remained intact.

Immediate relief efforts went into operation to assess damage and provide basic humanitarian aid to the affected staff and their families.

The turtle conservation project which finds its strength in community participation, needs to recommence operations as soon as possible to enable its staff to earn an income amidst the bleak future faced by the fishing community which has suffered heavy losses in terms of damaged fishing boats and gear. Two other nesting grounds at Rekawa and Bundala National Park have yet to be surveyed.

Several privately-owned turtle hatcheries were also affected by the killer waves which shattered holding tanks and washed away the reptiles. One operator lost about 10,000 eggs and a few hundred hatchlings.

In Thailand, three turtle research facilities were badly affected. At Koh Phra Thong, the Italian Naucrates conservation project was wiped out and suffered heavy losses. Two of its marine biologists, Rebecca Clark from Canada and Lisa Jones from Britain, who were working on the Golden Buddha Beach, were swept away by the giant waves. A memorial fund has been set up in the biologists' names to continue Naucrates's conservation work there.

Clark was the science manager onboard Ocean Alliance's whale-research vessel Odyssey before she went on sabbatical leave to Thailand. In memory of the young scientist, the alliance has set up an internship fund for young women from developing nations who are interested in science.

Located in the same province of Phang Nga as Naucrates, the Thai navy's turtle head-start programme at the Tap Lamu naval base was also in ruins. Two thousand turtles from two months to seven years old were lost.

In neighbouring Phuket, the Marine and Coastal Resource Development and Research Institute which was conducting research on the Olive Ridley and green turtle, reported 20 missing Olive Ridley turtles.

The institute's biologist, Kongkiat Kittiwattanawong, fears that the tsunami incident may push the dwindling turtle population one step closer to extinction. "It's too early to tell the full impact but this is certainly not going to help," he reportedly told Reuters.

Like a true scientist, Kongkiat remains undaunted by the tsunami tragedy. He took advantage of the male green turtle brought in by the waves to chart the reptile's movement to determine its migratory route. A satellite transmitter was attached to its carapace.

Marine turtles are migratory reptiles with vastly separated feeding and breeding grounds as shown by the satellite tracking programme conducted on female animals which come ashore to lay eggs.

"We have never been able to attach a transmitter to a male green turtle before, so this should help our understanding of how and where they live," Kongkiat was quoted as saying.

Kongkiat feared that sea turtles might be more adversely affected by the tsunami than other marine creatures as they need to surface regularly for oxygen. The battered nesting beaches strewn with debris and steep sand banks might also deter nesting females during the current nesting season.

Hykle acknowledges that it may take months before some of the projects affected by the tsunami are once again operational.

The priority now is on immediate relief efforts to get local communities back on their feet.

"Nevertheless, it may be possible to coordinate the collection of baseline data from around the region and analyse the impact on nesting in the short-term," says Hykle, adding that the matter would be raised at the upcoming signatories' meeting in March. Twenty countries have since signed the MoU.

As concern of destruction to coastal ecosystems mounts, it is feared that the surviving turtles may not find their regular food sources like seagrass, as in the case of the green turtle.

Under IOSEA MoU's conservation and management plan, turtle range states in the region are supposed to cooperate in protecting turtle habitats which include both nesting and feeding grounds.

"In Thailand, for example, there is discussion about using this tragic event as an opportunity to review zoning regulations in coastal areas, though not necessarily with turtle conservation in mind. However, turtles could benefit if resorts were rebuilt with the integrity of coastal ecosystems in mind, and disturbance from light and other factors was reduced," says Hykle.

Second open letter to the President of India

by MAHASWETA DEVI, ROOPA GANGULY , SITA VENKATESWAR, and MADHUSREE MUKHERJEE

Received from MADHUSREE MUKHERJEE
lopchu@att.net

17 Jan 2005

To Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam The President of India Rashtrapati Bhavan New Delhi 17th January 2005   Dear Sir,   It is three weeks since the tsunami hit. The Nicobars are devastated, with reportedly all coastal areas submerged. The death toll is immense, and official counts are clearly understated. Aid reached too late to save many of the injured. To this day, difficult terrain has made it impossible for search-and-rescue missions to reach everywhere. Throughout this tragedy, the callousness and inefficacy of the local administration has been astounding. On January 12, a 38-year-old Nicobarese man fell ill and died in a Central Nicobar relief camp. No doctor is present in this camp. By another report, around 40 volunteer doctors are in Port Blair, eager and ready to offer their services to the afflicted, but are not being permitted to go to the Nicobars. Further, the administration is requiring NGOs that wish to transport relief materials to the Nicobars to pay for the freight; but when the NGOs agreed to this condition, they were told all the ships were busy. The Nicobarese are eager to start rebuilding their lives, for which task they need tools as simple as daus and axes. For some reason the administration is not providing such tools, nor is it allowing NGOs to do so. India has the resources to deal with the catastrophe, we are repeatedly assured, but so far there is no evidence that India has the quality of governance required for such a task. Not only have the Nicobarese lost a third, if not half, of their population, they have also lost the coconut plantations that were once their livelihood. With coastal areas submerged, and most remaining parts of the islands covered with forest, it has become unclear where the Nicobarese are to rebuild their lives and on what resources they are to live. Illegal settlers, who have long plagued these gracious and gentle indigenous people, cornered much of the early aid and occupied the remaining high ground. These settlers must be permanently removed. In general, the administration must respond quickly and positively to Nicobarese needs as articulated by their own representatives. Late aid compounded by continued neglect leaves the Government of India open to charges of human rights violations. We enclose, for your information, an extract from a report by Manish Chandi, a researcher with the Andaman and Nicobar Environmental Team, on the extent of physical damage to the Nicobars; a revealing report by local-born journalist Denis Giles on early relief to the Nicobars; and copies of three petitions by the Nicobarese themselves. Too many lives and too much time have been lost. Please act now. Yours sincerely, Mahasweta Devi, Roopa Ganguly , Sita Venkateswar, Madhusree Mukerjee

Special relief loan scheme by State Bank of India for tsunami-affected people

Published by THE DAILY TELEGRAMS, Port Blair

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

17 Jan 2005

The State Bank of India, has come out with a special relief loan for tsunami affected people of these island which will take care of the immediate financial need of the distressed families of the island due to the earthquake and tsunami. Under the special scheme which is a general purpose loan scheme, the loan amount is restricted to 12 months net annual income (12xNMI) and the rate of interest @ 2 percent below SBAR i.e. 8.25 percent instead of 12.75 percent.

According to a press note issued by the bank, the processing fee for the loan has been waived and there will no charges for processing of the loan. The loan will be available from all the branches in A&N island only subject to availability of check off facility; for offering personal loan with under noted deviations to tsunami affected salaried employees of Central / State / PSO / Private organizations (profit making) /which have been paying salary regularly during the post 24 months) of A&N Islands.

