In Search of Resilience
Images by Imran Ahmed,
Text by Dipan Saha
Cyclonic gust at 200 km an hour ripped everything into pieces; seawater pushed in with 12 meter high waves and soon started the heavy rain. Mud houses and thatched roofs suffered the worst brunt making thousands of people homeless overnight. Lives of nearly 3 million people came to a halt and humanity remained helpless spectator in front of raging Mother Nature.
The category 5 Hurricane, as declared just before the landfall on 12th October, 2013, Phailin was mammoth on every single scale. Its terrifying size, rapid development and violent speed of wind made Phailin the second-largest cyclone to landfall ever on India. Widespread evacuation drive and emergency preparedness saved human lives but could save their houses from collapsing. Subsequent flooding played havoc on crops and livestocks too. The total financial damage touched $688 million USD and these losses unnerved the normalcy of local life; left a permanent scar on the poor needy people of the coastal districts of Odisha, especially in Ganjam.
Due to financial hardships, re-building was difficult for many, including elderly men, women and people with disabilities. So, they had to accept the torment of living below the open sky. Post-Phailin, these people struggled with hunger and poor health conditions and regular life practices were severely disrupted. Children and women suffered the most undoubtedly.
SEEDS, as part of their Odisha Reconstruction Project, came forward in support of these vulnerable people with their community-based disaster management approach. In partnership with Christian Aid (CA) and with the support of European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), SEEDS is, at present, facilitating construction of disaster resilient shelters in the 11 villages across 4 blocks of Ganjam district. The ongoing project focuses on fully supported reconstruction of 50 houses and partially supported reconstruction of 250 houses.
Through out this report we have tried to capture some of the main elements of this project and also identified some people, whose lives have been touched through this project.
Community-led monitoring system
Alone we are no match against Mother Nature. Since the time immemorial humanity realized that and tried to grow together as community. Living together as a community helps sharing the brunt and restores the strength to resile back, even from the worst calamities.
SEEDS always promotes and practises community-based disaster management strategy. That includes following the bottom-up approach at every level, starting from beneficiary selection to project implementation and monitoring process. The community as a whole takes the onus to guide the project and resolve every single hitch constructively.
As part of this strategy, SEEDS, in this Odisha Reconstruction Project, extensively followed community-led monitoring system.
In every village, a Village Development Committee (VDC) has been set up with both the elected ward representatives and community members. VDC consists of 2 teams – Store Committee and Monitoring Committee. The responsibilities of Store Committee are to unload and secure storage of materials to be used in shelter construction and distribute those materials as per the SMART Card and the Issue sheets.
Monitoring Committee supervises the project implementation process, keeps a tab on the activities of Store Committee and also supervises people working under cash-for-work scheme. SEEDS encourages and tries to ensure at least 50% participation of women members from the community in both the committees.
This community-led project implementation and monitoring system has achieved a sense of ownership among the community members and also helped to bring out the traditional knowledge residing within the community.
As an integral part of the community-led monitoring system, a proactive Complaint Response Mechanism has also been established in every village. Clearly visible complaint boxes have been set up and people are informed and encouraged to lodge their grievances without disclosing their identity. However, many people in the rural areas are not proficient in writing. And considering this problem, SEEDS is currently planning to publicise telephone numbers also on the complaint boxes. Through these telephone numbers villagers will be able to directly contact organization’s representatives at local level and at Delhi HQ, if needed.
Embedding knowledge through mason training
Disaster resilience comes from the emergency preparedness and the capability to return back to normal life as early as possible. For poor needy people, this returning back to normalcy does not happen easily, especially when they lose their shelters. Financial burden of reconstructing a decently inhabitable house, they often cannot bear easily. For that reason, under the Odisha Reconstruction Project, SEEDS is trying to construct disaster resilient shelters that includes all the disaster risk reduction (DRR) features and can be rebuilt, if collapsed, easily with locally available resources, like, bamboo, mud, cow dung, stones and red soil. The 4-way slope CGI sheet roof, a main feature of disaster resilient shelter, is typically resistant to cyclonic gusts; but, if needed, the roof can be dismantled and stored easily for future use.