Besides the donation towards the Prime Minister's Relief Fund and Lt. Governor's Relief, the SBI branch Port Blair has also distributed relief materials to various camps in and around Port Blair. All the branches have been instructed to immediately identify the affected people in their respective service area and provide consumption loan and other loans to rehabilitate them in their respective economic activities, the press note added.

Kerala doctors stranded in Port Blair - they do not get permission to help

by MUKUNDAN C. MENON
Published by NEW INDIAN EXPRESS

Received from ABRAHAM M. GEORGE
amgeorge@optonline.net

17 Jan 2005

A six-member team of doctors, which arrived in Andaman and Nicobar Islands under an initiative of Non-Resident Keralites for taking part in the relief and rescue operations, has been denied permission to visit the worst-hit islands in the archipelago.

Despite repeated requests from the medical team comprising doctors from Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode Medical Colleges, the island administration has not given them permission to travel to the battered islands of Kachchal, Kamota and Nancowri. Following this, the doctors remained stranded in Port Blair.

``The situation in these islands are very bad. Two doctors are already in the area. They recently urged the administration to rush more doctors as the situation there is very grim. But we don't know why we're being denied permission,'' team co-ordinator Ratheesh told this website's newspaper over phone from Port Blair. The team is being sponsored by Overseas Friends, an alumni association of Anjuman Engineering College and Rescue International.

All the three organisations have been launched by Malayalis working in UAE.

``We also heard from personnel involved in rescue operations that even the dead bodies have not been removed from these islands home to many aboriginals. No one from the administration has visited these areas,'' Ratheesh said.

``We expressed our desire to work on these islands. But for some strange reason, permission is being denied,'' Ratheesh, a Dubai-based businessman who reached the isles for voluntary work, said.

``The Health Secretary after showing initial interest in our request suddenly changed his stand. We spoke to Union Minister E.Ahamed. But even his intervention has not made a change,'' he said.

Doctors in the team have already met the Lt. Governor and other senior bureaucrats in Andaman. ``But nothing positive is emerging. They have not given us a proper reply. This sparks off doubts whether they are trying to hide something,'' Ratheesh said.

The team is led by Dr Sajith Kumar, assistant professor, Thiruvananthapuram Medical College. Dr Santhosh Kumar, Sajeesh and Dinesh of Thiruvananthapuram Medical College, B Krishnan and Habeed Mohammed of Kozhikode Medical College are its members.

Meanwhile, sources told this website's newspaper that the team would be given permission to visit Kamota on Monday. It will take eight hours to reach the island. ``We need medical presence in Kamota than in other islands. The team would be given permission to visit Kachchal and Nancowri also,'' the sources said.

Sea water ingression has caused extensive damage to islands' best cultivable land

Published by THE DAILY TELEGRAMS, Port Blair

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

Port Blair, Jan 16

The Director General of ICAR, Dr Mangla Rai said here today that the cultivable area affected under tidal submergence due to tsunami in these islands is estimated to be in the range of 4500 - 5000 hectares. Addressing a press conference in CARI complex, Dr Rai who is also the Secretary, DARE, GoI, informed that 68 villages are reported to have been affected in terms of sea water ingression.

The ICAR chief said that the soil salinity has increased manifold in the low-lying coastal areas because of inundation by sea water and it has caused extensive damage to some best available cultivable land in the islands. He hinted at the possibility of drastic change in soil microflora particularly in the inundated areas. Dr Rai also indicated at the increase in the incidence of coconut rhinoceros beetle in Nicobar group of islands for which integrated pest management has to be adopted in big way.

Sounding a note of caution about the scarcity of fodder due to submergence of grazing and fodder land due to tsunami sea water ingression, the ICAR DG informed that this may lead to reduction in milk yield among diary cattle and buffalo. He said the incursion of tidal waves may also render the islands into a state of poor livestock and poultry health care status apart from the general weakness of the cattle. He informed that quite a big number of cattle and poultry population has been lost due to recent disaster. He said that as reported by the Department of AH & VS, the lives of about 5000 cattle, 33000 poultry, 25850 pigs, 7500 goat and 14 buffaloes were lost in Car Nicobar. Similarly, in South Andaman area, 78 cattle, 75 buffalo, 308 goats, 9700 poultry and 12 pigs were lost in the aftermath of the Tsunami.

Answering a question on how to combat the present situation of such an agricultural loss, Dr Rai was of the view that alternative farming system has to be worked out and diversification of the cropping system will have to be resorted to in the prevailing situation. He summed up the situation by stating that 'adversity is an opportunity to enhance productivity'.

Report on North Sentinel island

by SANJEEV MIGLANI

Received from MADHUSREE MUKHERJEE
lopchu@att.net

15 Jan 2005

One of the world's most primitive people have become more vulnerable after last month's quake and tsunami severely altered the landscape around their palm-fringed island in the Andaman and Nicobar chain, an expert said.

The fishing grounds of the Sentinelese, estimated to number between 50 and 250, have shrunk after giant waves swept large amounts of sand and debris into lagoons and filled shallow waters around the island of North Sentinel, a survey team found.

"There is a drastic change in the shape of the land," said Anstice Justin, the head of the local unit of the Anthropological Survey of India who was part of the team that went on the reconnaissance mission to North Sentinel island. "Instead of the lagoon there is a a field of rock. How will they fish there? There are no shallow waters anymore."

The Sentinelese, the most isolated of the five ancient tribes that live in the remote cluster of islands, do not fish in deep seas because unlike the other tribes they have not yet mastered the art of propelling their craft.

They use long poles to negotiate their canoes through shallow waters. Justin said he counted 32 Sentinelese, mostly adult males, a few teenagers and a couple of women, all of them naked, who came to the shore when they saw their speedboat approach "They made certain gestures, they were saying something, but it wasn't intelligible to us. But I would assume, like any human being, they would be concerned about what had happened." Justin said his team left some coconuts in the waters near the island, which the Sentinelese later retrieved.

The government said members of the other primitive tribes appeared to have largely escaped the tsunami waves because they mostly lived in jungles away from the coast. But survey teams have not yet visited all the islands or accounted for all the members of these tribes, which have been living in the area for thousands of years. Many of the tribal people are semi-nomadic and subsist on hunting with spears, bows and arrows, and by fishing and gathering fruit and roots. They still cover themselves with tree bark or leaves.

Justin said the wreckage of two old ships jutted out from one of the washed up beaches of North Sentinel island and a few new breakers had emerged in the waters in another part of the island.

"Everywhere, you could see the earth had erupted, it was as if their land had been invaded."

Unlike the other tribes who have established some kind of contact with the outside world, the Sentinelese, who are drawn from Negrito stock, have been hostile to anyone trying to get anywhere near them.

"Perhaps this change in the topography will induce changes in them, might push them up the evolution chain, if you like.

"They may shape new kinds of oars that can take them to the deep sea, they might learn propelling techniques," said Justin.

AMITAV GOSH, famous writer, visits islands and puts down his thoughts (3)

by AMITAV GOSH
Published by THE HINDU of 13 Jan 2005

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

13 Jan 2005

Amitav Ghosh, the internationally renowned novelist, visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands recently to see for himself how the system and ordinary people have coped with the devastation caused by the tsunami of December 26. This is the third in a three-part series of special articles for THE HINDU newspaper.

At the airfield in Car Nicobar, the Director arranged a ride for us on a yellow construction truck that had been set to the task of distributing relief supplies. The truck went bouncing down the runway before turning off into a narrow road that led into a forest. Once the airstrip was behind us, it was as though we had been transported to some long-ago land, unspoiled and untouched. The road wound through a dense tropical jungle, dotted, at intervals, with groves of slender areca-palms and huts mounted on stilts. Some of these had metamorphosed into makeshift camps, sprouting awnings of plastic and tarpaulin. It was clear that the island's interior was sparsely inhabited, with the population being concentrated along the seafront. Earlier, while the plane was making its descent, I had had a panoramic, if blurred, view of the island, in the crisp morning sunlight. No more than a few kilometres across, it was flat and low, and its interior was covered by a dense canopy of greenery. A turquoise halo surrounded its shores, where a fringe of sand had once formed an almost-continuous length of beach: this was now still mainly underwater. I saw to my surprise that many thick stands of coconut palms were still standing, even on the edge of the water. Relatively few palms had been flattened; most remained upright and in full possession of their greenery. As for the forest, the canopy seemed almost undisturbed. All trace of habitation on the other hand, had been obliterated : the foundations of many buildings could be clearly seen, on the ground. But of the structures they had once supported, nothing remained. Selective destruction It was evident from above that the tsunami had been peculiarly selective in the manner of its destruction. Had the island been hit by a major cyclone, not a frond would have survived on the coconut palms and the forest canopy would have been denuded. Most human dwellings, on the other hand, would have retained their walls even if they lost their roofs. Not so in this instance: the villages along the shore were not merely damaged; they were erased. It was as if the island had been hit by a weapon devised to cause the maximum possible damage to life and property, while leaving nature largely unharmed. We came to an intersection that was flanked by low, whitewashed buildings. This was the administrative centre of the island, the Director explained; the settlement of Malacca lay a good distance away and we would have to walk. After getting off the truck, we came to the District Library, a building of surprising size and solidity: like the surrounding offices, it was unharmed, but a medical camp, manned by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, had sprung up on its grounds, under the shade of a spreading, moss-twined padauk tree. The Director spotted a doctor, sitting in a tent. He darted away and slipped under the tent's blue flap. "Doctor, have you heard anything about my family?" he said. "I've come because I heard some survivors had been found... " The doctor's face froze and after a moment's silence, in a tone that was non-committal and yet not discouraging, he said: "No news has reached me - I've not heard anything... " Salvaged goods We continued on our way, walking past the airy bungalows of the island's top officials, with their well-tended gardens. Soon we came upon two men who were sitting by the roadside, beside an odd assortment of salvaged goods. "That's mine," said the Director, pointing to a lampstand of turned wood. " I paid a lot for it; it's made of padauk wood." There was no rancour in his voice and nor did he seem to want to reclaim the object. We walked on. A few steps ahead the road dipped towards a large clearing fringed by thick stands of coconut palm: as with many small town maidans, there was a plaster bust of Mahatma Gandhi standing in its centre. So far on our journey from the airport we had seen no outward sign of the damage caused by the tsunami, but now we had arrived at the outer periphery of the band of destruction. Mounds of splintered planks and other building materials lay scattered across the clearing, and the red-white-and-green fence that surrounded the bust of Mahatma Gandhi was swathed in refuse and dead coconut fronds. Everywhere, evidence of the tsunami's reach could be seen in pools of water that had turned rank over the last few days. At the far end of the maidan, a fire was blazing among the coconut palms. The warehouse that supplied the island with cooking gas had stood at that spot. The tsunami had swept the warehouse away, leaving the canisters exposed to the sun and a fire had ensued. Every few minutes the ground shook to the blast of exploding canisters. Encountering Michael Oblivious to the fire, the Director stepped away to accost a passer-by who was wheeling a loaded bicycle. Over his shoulder, he said to me: "This is Michael; he worked in my office." Michael was a sturdy, grizzled Nicobarese, dressed in green shorts and a grey shirt. Laying his hands on the bicycle's handlebars, the Director said, in Hindi: "Michael, listen - has there been any news of Madam? You know what she looks like: have you seen any trace of her?" Michael dropped his eyes, as if in embarrassment, and answered with a tiny shake of his head. Lowering his voice, the Director continued: "And have you heard anyone speak of a girl, roaming in the jungle?" When this too failed to elicit an answer, he went on: "Michael, I need your help. Bring some men and come. I need to dig through the rubble to see if I can find anything." Even as he was speaking, his attention shifted to the contents of the plastic bags that were hanging from Michael's handlebars. Flinching, he let go of the handlebar. "Michael!" he cried, "What is all this stuff you've picked up? You should know better than to take things from over there - they may be contaminated." Michael hung his head and wheeled his bicycle silently away. "They're all looting," said the director, shaking his head. "I've heard the bazaar in Port Blair has received three sackfuls of gold from the islands..." In the clump of burning palm-trees, yet another gas canister exploded. It was close enough that we could feel the rattle of the blast in the debris under our feet; a shard of metal struck an onlooker, fortunately without injury. Oblivious to the flames, the Director hurried towards a spot where a mound of mangled household objects lay piled, having been pushed through the screen of coconut palms like dough through a sieve. Mangled objects "Look, that's mine," said the Director, pointing to a blue Aristocrat suitcase made of moulded plastic. It had been hacked open with a sharp-bladed instrument and its contents were gone. The Director picked it up and shook it. "I saw it the last time I was here," he said. "I t was already empty. Everything had been looted." His eyes moved over to a steel trunk, lying nearby. "That's mine too. Go and look." Stepping over I saw that the trunk's lock had been forced open. On the side, written in large black letters, was the Director's name and designation. "You see," the Director said, as if in vindication. "Everything I've been telling you is true. These things were all mine." Research lost A short distance away a wooden cabinet lay overturned, and heaps of paper could be seen spilling out of its belly. The Director beckoned to me. "See - there are all the records from my office. Thirteen years of research: all gone." We went to kneel beside the cabinet and I saw that the papers were mimeographed data sheets, with the letterhead of the Malaria Research Centre imprinted on top. Somewhere among the papers I spotted some old photographs. Somehow it was a matter of great relief to me to come upon some retrievable memento and I was quick to draw the Director's attention to the pictures. On examination it turned out that most of the pictures had been defaced by the water, but I found one where he, the Director, could clearly be seen, standing among a group of people. I held it out to him and he took it with an indifferent shrug. "That photo was taken at the air base, I remember." He let go and it fluttered into a puddle of stinking water. "Don't you want to keep it?" I said, in astonishment. "No," he said simply. "It means nothing. These are just work pictures." Slides! Then suddenly his eyes lit up. "Look," he said, "my slides... " A drawer had come open, shaking loose several decks of white-rimmed photographic slides. Most were sodden with water, but some were dry and had preserved their mages. To my untrained eyes, the pictures appeared to be of bacteria, hugely magnified by the lens of a microscope. The Director sorted quickly through the slides and chose a dozen or so. Close at hand there lay a roll of unused plastic bags that had been washed out of a shop and dried by the sun. Peeling off one of these bags, he placed the slides carefully inside before fastening his fingers on them. "Your home must have been nearby?" I said. "No," came the answer. "The wave carried these things right out of the town. My house is still a kilometre away, over there." Power of tsunami I had imagined that his possessions had ended up in the same place because his house was nearby: this was an indication of how little I understood of the power of the surge. Its strength was such that it had tossed the Director's house aside, picked up his household goods, bundled them together and punched them through a kilometre-wide expanse of dense habitation. The location the Director had pointed to was on the far side of the burning coconut palms; it was evident that to get there we would have to pass quite close to the fire, which was now spreading rapidly. We set off almost at a run, and soon came to a point where our path was blocked by a fallen tree. He clambered over, hanging on to his slides and I followed. The fire was now less than a hundred metres to our right and as I was climbing over there was another detonation, followed by a crackling, whooshing sound. I fell quickly to the ground and shut my eyes. When next I looked up, the Director was still standing, looking down at me with puzzled impatience. "Come on, come on - that's where we have to go: over there." When I rose to my feet I had my first glimpse of the seafront where the town of Malacca had once stood: till now it had been largely screened off from view by the coconut palms. On a stretch of land a couple of kilometres long, there were now only five structures still standing: the staring, skull-like shell of a school that had lost all its doors and windows; a neatly whitewashed bungalow; an arched gateway that had the words `Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Park' painted on it; a small, miraculously unharmed Murugan temple, right beside the sea; and lastly the skeleton of a church, with a row of parallel arches rising from the rubble like the bleached ribs of a dead animal. Life-saver This was the structure that had saved the life of the Director's son. The palms along the seafront were undamaged and upright, their fronds intact, but the other trees on the site had lost all their leaves and a couple had buses, cars and sheets of corrugated iron wrapped around their trunks. If not for the tree-trunks and the waving palms, the first visual analogy to suggest itself would have been Hiroshima after the bomb: the resemblance lay not just in the destruction but also in the discernible directionality of the blast. But there the parallel ended for the sky here was a cloudless blue and there were no wisps of smoke rising from the ruins. The Director led the way across the debris as if he were following a route imprinted in memory, a familiar map of streets and lanes. Despite a stiff breeze, blowing in from the sea, an odour of death flowed over the site, not evenly, but in whirls and eddies, sometimes growing so powerful as to indicate the presence of a yet-undiscovered body. Stray dogs, rooting in the ruins, looked up as though to express their surprise at the sight of human beings who were still ambient and on their feet. Home that was We came to a point where a rectangular platform of cement shone brightly under the sun. The Director stepped up to it and placed his feet in the middle. "This was my house," he said. "Only the foundation was concrete. The rest was wood. My wife used to say that she had moved from a white house to a log cabin. You see, she was from an affluent family; she grew up in a bungalow with an air-conditioner. She used to teach English in a school here, but she always wanted to leave. I applied many times, but the transfer never came." He paused, thinking back. For much of the time that we had been together, his voice had carried a note of sharp but undirected annoyance; now it softened. "There was so much she could have achieved," he said. "I was never able to give her the opportunity." I reached out to touch his arm but he shook my hand brusquely away; he was not the kind of man who takes kindly to expressions of sympathy; I could tell from his demeanour that he was accustomed to adversity and had invented many rules for dealing with it. The emotion he felt for his family he had rarely expressed; he had hoarded it inside himself, in the way a squirrel gathers food for the winter: loathe to spend it in his hectic middle years, he had put it away to be savoured when there was a greater sense of ease in his life, at a time when his battles were past and he could give his hoarded love his full attention. He had never dreamt - and who could? - that one bright December day, soon after dawn, it would be stolen, unsavoured, by the sea. I began to walk towards the gently lapping waves, no more than a hundred metres away. The Director took fright at this and called me back: "Don't go that way, the tide is coming in. It's time to leave." Yellow paint box I turned to follow him and we were heading back towards the blazing palms, when he stopped to point to a yellow paint box, peeping out of the rubble. "That belonged to Vineeta, my daughter," he said, and the flatness of his voice was harder to listen to than an outburst would have been. "She loved to paint; she was very good at it. She was even given a prize, from Hyderabad." I had expected that he would stoop to pick up the box, but instead he turned away and walked on, gripping his bag of slides. "Wait!" I cried. "Don't you want to take the box?" "No," he said vehemently, shaking his head. "What good will it do? What will it give back?" He stopped to look at me over the rim of his glasses. "Do you know what happened the last time I was here? Someone had found my daughter's schoolbag and saved it for me. It was handed to me, like a card. It was the worst thing I could have seen. It was unbearable." He started to walk off again. Unable to restrain myself, I called out after him: "Are you sure you don't want it - the paint box?" Without looking around he said: "Yes, I am sure." I stood amazed as he walked off towards the blazing fire, with his slides still folded in his grip: how was it possible that the only memento he had chosen to retrieve were those magnified images? As a husband, a father, a human being, it was impossible not to wonder: what would I have done? what would I have felt? what would I have chosen to keep of the past? The truth is that nobody can know, except in the extremity of that moment, and then the choice is not a choice at all, but an expression of the innermost sovereignty of the self, which decides because nothing now remains to cloud its vision. In the manner of his choosing there was not a particle of hesitation, not the faintest glimmer of a doubt. Was it perhaps that in this moment of utter desolation there was some comfort in the knowledge of an impersonal effort? Could it be that he was seeking refuge in the one aspect of his existence that could not be erased by an act of nature? Or was there some consolation in the very lack of immediacy - did the value of those slides lie precisely in their exclusion from the unendurable pain of his loss? Whatever the reason, his mind had fixed upon a set of objects that derived their meaning from the part of his life that was lived in thought and contemplation. There are times when words seem futile, and to no one more so than a writer. At these moments it seems that nothing is of value other than to act and to intervene in the course of events: to think, to reflect, to write seem trivial and wasteful. But the life of the mind takes many forms and after the day had passed I understood that in the manner of his choosing, the Director had mounted the most singular, the most powerful defence of it that I would ever witness. Amitav Ghosh