Along with the usages of locally available materials, SEEDS is also organizing hands-on masonry and carpentry training workshops for villagers and distributing free tool boxes to select participants after completion of the training. The objective of this unique initiative is to embed knowledge of disaster resilient shelter construction within the community and make villagers self-reliant to resile back to normal life after any future disasters.
Besides, this training is also capable of providing better employability, through skill development. It has been observed that the livelihood of majority people in this region is daily labor. Nature of their work is seasonal involving unskilled or semi-skilled activities. Obvious result is poor wage and irregular work opportunity. Hands-on training and practical work experience as mason will help these people to secure better paying works in future. We met some people who went through the training.
Trained carpenter with disability
Name – K. Parameswar Rao (42)
Family – wife and 3 kids
Quote – “very happy for this training opportunity; will be surely helpful in future.”
- Parameswar Rao, before attending carpentry training, was engaged is basic carpentry job and that was his livelihood. From the hands-on training, he extensively learned about layout preparation, usage of PCC, structural construction of 4-way slope. He has already completed several shelters and now supervises a team of apprentices, undergoing the training. For anyone it will be a motivating experience to watch Parameswar working on the roof and fixing CGI sheets despite complete disability in one of his legs.
Trained mason
Name – Basha Khan (26)
Family – unmarried, living with parents and 2 sisters
Quote – “these houses are very good in quality; will definitely sustain cyclone and floor”
Basha was also a carpenter earlier, based in Korapalli, and learned masonry from the SEEDS organized workshop. After the training he has already completed construction of 4 shelters and quite confident about his capability. When asked, he confirmed that DRR techniques are absolutely essential for this location and easier to follow too. He would advise others to use such techniques in future and also help people to reconstruct their houses following such techniques.
Trained mason
Name – Babula Nayak (40)
Family – wife and 4 kids
Quote – “these houses are just fantastic; SEEDS trained was also excellent.”
Babula Nayak was a small time bicycle mechanic and when heard about SEEDS masonry training, gladly joined the workshop. Today he can single-handedly build shelters with complete DRR features. His bicycle repairing skill was not paying sufficiently for his family’s livelihood. Masonry training offered him another earning opportunity. He is confident that this training will offer more work opportunity even after the end of the SEEDS project.
Currently undergoing mason training
Name – P. Rambabu (35)
Family – wife, 4 kids and mother-in-law
Quote – “I would suggest these techniques to everybody and help them to construct such houses in future”
Rambabu primarily worked as helper in household painting work. He is currently getting trained in masonry and also expects that this new skill will open up new work opportunities in near future.
Technology transfer through replication
Another explicit objective of this disaster resilient shelter construction project is to build active awareness about disaster risk reduction techniques. People should understand the benefits of DRR techniques and accept them through replication independently, without direct persuasion from SEEDS. In reality, this objective has been achieved. B. Krishnamurti of Jolari Pentho, after observing the disaster resilient shelter construction, decided to utilize these techniques and independently constructed one shelter on his own plot of land. Krishnamurti spent last 10 years of his life in Dubai as construction worker and returned just a few months back. He lives with his wife and also a member of VDC Monitoring Committee. He is not a direct beneficiary of SEEDS project. His newly constructed shelter features many DRR techniques like Queen Key, Horizontal Bracing, interlocking between column and bracing and load-distributing structure. He has already spent nearly 12,000/- rupees and very happy about the outcome.
Road ahead
Fighting back is the second nature of human being and it helps humanity to survive even the worst. The Cyclone Phailin was a completely new experience for many people in Ganjam and surrounding districts. The majority of the today’s living population had no recollectable memory of a cyclonic storm, unlike people of Balasore or upper coastal areas of Odisha. The 1999 Odisha Cyclone caused no havoc in this region, except few days of raining. Probably, this was the reason many were not ready here to evacuate even after the repeated warnings; the state government ultimately had to forcefully evacuate them.
However, situation is changed now completely. With consistent climatic changes, disasters like, cyclonic storms, are going to be more frequent visitors in this part of the world. This reminds us the utmost necessity of developing emergency preparedness along with physical and psychological resilience. We wish SEEDS will continue their disaster risk reduction program and touch vulnerable poor needy lives through their unique initiatives.