Situation report on the indigenous inhabitants of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

by MANISH CHANDI, Port Blair

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

13 Jan 2005

The archipelagos of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands have suffered greatly during the recent earth quakes and the subsequent tsunami. This is more so in the Nicobar Islands than in the Andaman group of islands, given their proximity to the island of Sumatra and the epicenter of the earthquakes. The Islands have gone through submergence and upheaval of landmasses giving rise to changes in terrestrial and marine environments of the islands. The indigenous inhabitants of the Andaman Islands are the few remaining Great Andamanese on Strait Island, Onge of Little Andaman Island, the Jarawa of South & Middle Andaman Islands, and the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island. All of these groups in contact with the A&N administration (apart from the Sentinelese who continue to be resistive and hold their own ground) have claimed to have run to higher ground with the beginning of the earthquakes.

This they claim is orally transmitted generational knowledge given past events in their historical experience which has taught them the nuances of survival in their Island environment. Apart from running to higher ground, I was even informed of an act that was perpetrated during this situation when all Jarawa with bows and arrows struck the ground with these shafts to reduce the intensity of the earthquake and increase chances of their survival on higher ground.

The Great Andamanese who number about 40 people are the remnants of former larger groups of tribes on the Andaman Islands who have been resettled by the Govt. of India since 1956 on Strait Island. Apart for the few, who are employed in various Govt. departments, the rest of them were on their Island on the 26th of December. They had moved to a hill adjacent to their settlement and remained there until they were evacuated to Port Blair to ensure their safety. The entire group is at present at Port Blair at the Adi basera - a rest station specifically made for the indigenous tribes during their infrequent visits to Port Blair.

The Onge live at Dugong Creek in the north and South Bay on Little Andaman Island. When the earthquakes struck they had moved to higher ground deep inside their forest and escaped the fury of the waves that entered the settlements. South Bay has been badly damaged though Dugong creek is inundated but not as badly devastated. One Onge woman and her newborn child are at Port Blair's GB Pant Hospital recuperating from childbirth.

The Jarawa reserve which extends along the West Coast of South and Middle Andaman Islands had also run inland; moreover this being the season to hunt wild boar most of them were inland deep in the tropical evergreen jungle that is common throughout their habitat. At present quite a few Jarawa tribe's people have assembled together near the southern most extremity of the reserve close to Tirur settlement at a large communal hut. This has encouraged poachers from the Wandoor and Kadamtala regions who have already arrived from and returned back to the reserve for wild Boar and spotted deer. One of the tsunami-affected families is supplementing their income with wild boar from the Jarawa reserve at Wandoor village. Apparently those Jarawa who did not strike the ground with arrow shafts or metal, have been temporarily restricted from communing with the regrouped persons and these persons are near Tirur village. The Andaman Trunk Road that runs through the reserve has not been severely damaged excepting for broken culvert retaining walls and a landslide at 2 places. Vehicular traffic is restricted to small cars and even motorbikes all those whom I met were allowed to travel without a police escort.

The Sentinelese have shown their resilience and do not seem to have faced much problems during the Tsunami events and even shot arrows at a naval Helicopter on patrol which had descended to check on their well being. The Island of North Sentinel has seen an upheaval of the landmass especially the surrounding coral reef and has thus increased terra firma of the island but damaging a once pristine reef.

The Nicobar islanders have been the worst sufferers of these events on and after December 26th. Initial reports were largely arriving from Car Nicobar Island, which is the district headquarters and also an airbase. This saw the attention of the world focus around here while other regions were neglected for about 4 days before rescue missions were in place.

Even so the number of dead and missing persons continue to mount given the inaccessibility of most regions. There has been considerable submergence in this region with coastlines having changed with massive ingress of the sea and the submergence of all coastal flat lands. The latest survivor has come out from Great Nicobar Island (in the South Nicobars) after 2 weeks floating on a log in a morass of fallen trees and debris that engulfed most of the devastated coastal forest regions of Great Nicobar Island. Pulomilo Island that was once ensconced within Little Nicobar Island is now submerged except for a small hilltop that housed a marine navigational beacon; it is a similar case with Chowra Island, a large portion of the Island being submerged and only a few survivors remain. The western coasts of Great and Little Nicobar have been partially submerged wiping out communities who once inhabited the region.

The Shompen who live inland and deep in the forest (of Great Nicobar) have so far known not to have suffered any causalities though personnel from the Tribal welfare department have left for Campbell Bay to assess the situation. A Helicopter that hovered above an active settlement of some Shompen scared the inhabitants away and returned to report on their well being.

In the Central Nicobars the Islands of Trinket and Katchal have split with wide cracks and many inhabitants are presumed dead. At Camorta island relief camps are present in many places catering to the displaced and affected inhabitants. The evacuees from Chowra and Car Nicobar Island (in the northern Nicobars) are at camps at Port Blair and on Car Nicobar Island. Those survivors from the southern Nicobars are at Campbell bay on Great Nicobar Island.

A lot of islanders are known to be living in the jungle of Car Nicobar; similarly with recent evacuations it is presumed that many other survivors are still marooned in the thickly forested regions of Great and Little Nicobar Islands. The Tsunami and earthquakes have caused a loss of lives to such an extent that only a few survivors of a few tribal groups remain; this is the case largely from Chowra and from the southern Nicobars. Despite this many Car Nicobarese have begun to return from Port Blair to Car Nicobar, and have been expressing the view of a need to restart their lives afresh and to also restrict ownership of space on their islands compared to the uncontrolled immigration of the past.

One of future concerns is the ability of fragmented communities especially of Great and Little Nicobar islands, Chowra Island, to be reoccupy their former space; apart from submerged regions, existing landscapes are largely hilly and thickly forested slopes of considerable gradients. Ariel pictures taken during rescue and search missions show a devastated landscape devoid of all trees that are now floating in muddy water with a complete transformation of topography and contour of Island coastlines. Given the fact that the traditional lifestyle of horticulture will take a long while to resume, in the event of complete damage, an alternative to this form of livelihood will be necessary to adopt in the interim period. This of course is a concern envisaged from outside of the community and it will be advisable to wait for such planning to take place by residents themselves. It would be pertinent to give the option of first choice to the remaining residents during the resettlement process after which other administrative and settlement constructions can be planned for these regions. This will take a while given the situation at present where all of the communities in the Nicobar archipelago are at present in relief camps spread form Port Blair to Great Nicobar in the southern extremity. Another danger that is present through this relief operation is the large number of NGO's present in the islands now and from those outside - all of whom are keen to be part of the rehabilitation process. Also the Administration is under pressure form various groups genuine and otherwise in terms of compensation for damages caused by this event. It would be wise to give time its due and a consolidative approach on the part of the Administration, NGO's toward forming a strategy that is envisaged by the Nicobar Tribal council for their future well being.

Letter regarding tribal land in the Central Nicobars

by SAMIR ACHARYA
Published by SANE (Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology)

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

13 Jan 2005

to
Mr. Kunwar Singh, Chairman
National Commission for Scheduled Tribes
Government of India
5th Floor, Lok Nayak Bhawan, Khan Market,
New Delhi - 110003

Dear Sir,

May I invite your kind attention to the urgent need of protecting the tribal land in the Nancowrie group of islands? The tribals there had sent an appeal to the Hon'ble Lt. Governor, Andaman and Nicobar Islands on 4th January, 2005 (copy enclosed for your ready reference). Their concern has now led to the creation of a fear psychosis that needs immediate attention.

The tribals in Katchal Island have lost a tremendous amount of land and livelihood options. On this tribal island 500 hectares of land was taken over by the Rubber Board and a rubber plantation was established without denotifying the land. The plantation was then taken over by the Andaman and Nicobar Forest and Plantation Corporation Ltd. The Hon'ble Supreme Court of India, in May, 2002, had ordered that all plantations on forest land should be cut down. Their Lordships had also ordered the dissolution of the Andaman and Nicobar Forest and Plantation Corporation. Neither order has been complied with till date. The plantation has also resulted in an influx of illegal non-tribals into the island. Widespread discontent among the tribals

found expression in a public interest litigation filed before the Hon'ble Calcutta High Court by the Nicobar Youth Association. As a result of this case, the Lt. Governor ordered the deportation of all illegal entrants. But when 50 illegals from Teressa Island were arrested, produced before the court and granted bail, the Lt. Governor accompanied by the Chief Secretary and our Member of Parliament flew down to Car Nicobar and announced issue of permits to them to legalise their presence on tribal land.

We urge you to kindly use the enormous prestige of your office to persuade the Government of India to direct the Administration to i. cut down the rubber plantation and hand over the timber duly treated to the local community for use in reconstruction of their destroyed huts ii. return the clear-felled plantation land to the local community to compensate for the land lost in the tsunami; and iii. to evict all non-tribal encroachers and to deposit all non-tribals not holding a pass. We also urge you to kindly request the Administration to issue Tribal Passes in consultation with the Tribal Council so that their wish is respected and no one is forced on the community against their wish.

Thanking you,
Yours sincerely,

Samir Acharya

AMITAV GOSH, famous writer, visits islands and puts down his thoughts (2)

by AMITAV GOSH
Published by THE HINDU of 12 Jan 2005,

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

12 Jan 2005

Amitav Ghosh, the internationally renowned novelist, visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands recently to see for himself how the system and ordinary people have coped with the devastation caused by the tsunami of December 26. This is the fi rst in a three-part series of special articles for THE HINDU newspaper.

Are supplies really available aplenty, throughout the Andaman and Nicobar Islands? The tale told in the relief camps is of course exactly the opposite of that which echoes out of the lairs of officialdom. Most of the refugees had to wait several days before they were evacuated. Forgotten in their far-flung islands, they listened to radio broadcasts that told them their nation was rushing aid to Sri Lanka and had refused all outside help as unnecessary: for the thirsty and hungry there was little consolation in the thought that these measures might help their country establish itself as a superpower. In Campbell Bay, according to several reports, refugees were moved to such fury by the indifference of the local officials that that they assaulted an officer who was found ushering in the New Year with a feast. Accounts of this incident, confirmed by several sources in the Coast Guard and the police, were characteristically denied by the civil authorities.  In Port Blair, relief camps are the main sources of aid and sustenance for the refugees. These are all sustained by private initiatives: they are staffed by volunteers from local youth groups, religious foundations and so on, and their supplies are provided by local shopkeepers, businessmen and citizens' organisations. I met with the organisers of several relief camps and they were unanimous in stating that they had received no aid whatsoever from the government, apart from some water. They knew that people on the mainland were eager to help and that a great deal of money had been raised. None of these funds had reached them; presumably they had met the same bottlenecks of distribution as the supplies that were lying piled on the runways. That it should be possible for the people of a small town like Port Blair to provide relief to so many refugees is the bright side of this dismal story: it is proof, if any were needed, that the development of civil society in India has far outpaced the institutions of state and the personnel who staff them.  Armed forces' attitude  The attitude of the armed forces is not the same as that of the civilian authorities. At all levels of the chain of command, from Lt. Gen. B.S. Thakur, the commanding officer in Port Blair, to the jawans who are combing through the ruins of Car Nicobar, there is an urgency, a diligence and an openness that is in striking contrast to the stance of the civilian personnel. Indeed, the feats performed by some units speak of an exemplary dedication to duty. Consider for example the case of Wing Commander B.S.K. Kumar, a helicopter pilot at the Car Nicobar air base. On December 26, he was asleep when the earthquake first made itself felt: his quarters were a mere 30 metres from the sea. Not only did he manage to outrun the tsunami, with his wife and child, he was airborne within 10 minutes of the first wave. In the course of the day he winched up some 60 stranded people and evacuated another 240.  His colleague, Wing Commander Maheshwari, woke too late to escape the wave. As the waters rose, he was forced to retreat to the roof of his building with his wife and daughter. Along with 29 other people, he fought for his footing on the roof until all were swept off. He managed to make his way to land, but was separated from his wife and child: two hours passed before they were found, clinging to the trunk of a tree. Of the 29 people on that roof, only six survived. And yet, despite the ordeal, Wing Commander Maheshwari flew several sorties that day.  Bureaucratic insensitivity  Considering the diligence of the armed forces and the enthusiasm and generosity of ordinary citizens, how is the attitude of the island's civilian administration to be accounted for? The answer is simple: a lack of democracy and popular empowerment. As a Union Territory, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have no legislature and thus no elected representatives with any clout apart from a single Member of Parliament. Elsewhere in India, in any situation of crisis, officials have to answer to legislators at every level: a failure to act would result in their being hounded by legislators and harried by trade unions, student groups and the like. As Amartya Sen has shown in his work on famines, these mechanisms are essential to the proper distribution of resources in any situation of extreme scarcity: in effect, the political system serves as a means by which demands are articulated. The media similarly serve to create flows of information.  These are precisely the mechanisms that are absent in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands: there are no elected representatives to speak for the people and the media have been excluded from large swathes of territory. It is not for no reason that on the mainland, where these mechanisms do exist, the attitude of administrators in the affected districts has been more sensitive to the needs of the victims and substantially more open to the oversight of the press and to offers of help from other parts of the country.   It is common for civil servants to complain of the perils of political interference: the situation on the islands is proof that in the absence of vigorous oversight many (although certainly not all) officials will revert to the indifference and inertia that are the natural condition of any bureaucracy.  Clearly the Central Government is aware that there is a problem, for the relief operation was restructured on January 2, reportedly at the personal intervention of Sonia Gandhi. What is more, several senior members of the ruling party have been dispatched to the outlying islands, not just for token visits, but to make sure that the supplies are properly distributed. These are welcome first steps, but it is essential that the Central Government moves quickly to create a more responsive and efficient disaster relief operation in this region not just for the management of this disaster, but for the long term. For if anything can be said with any certainty, it is that the tsunami will not be the last seismic upheaval to shake the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.  In 1991, after lying dormant for 200 years, the volcano of Barren Island, off the coast of the Andamans, became active again: there are reports that it erupted again around the time of the earthquake of December 26. On September 14, 2002, there was a 6.5 magnitude earthquake near Diglipur in North Andaman Island: now there are unconfirmed reports of a minor eruption in the same area. The signs are clear: no one can say the Earth has not provided warnings of its intent.  In Port Blair I found that the tsunami's effects on the outlying islands could only be guessed at. The refugees in the camps spoke of apocalyptic devastation and tens of thousands dead; the authorities' estimates were much more modest. There were few, if any, reliable independent assessments, for the civil authorities had decided that no journalists or other `outsiders' were to be allowed to travel to the outlying islands. The reasons given were those of the battlefield: too many resources would be spent on their protection. But there was no battle under way in the islands and the dangers of the tsunami were long past. Public ferry and steamer services linking Port Blair to the outer islands were in operation and had plenty of room for paying passengers. And yet journalists, Indian and foreign, who attempted to board these ships were forcibly dragged off.  Off to Car Nicobar  On January 1, 2005, there was an unexpected parting in this curtain of exclusion. The reason was that a couple of senior members of the ruling party had come to Port Blair with the intent of travelling farther afield. It was quickly made known that an Air Force plane would be provided to take the Ministers, and a retinue of journalists, to the island of Car Nicobar the next day. This island, which is positioned halfway between the Andaman and Nicobar chains, is home to some 30,000 people: it also houses an air base, which makes it something of a hub in relation to the more southerly islands.  Hoping to get on this plane, I duly presented myself at the airport only to find that a great many others had arrived with the same expectation. As always in such situations, there was considerable confusion about who would get on. After the Ministers had boarded, a minor melee ensued at the foot of the ramp that led to the plane's capacious belly. Knowing that I stood little chance of prevailing in this contest, I had almost resigned myself to being left behind when a young man in a blue uniform tapped my elbow and pointed across the airfield. "You want to go to Car Nicobar? That plane over there is carrying relief supplies. Just go and sit down. No one will say anything."  I sought no explanation for this unsolicited act of consideration: it seemed typical of the general goodwill of the military personnel I had encountered on the islands. As if on tiptoe I walked across the tarmac and up the ramp. The plane was a twin-engined Soviet-era AN 26, rusty but dependable, and its capacious fuselage was lined with folding benches. The round portholes that pierced its sides were like eyes that had grown rheumy with age; time had sandpapered the panes of glass so that they were almost opaque. The cargo area was packed with mattresses, folding beds, cases of mineral water and sacks of food, all covered with a net of webbing. There were some half dozen men inside, sitting on the benches with their feet planted askew beside the mass of supplies.  Angry and irascible  I seated myself in the only available space, beside a short, portly man with thick glasses and well-oiled, curly hair. He was dressed in a stiffly ironed brown safari suit and he had an air of irascibility that spoke of a surfeit of time spent in filing papers and running offices. He was muttering angrily when I came aboard: "What do those people care? What have they ever done to help anyone... ?" Of all the people on that plane he was perhaps the last I would have chosen to sit beside: I was keen to make myself as inconspicuous as possible while he seemed determined to draw attention to himself. It could only be a matter of minutes I thought, before the airmen evicted him.Inexplicably, they did not.  When the engines started up, my neighbour turned his attention to me. "These big people think they are so great, but what help have they given?" I assumed this to be a general expression of disgust, of the kind that is to be heard on every train and bus in the country. But then he added suddenly: "Let them go through what I have gone through. Let them suffer, then they would see... "  This hit me with the force of a shock: his well-laundered safari suit, his air of almost-comical self-importance, his irascibility - there was nothing about him that bespoke the victim. But I understood now why the airmen had ignored his rants; they knew something about him that I did not and this was their way of showing compassion.  In the meanwhile the tirade continued: "If those politicians had suffered as I have, what would they do? This is the question I want to ask."  I winced to think of my first response to his mutterings. "What exactly has happened?" I asked. "Tell me."  The Director's Story  He did not want his name, so I shall call him `The Director'. This indeed was his official title: he had been posted to the island of Car Nicobar in 1991, as the Director of the island's Malaria Research Centre and had lived there ever since. He was originally from Puri, in Orissa, and had been trained at the University of Berhampore. During his tenure in Car Nicobar he had married and had two children: a son who was now 13, and a 10-year-old daughter. His home was in Malacca - the seafront township I'd heard about in the camps - and his office was just a few minutes' walk from where he lived. In this office he had accumulated a great wealth of epidemiological knowledge. Car Nicobar had once been rife with malaria, he told me. In an island with a population of just 30,000, the annual incidence had been as high as 3810, even as recently as 1989. But during his tenure he had succeeded in bringing the rate down to a fraction of this number. It was clear, from the readiness with which he quoted the figures, that he was immensely - and justly - proud of what he had achieved during his stay on the island.  On December 25, 2004, the Director was in Port Blair, on his way to New Delhi. Since he was travelling for official reasons, he had left his family in Malacca. He spent the night of December 25 in the Haddo Circuit House, which stands close to the water. On the morning of the 26th he was woken by the shaking of his bed. He stepped off to find the floor heaving and realised that an earthquake had hit the town. As he was running out of the building, his mobile phone rang. Glancing quickly at the screen, he saw that his wife was calling from Malacca. He guessed that the earthquake had struck Car Nicobar too but he was not unduly alarmed. Tremors were frequently felt on the island and he thought his wife would be able to cope. The Guest House in the meanwhile was still shaking and there was no time to talk.  He cut off the call and ran outside; he would phone back later, he decided, once the tremors stopped. He waited out the earthquake outside and when the ground was still at last, he hit the call button on his phone. There was no answer and he wondered if the network was down. But he had little time to think about the matter because a strange phenomenon had suddenly begun to manifest itself before him: the water in the harbour had begun to rise, very rapidly, and the anchored ships seemed to be swirling about in the grip of an unseen hand. Along with everyone else he ran to higher ground.  Surge of water  The islands of the Andaman chain rise steeply out of the sea and the harbour and waterfront of Port Blair are sheltered by a network of winding fjords and inlets. Such is the lay of the land that the turbulence that radiated outwards from the earthquake's epicentre, manifested itself here not as an onrushing wall of water, but as a surge in the water level. Although this caused a good deal of alarm, the damage was not severe.  It was not long, however, before it occurred to the Director that the incoming swell in Port Blair's harbour might have taken a different form elsewhere. The Nicobar islands do not have the high elevations of their northern neighbours, the Andamans. They are low-lying islands for the most part, and some like Car Nicobar stand no more than a few metres above sea level at their highest point. Already anxious, the Director became frantic when word of the tsunami trickled down to the waterfront, from the naval offices further up the slope.  Malacca hit  The Director knew of a government office in Car Nicobar that had a satellite phone. He dialled the number again and again: it was either busy or there was no answer. When at last he got through, the voice at the other end told him, with some reluctance, that Malacca had been badly hit. It was known that there were some survivors, but as for his family, there was no word.   The Director kept calling, and in the afternoon he learnt that his 13-year-old son had been found clinging to the rafters of a church, some 200 metres behind their house. Arrangements were made to bring the boy to the phone and the Director was able to speak to him directly later that night. He learnt from his son that the family had been in the bedroom when the earthquake started. A short while later, a terrifying sound from the direction of the sea had driven the three of them into the drawing room. The boy had kept running, right into the kitchen. The house was built of wood, on a cement foundation. When the wave hit, the house dissolved into splinters and the boy was carried away as if on a wind. Flailing his arms, he managed to take hold of something that seemed to be fixed to the earth. Through wave after wave he managed to keep his grip. When the water receded he saw that he was holding on to the only upright structure within a radius of several hundred metres: of the township there was nothing left but a deep crust of wreckage.  "And your mother and sister?" the Director had asked.  "Baba, they just disappeared... " And now for the first time, the boy began to cry, and the Director's heart broke because he knew his son was crying because he thought he would be scolded and blamed for what had happened.  Timid, brave boy  "I was strict with him sir," the Director said, his voice trailing off. "I am a strict man; that is my nature. But I must say he is a brave boy; a very brave boy."  Having spent 13 years on the island, the Director was well acquainted with the local administration and the officers on the air base. Through their intervention he was able to get on a flight the very next day. He spent the day searching through the rubble; he found many possessions, but no trace of his daughter or his wife. He came back to Port Blair with his son the same evening and the two of them moved in with some friends. Every day since then he'd been trying to go back, to find out what had become of his wife and daughter but the flights had been closed - until this one.  "Tell me," he said, his voice becoming uncharacteristically soft. "What do you think: is there any hope?"  It took me a moment to collect my wits. "Of course there is hope," I said. "There is always hope. They could have been swept ashore on another part of the island."   He nodded. "We will see. I hope I will find out today, in Malacca."  With some hesitation I asked if it would be all right if I came with him. He answered with a prompt nod. "You can come."   I had the impression that he had been dreading the lonely search that lay ahead and would be glad of some company. "All right then," I said. "I will."    Amitav Ghosh

Global warming and rising sea levels will affect the Nicobar islands

by MADHUSREE MUKHERJEE
lopchu@att.net

12 Jan 2005

Sadly I think the warning about global warming causing an upcreep of the sea should be taken seriously. It isn't just the slow rise of the sea, but also that global warming will cause more frequent and violent storms, which means storm surges--segments of ocean uplifted by the low-pressure core of a storm and moved onto land. (Like the Orissa tidal wave.) What this all means about rebuilding for the battered Nicobarese I don't know. It looks like not only should people worry about how far they are from the shore (CRZ), but how high they are

AMITAV GOSH, famous writer, visits islands and puts down his thoughts (1)

by AMITAV GOSH
Published by THE HINDU of 11 Jan 2005,

Received from KALPAVRIKSH
Mr. Pankaj Sekhsaria
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239
E-mail: pankaj@leadindia.org

11 Jan 2005

Amitav Ghosh, the internationally renowned novelist, visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands recently to see for himself how the system and ordinary people have coped with the devastation caused by the tsunami of December 26. This is the fi rst in a three-part series of special articles for THE HINDU newspaper.

Overlapping faults The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are one of those quadrants of the globe where political and geological fault lines run on parallel courses. Politically the islands are Union Territories, ruled directly from New Delhi, but geologically they stand just beyond the edge of the Indian tectonic plate. Stretching through 700 kilometres of the Bay of Bengal, they are held aloft by a range of undersea mountains that stands guard over the abyssal deep of the Sunda trench. Of the 572 islands, only 36 are inhabited: `the Andamans' is the name given to the northern part of the archipelago while `the Nicobars' lie to the south. At their uppermost point, the Andamans are just a few dozen miles from Burma's Coco Islands, infamous for their prisons, while the southernmost edge of the Nicobars is only a couple of hundred kilometres from the ever-restless region of Aceh. This part of the chain is so positioned that the tsunami of December 26, 2004 hit it just minutes after the coastline of northern Sumatra. Despite the hundreds of kilometres of water that separate the Andamans from the Indian mainland, many of the relief camps in Port Blair, the islands' capital city, have the appearance of miniaturised portraits of the nation. Only a small percentage of their inmates are indigenous to the islands; the others are settlers from different parts of the mainland: Bengal, Orissa, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. If this comes as a surprise, it is only because the identity of the islands - and indeed the alibi for the present form of their rule - lies in an administrative conception of the `primitive' that dates back to the British Raj. The idea that these islands are somehow synonymous with backwardness is energetically promoted in today's Port Blair. Hoardings depicting naked `primitives' line the streets, and I heard of a sign that instructs onlookers to `Love Your Primitive Tribe.' In most parts of the mainland, these images would long since have been defaced or torn down, for the sheer offensiveness of their depictions: not so on these islands which are more a projection of India than a part of its body politic; as with many colonies, they represent a distended and compressed version of the mother country, in its weaknesses and strengths, its aspirations and failings. Over the last two weeks, both the fault lines that underlie the islands seem suddenly to have been set in motion: it is as if the hurried history of an emergent nation had collided here with the deep time of geology. The mainland settlers in the camps are almost unanimous in describing themselves as having come to the islands in search of land and opportunity. Listening to their stories it is easy to believe that most of them found what they were looking for: here, in this far-flung chain of islands, tens of thousands of settlers were able to make their way out of poverty, into the ranks of the country's expanding middle class. But on the morning of December 26, this hard-won betterment became a potent source of vulnerability. For to be middle-class, in India or anywhere else, is to be kept afloat on a life-raft of paper: identity cards, licences, ration cards, school certificates, cheque books, certificates of life insurance and receipts for fixed deposits. It was the particular nature of this disaster that it targeted not just the physical being of the victims but also the proof of the survivors' identities. An earthquake would have left remnants to rummage through; floods and hurricanes would have allowed time for survivors to safeguard their essential documents on their person. The tsunami, in the suddenness of its onslaught allowed for no preparations: not only did it destroy the survivors' homes and decimate their families; it also robbed them of all the evidentiary traces of their place in the world. On January 1, 2005, I went to visit the Nirmala School Camp in Port Blair. The camp, like the school in which it is housed, is run by the Catholic Church and it is presided over by a mild-mannered young priest by the name of Father Johnson. On the morning of my visit Father Johnson was at the centre of an angry altercation. The refugees had spent the last three days waiting anxiously in the camp, and in that time no one had asked them where they wanted to go or when; none of them had any idea of what was to become of them and the sense of being adrift had brought them to the end of their tether. The issue was neither deprivation nor hardship - there was enough food and they had all the clothes they needed - it was the uncertainty that was intolerable. In the absence of any other figure of authority they had laid siege to Father Johnson: when would they be allowed to move on? Where would they be going? Father Johnson could give them no answers for he was, in his own way, just as helpless as they were. The officials in charge of the relief effort had told him nothing about their plans for the refugees. Now time was running out: the schools in which the camps were located were to re-open on January 3. With the date almost at hand, Father Johnson had no idea how he was going to manage his students with more than 1600 refugees camping on the grounds. Reclaiming identity